The Civil War of Sri Lanka: THE BATTLE FOR A HOMELAND AND THE TAINTED CONQUEST

By: Aminath Ishrath

As my country is a close neighbor of Sri Lanka, both geographically and diplomatically, I grew up hearing about the Tamil Tigers and the war troubles in Sri Lanka. As our tour to Sri Lanka is to discover the culture and heritage of the country, I think it is significant that everyone is aware about one of the world’s most enduring civil wars that have scarred Sri Lanka.

The population of Sri Lanka is divided into a three main groups, ethnically and religion wise. The majority are Buddhist Sinhalese, followed by Hindu Tamils and then Tamil-speaking Muslims. Since Sri Lanka gained its independence from the British Empire in 1948 and elected the Sinhalese majority into power, succeeding Sinhalese governments employed different discriminatory legislation against the Tamils. The following are some of the measures taken by the Sinhalese Governments that eventually led to the main causes for the war.

There is a sizable population of Tamils in the Central Province who were plantation laborers brought down from India by the British colonial authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries. These Indian Tamils (or Estate Tamils), as they are called, still work mainly in Sri Lanka's tea plantations. Although they speak dialects of the same language, they are usually considered a separate community from the Sri Lankan Tamils of the North and East. The government of D.S. Senanayake passed legislation, stripping the Estate Tamils of their citizenship in 1949, leaving them stateless. 

Not content with stripping their citizenship, successive governments tried to remove the estate Tamils from the country entirely. In 1964, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike signed an agreement with Indian Prime Minister L.B. Shastri and three years later, a second agreement with Indira Gandhi. The bottom line of these agreements stated that 600,000 of the estate Tamils would be expelled and sent to India over a 15-year period, and 375,000 would be restored their Sri Lankan citizenship. Not all of the former group actually returned to India but remained in Sri Lanka without the ability to vote, travel abroad, or participate fully in Sri Lankan life. It was not until 2003 that full citizenship rights were restored to the remaining Tamils in the hill country.

The conflict worsened with the Sinhala Official Language Act of 1956. At that time, there was a general agreement that English should be replaced as the country's official language. In the above stated Act, the Sri Lankan government replaced English with Sinhala, which deprived the Tamils of their right to deal with government institutions in their language, as well as limited their opportunity to join government service.

In early 1970's, the name of the country was changed from Ceylon to Sri Lanka, a name of Sanskrit origin that angered and alienated many Tamils. The concept of a separate nation,  Tamil Eelam, was proposed by the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) in 1976. TULF was a coalition of parties who went on to campaign in the 1977 elections for an independent state for Tamils in Sri Lanka. They won most of the Tamil seats, but the government later banned them from Parliament for encouraging an independent state.

Also in the 1970’a, importing Tamil-language films, books, magazines and journals from the cultural hub of Tamil Nadu, India was banned along with the Tamil Youth League. Foreign exchange for Tamil students going to India for university education was stopped. The government insisted this was a part of a general program of economic self-sufficiency but most of the Tamil population did not accept nor believe this.

With the passing of two additional laws in the early 1970’s, the first which limited Tamil enrollment in universities and the second which declared that Buddhism had ‘foremost place’ in Sri Lanka, the gradual alienation of the minority Tamils began and the ethnic uproar had reached the point of war.

In 1976, the rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) mostly known as the Tamil Tigers, was formed under Vellupillai Prabhakaran, and began its bloody campaign for a Tamil homeland in northern and eastern parts, that claimed 60% of the island’s coastline, and its only major port, the famed Trincomalee.

In 1983, the LTTE launched an attack on the military in northern Sri Lanka that sparked anti-Tamil riots across the country and is generally viewed as the beginning of the civil war and by 1989, the LTTE controlled the majority of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. For the next three decades, a dramatically bloody civil war was fought on land, in water, in air (Tamils even had an air force) and with other supporting rebel armies from Tamil activist groups. It was supported by shady business dealings and remittances from large Tamil movements.

The government hardly acted better, with scorching tactics and random killings of combatants and non-combatants alike were practically achieved through ignoring international concerns and shutting off news media. Independent journalists, foreign aid groups and diplomats were entirely barred from the war zone, and reports from the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers are still impossible to verify. The government devoted as much as a quarter of the national budget to military spending.  Even by these brutal standards, the fury it unleashed during the last days of the civil war was staggering and they managed to corner the Tamil Tiger movement to a single beach in the northeast of the country by early 2009.

Peace talks between the government and the LTTE were initiated in 1995 but quickly broke down because neither side was willing to concede anything substantial. In February 2002, a new peace process begun with the signing of a ceasefire agreement and from September 2002 to April 2003, six rounds of peace talks were held between the LTTE and the government. However, in 2003, the LTTE announced that it would settle for nothing less than an interim government and pulled out of the negotiations and by the summer of 2006, full-scale violence had returned to eastern Sri Lanka. A deadlock was reached in September, and another peace talk was held in Geneva in October. However, both parties failed to agree on a constructive way to end the conflict and have once again resorted to violence.

Under intense international pressure, the military declared a “no-fire zone”, a safe zone for Tamil refugees between the government and the rebel lines, although The Times reported that it continued gunfire inside the zone up to the very end of the conflict. The Times also claimed that over 20,000 civilians (3 times the official figure) were killed in the final stages of the civil war, mainly as a result of government bombardment.  As I shave mentioned before, no independent observers had access to the remote war zone, but The Times took a photo of the no-fire zone while travelling with the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who commented that it was “the most appalling sight” he had seen in his career. But the UN was already aware of what was happening there and publicly, it blamed both sides, but its records obtained from their sources showed that the majority of deaths were caused by the government, which attacked hospitals, schools and the beach full of refugees.

Sri Lanka has refused to allow any independent investigation into the conflict and is unlikely to be referred to the International Criminal Court because of its powerful allies such as China. In 2009, the Sri Lankan government formally declared an end to the 25-year civil war after the army took control of the entire island and killed the leader of the Tamil Tigers. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered a victory address to parliament, declaring that the country had been "liberated" from terrorism.

It is almost 4 years since the war has ended. But the aftermath of this bloodbath is far from being erased. While the Government and the rebel armies were locked in battle, civilians were trapped amidst the gunfire, bombing, suicide assassinations and massacres. Children who were barely 16 years were snatched from the hands of their parents to be recruited into the rebel armies. Survivors, who were able to flee the war, recall the horrors of leaving behind their families. Doctors wince at the memories of when they were forced to amputate children's legs without anesthetics, using butchers' knives in a series of makeshift hospitals that repeatedly came under direct fire. Women are anguished when flashes of the war scenes appear out of nowhere, and they remember shoveling the body parts of their neighbors after they were blown up to pieces by the bombs.

The “victory” of the Sri Lankan Government over the Tamils will go down into the archives of history as a blood stained triumph, claiming over 100000 lives, over a bloody battle caused by ethnic discrimination.