The Tamil National Alliance (Tamil: தமிழ்த் தேசியக் கூட்டமைப்பு ISO 15919: tamiḻt tēciyakkūṭṭamaippu) is a powerful minority Sri Lankan Tamil political alliance in Sri Lanka. It was formed as an amalgamation of moderate Tamil parties as well as number of former rebel groups. It has participated in elections since 2001.
The alliance originally supported self-determination in an autonomous state for the island's Tamils, but dropped the demand for an independent state in 2010, saying that it is ready to accept regional self-rule.
The party supported negotiations with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to resolve the civil war in Sri Lanka. Three of its sitting Members of Parliament, Kiddinan Sivanesan, Joseph Pararajasingham and Nadarajah Raviraj have been assassinated since 2006, allegedly by the Sri Lankan government.
Read more about Tamil National Alliance: Formation, Manifesto and Policies, Assassination of MPs
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or alliance:
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)