The LTTE Football Team

The Tamil Eelam football team at VIVA 2012.

I was reading TamilNet (through VTunnel) and I saw this article about the Tamil Eelam football team participating in a World Cup with other ‘stateless nations’. I thought it was a remarkably surreal event. Sadly, they finished seven out of eight. Iraqi Kurdistan won, Northern Cyprus were runners up and Zanzibar finished third.

Note that I call this the LTTE football team rather than the Eelam team because they’re flying the horrendous LTTE flag – the snarling tiger encircled by bullets, flanked by bayonets. That was quite unequivocally the LTTE’s flag and anyone flying that terrorist emblem is not supported by me. Regarding the symbols,

Janarthan Sadacharalingam, Captain for TEFA spoke to TamilNet about the necessity of holding up the symbols representing the Eezham Tamil nation in sports.

“We did not shy away from using these symbols because we are firm on our nation and want to send a strong message against any compromise of our identity,” he said.

Well, OK, but as John Lennon said, ‘But when you talk about destruction, Don’t you know that you can count me out… But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow’. Eelam is one thing and LTTE is another. Mixing them together doomed them both, but the echoes of tragedy and hate go on.

But anyways. I just found it interesting that they have an entire football tournament devoted to non-nations, nations that don’t but possibly could exist, and that don’t exist in a territorial sense much at all. It is a wondrous world full of multiple variations and imaginations.

7 Comments

There are a lot of well meaning people who like to pretend that the “vast majority” of the Tamil diaspora did not support the LTTE. However, as time passes their (simple minded?) charade is being exposed, and, well, it ain’t pretty :) Much of the Tamil youth in the diaspora are what I would call “lost causes” (from a Sri Lankan perspective) – their level of disconnect with reality on the island is kinda mind boggling. Mind you this is from my experience having mingled with these folk in real life and from what I see on facebook so others may have a different experience. I say “lost causes” because I think that it is rather pointless “reaching out” to them. It’s like India trying to “reach out” to the Khalistani diaspora in Canada – the youth have been brought up by their parents on such a steady stream of hatred and a narrative of victimhood that come what may they will be anti-Indian, and fiercely so. It is rather unfortunate, but these individuals will never be “Sri Lankan” and they will have no relationship with Sri Lanka beyond the connection to a mythical “Tamil Eelam” on the internet.