The Tamil United Liberation Front (in Sinhala: Tamil Vimuktasi Peramuna) is a political group in Sri Lanka, which seeks autonomy or independence for the Tamil-populated areas of Sri Lanka, which they call Tamil Eelam.
On May 4, 1972 several Tamil political groups, including the All Ceylon Tamil Congress and the Federal Party, formed the Tamil United Front (TUF). With the group's adoption in 1976 of a demand for an independent state, a "secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam," it changed its name to the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). In the general election of July 1977, TULF won eighteen seats in the legislature, including all fourteen seats contested in the Jaffna Peninsula. In October 1983, all the TULF legislators, numbering sixteen at the time, forfeited their seats in Parliament for refusing to swear an oath unconditionally renouncing support for a separate state in accordance with the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka.
In the 2004 parliamentary elections TULF contested as a part of the LTTE-backed ticket Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi. ITAK won 22 of 225 seats in the National Assembly.
Those Tamils who are representing the North and the East in Parliament are only proxies of the L.T.T.E. with no independent views and those outside have been silenced by the threat of guns.
TamilUnitedLiberationFront (TULF) leader V. Anandasangaree said he wants to meet John Cushnahan, the Chief Observer of the European Union, election observation mission, to ask him to watch the LTTE during the forthcoming Presidential elections.
The TULF leader warned that the LTTE would try to rig the elections with the connivance of the officers who may be forced to carry out their instructions.
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