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.
