THE SRI LANKAN WAR

A DECADES LONG CONFLICT

1. SINHALESE (Buddhist)

2. TAMILS (Hindu)

Sri Lankan Tamils

Indian Tamils

3. SRI LANKAN MOORS

(Muslims)

4. OTHERS

Burghers

Veddah

ETHNIC GROUPS IN SRI LANKA

 KEY PARTIES
INVOLVED

T H E C O N F L I C T WA S P R I M A R I LY B E T W E E N T H E S R I L A N K A N
G O V E R N M E N T, W H I C H W A S P R E D O M I N A N T L Y S I N H A L E S E A N D T H E
L I B E R AT I O N T I G E R S O F TA M I L E E L A M ( L T T E ) , A M I L I TA N T
O R G A N I Z A T I O N S E E K I N G A N I N D E P E N D E N T TA M I L S TA T E I N T H E
NORTH AND EAST OF SRI LANKA.
 BACKGROUND
1. The Great Britain ruled Sri Lanka from 1815 to 1948. When the British
arrived, the country was dominated by Sinhalese speakers whose ancestors
arrived on the island from India in 500 BCE.
2. The British established huge cash crop plantation on the island, first of
coffee and later of rubber and tea. Colonial Officials brought in
approximately a million Tamil speakers from India to work as plantation
labourers.
3. The British established schools in the northern Tamil majority part of the
colony and preferentially appointed Tamils to bureaucratic positions which
angered the Sinhalese majority and left them feeling isolated and
oppressed.
4. Soon after British occupiers left the island in 1948 these patterns of Tamil
dominance changed dramatically.
  After independence many Sinhalese worked their way
into the upper echelons of government. These Sinhalese
THE STORY gained power and went on to gradually pass Acts
REVERSES effectively disenfranchising their Tamil counterparts.
 Sinhala Only Act, 1956 - It made Sinhala the official
language of Sri Lanka and created barriers for Tamil
people trying to access Government services or
seeking public employment.
ROOT CAUSES FOR  The Ceylon Citizenship Act,1948 – It effectively
THE SRI LANKAN barred Indian Tamils from holding Citizenship.
WAR  Standardization – It aimed to provide more
educational opportunities for disadvantaged Sinhalese
students.
 In 1970s, importing Tamil language books, magazines
and films from Tamil Nadu was also outlawed.
 Ethnic tensions rose and the successive Governments
did nothing to provide equal rights and opportunities
to Tamil people.
 CIVIL WAR ERUPTS

 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was formed in 1976

by Vellupillai Prabhakaran with the intention of acquiring a
homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka in the North and East parts
of the island.
 The conflict erupted when a landmine ambush laid by Tamil
rebels killed thirteen Sinhalese soldiers of the Sri Lankan Army
in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna in the North. The Government
flew the bodies to the capital Colombo for a mass burial, but
relatives demanded individual funerals and Anti Tamil riots
began.
 The backlash degenerated into a week of violence targeting
Tamils, dubbed as the “BLACK JULY”.

A Tamil youth stripped naked before being killed by
Sinhalese rioters near Borella bust stand.
BLACK JULY
The 1983 Anti Tamil pogroms in
Sri Lanka, commonly referred to
as Black July, was a brutal state-
sponsored genocide lasting from
July 23 to July 30. Sinhalese
mobs took at least 3,000 Tamil
lives, destroyed 8,000 homes,
5,000 shops, and displaced
90,000-1,50,000 Tamils. Many
Tamil women were raped and
many families were burnt alive.
It was prompted the first large
exodus of Tamils: 5,00,000 fled
the island giving seed to a
global Tamil diaspora.
 INDIAN INTERVENTION

 During the 1970s, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) helped train
and arm the LTTE, but after the group’s terrorist activities grew in 1980’s
including its alliances with separatist groups in the southern state of Tamil
Nadu– RAW withdrew its support.
 In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi decided to intervene in the situation mainly because
of separatism issue in Tamil Nadu and also to avoid the potential swarm of
refugees from Sri Lanka to Indian shores.
 Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to the island in the hope of
bringing about peace. It proved to be a terrible disaster. Instead of
negotiating settlement between both parties, the Indian troops ended up
fighting the Eelam group. About 1200 Indian men died in the war.
 India was forced to withdraw its troops by Sri Lankan President Premdasa
in 1990.
 Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE human bomb in 1991 at an
election rally in Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka’s President Premadasa met with a
similar fate in 1993.
 TOWARDS THE END OF WAR

 1997 US State Department placed LTTE on its terror list.

 2002 Norway brokered a cease fire agreement between LTTE
and Sri Lankan Government where instead for a separate
nation LTTE asked for Regional Autonomy.
 2005 The assassination of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister,
Lakshman Kadirgamar reignited the conflict.
 For next 2 years both parties repeatedly violated the cease
fire agreement.
 2007 The Rajapaksa Government launched an all out onslaught
against LTTE.
 2009 President of the country declared to the Parliament that
Prabhakaran (LTTE leader) was killed.
  There were war crimes and crimes against
humanity that were committed by the Sri Lankan
military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly
during the final months of the war.
 The war crimes include attacks on civilians and
civilian buildings by both sides; executions of
WAR CRIMES combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced
DURING FINAL disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and
paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual
STAGES OF WAR violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic
denial of food, medicine, and clean water by
the government to civilians trapped in the war
zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of
military equipment in the proximity of civilians and
use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
 It is also found that as many as 40,000 Tamil
civilians may have been killed in the final months of
the civil war, a large majority as a result of
indiscriminate army bombardment.
 The Sri Lankan government has denied that its
forces committed any war crimes and has strongly
opposed any international investigation.
 Sri Lanka is not a signatory of the Rome Statute.
Therefore, it is only possible for the ICC to
investigate and prosecute war crimes in Sri Lanka if
the UN Security Council was to refer Sri Lanka to
the ICC, which is unlikely.
 In June 2010 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-
moon appointed a three-member panel of experts
to advise him on whether war crimes were
committed in the final stages of the civil war.
 Specific findings of the panel. In regard to crimes
by the Sri Lankan government:
 The Sri Lankan military used large-scale and
widespread shelling causing large numbers of
civilian deaths.
 The Sri Lankan government tried to intimidate and
silence the media and other critics of the war using
a variety of threats and actions.
 The Sri Lankan military shelled the UN hub, food
distribution lines and Red Cross ships coming to
rescue the wounded and their relatives.
 Tens of thousands of civilians were killed between
January and May 2009. Many died anonymously
in the final days.
 The Tamil Tigers refused to allow civilians to leave
the conflict zone and kept them as hostages. The
civilians were sometimes used as human shields.
 The Tamil Tigers forcibly recruited members during
the whole of the civil war but this intensified during
the final stages of the war. Some of the recruits
were young as 14.
 International Interventions

 The major, but not necessarily most successful, diplomatic effort to intervene
in Sri Lankan conflict was taken by India. Its failure to include the LTTE in the
negotiations prevented the agreement from becoming a success, and
eventually India became one of the fighting parties.
 Over the years various parties in Sri Lanka have called for third party
mediation, and the United States, France, Australia, Canada and the United
Kingdom, among others, have offered their services. All these endeavors for
third party mediation have never been successful.
 The UN has played a remarkably limited role. As long as the Sri Lankan
government is strongly opposed to outside political involvement in the
conflict, with their present Charter the UN cannot do much.
 In January 2000, the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Knut
Vollebaek, started an attempt to mediate in the conflict. These might be
considered the most serious endeavors for international intervention in the
conflict since the Indian involvement, but it is again compounded by ongoing
hostilities.
 THE SITUATION NOW

 A large population of the Tamil population remains

displaced.
 The Government often surveys and tracks people linked to
LTTE and continues to disenfranchise the Tamil community.
 Sinhalese monuments, road signs, street and villages names
as well as Buddhist places of worship became more
common in predominantly Tamil areas.
 Sri Lanka has also been experiencing communal clashes
between Buddhists and Muslims.
 THANK YOU
By Upasna Devi
340/20