Sri Lankan civil war
Encyclopedia
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island
of Sri Lanka
. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency
against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), a separatist
militant organization which fought to create an independent
Tamil
state named Tamil Eelam
in the north and the east of the island. After a 26 year long military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.
For over 25 years, this civil war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy
of the country, with an estimated 80,000–100,000 people killed during its course. The tactics employed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resulted in their being branded as a terrorist organization in 32 countries, including the United States
, India
, Australia
, Canada
and the member nations of the European Union
. The Sri Lankan government forces have also been accused of human rights abuses.
After two decades of fighting and four failed tries at peace talks, including the unsuccessful deployment of the Indian Army
, the Indian Peace Keeping Force
from 1987 to 1990, a lasting negotiated settlement to the conflict appeared possible when a cease-fire was declared in December 2001, and a ceasefire agreement signed with international mediation in 2002. However, limited hostilities renewed in late 2005 and the conflict began to escalate until the government launched a number of major military offensives against the LTTE beginning in July 2006, driving the LTTE out of the entire Eastern province
of the island. The LTTE then declared they would "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood".
In 2007, the government shifted its offensive to the north of the country, and formally announced its withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement on January 2, 2008, alleging that the LTTE violated the agreement over 10,000 times. Since then, aided by the destruction of a number of large arms smuggling vessels that belonged to the LTTE, and an international crackdown on the funding for the Tamil Tigers, the government took control of the entire area previously controlled by the Tamil Tigers, including their de-facto capital Kilinochchi
, main military base Mullaitivu
and the entire A9 highway, leading the LTTE to finally admit defeat on May 17, 2009. Following the end of the war, the Sri Lankan government has described Sri Lanka as the first country in the modern world to eradicate terrorism
on its own soil. Following the LTTE's defeat, pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance
dropped its demand for a separate state
, in favour of a federal
solution.
communities arose in the country in the early 20th century with the aim of obtaining political independence, which was eventually granted by the British after peaceful negotiations in 1948. Disagreements between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic communities flared up when drawing up the country's first post-independence constitution.
After their election to the State Council
in 1936, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP) members N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena
demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. In November 1936, a motion that 'in the Municipal and Police Courts of the Island the proceedings should be in the vernacular
' and that 'entries in police station
s should be recorded in the language in which they are originally stated' were passed by the State Council and referred to the Legal Secretary. However, in 1944, J.R. Jayawardene moved in the State Council that Sinhala should replace English
as the official language. In 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike's passage of the "Sinhala Only Act
" led to ethnic riots. The civil war is a direct result of the escalation of the confrontational politics that followed.
In 1963, shortly after the nationalisation of oil companies by the Sri Lankan government, documents relating to a separate Tamil state of 'Tamil Eelam
' began to circulate. At this time, Anton Balasingham
, an employee of the British High Commission in Colombo, began to participate in separatist activities. He later migrated to Britain, where he became the chief theoretician of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In the late 1960s, several Tamil youth, among them Velupillai Prabhakaran
also became involved in these activities. These forces together formed the Tamil New Tigers
in 1972. This was formed around an ideology which looked back to the 1st Millennium Chola Empire – the Tiger was the emblem of that empire.
A further movement, the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, formed in Manchester
and London
; it became the backbone of the Eelamist movement in the diaspora, arranging passports and employment for immigrants and levying a heavy tax on them. It became the basis of the Eelamist logistical organization, later taken over entirely by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
.
The formation of the Tamil United Liberation Front
(TULF) with its Vaddukkodei (Vattukottai) resolution of 1976 led to a hardening of attitudes.
The TULF supported the armed actions of the young militants of the TNT who were dubbed "our boys". These "boys" were the product of the post-war population explosion. Many partially educated, unemployed Tamil youth fell for revolutionary solutions to their problems. The leftist parties had remained "non-communal" for a long time, but the Federal Party (as well as its off-shoot, the TULF), deeply conservative and dominated by Vellala casteism, did not attempt to form a national alliance with the leftists in their fight for language rights.
Following the sweeping electoral victory of the UNP in July 1977, the TULF became the leading opposition party, with around one sixth of the total electoral vote winning on a party platform of secession from Sri Lanka.
In August 1977, Junius Richard Jayawardene's new UNP government followed its attack on the Left with a well organised pogrom against Tamils living in majority Sinhalese areas. In August the government granted only the educational rights demanded by the Tamils. But to the Tamil leadership that was losing the control it had on the Tamil militants after not being able to follow through with the election promise of seceding from Sri Lanka to form Tamil, it was too little too late.
in 1975 by Prabhakaran.
The LTTE 's modus operandi of the early war was based on assassinations. The assassination in 1977 of a Tamil Member of Parliament, M. Canagaratnam, was carried out personally by Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE.
In July 1983, the LTTE launched a deadly ambush on a Sri Lanka Army patrol Four Four Bravo
outside the town of Thirunelveli
, killing an officer and 12 soldiers. Using the nationalistic sentiments to their advantage, the Jayawardena organized massacres and pogrom
s in Colombo
, the capital, and elsewhere (see Black July
). Between 400 and 3,000 Tamils were estimated to have been killed, and many more fled Sinhalese-majority areas. This is usually considered the beginning of the civil war.
Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups. The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one. Initially, the LTTE gained prominence due to devastating attacks such as the massacre of civilians at the Kent and Dollar Farms
in 1984 and the Anuradhapura massacre of 146 civilians
in 1985. The Anuradhapura massacre was apparently answered by government forces with the Kumudini boat massacre
in which over 23 Tamil civilians died. Over time, the LTTE merged with or largely exterminated almost all the other militant Tamil groups. As a result, many Tamil splinter groups ended up working with the Sri Lankan government as paramilitaries or denounced violence and joined mainstream politics, and some legitimate Tamil-oriented political parties remain, all opposed to LTTE's vision of an independent state.
Peace talks between the LTTE and the government began in Thimphu
in 1985, but they soon failed, and the war continued. In 1986, many civilians were massacred
as part of this conflict. In 1987, government troops pushed the LTTE fighters to the northern city of Jaffna
. In April 1987, the conflict exploded with ferocity, as both the government forces and the LTTE fighters engaged in a series of bloody operations.
The Sri Lankan military launched an offensive, called “Operation Liberation” or “Vadamarachchi Operation”, during May–June 1987, to regain control of the territory in the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. This offensive marked the Sri Lankan military's first conventional warfare on Sri Lankan soil since independence. The offensive was successful, and the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and the Sea Tiger leader Soosai narrowly escaped from advancing troops at Valvettithurai. The key military personnel involved in the operation were Lt Col. Vipul Boteju, Lt Col. Sarath Jayawardane, Col. Vijaya Wimalaratne
, Brig. Denzil Kobbekaduwa
and Maj. Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
In July 1987, the LTTE carried out their first suicide
attack. "Captain Miller
" of the Black Tigers drove a small truck carrying explosives through the wall of a fortified Sri Lankan army camp, reportedly killing forty soldiers. They carried out over 170 suicide attack
s, more than any other organization in the world, and the suicide attack became a trademark of the LTTE and a characteristic of the civil war.
The killings of Father Mary Bastian
and George Jeyarajasingham
, both human rights activists, have been attributed to the government forces. These are but two examples of the thousands murdered in this period.
became involved in the conflict in the 1980s for a number of reasons, including its leaders' desire to project India as the regional power in the area and worries about India's own Tamils seeking independence. The latter was particularly strong in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu
, where ethnic kinship led to strong support for independence for Sri Lankan Tamils. Throughout the conflict, the Indian central and state governments have supported both sides in different ways. Beginning in the 1980s, India, through its intelligence agency R&AW
, provided arms, training and monetary support to a number of Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE and its rival Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization
(TELO) . The LTTE's rise is widely attributed to the initial backing it received from R&AW. It is believed that by supporting different militant groups, the Indian government hoped to keep the Tamil independence movement divided and be able to exert overt control over it.
India became more actively involved in the late 1980s, and on June 5, 1987, the Indian Air Force
airdropped food parcels
to Jaffna
while it was under siege by Sri Lankan forces. At a time when the Sri Lankan government stated they were close to defeating the LTTE, India dropped 25 tons of food and medicine by parachute into areas held by the LTTE in a direct move of support toward the rebels. Negotiations were held, and the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed on July 29, 1987, by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
and Sri Lankan President Jayewardene
. Under this accord, the Sri Lankan Government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, including devolution
of power to the provinces
, a merger—subject to later referendum—of the Northern and the Eastern provinces into the single province
, and official status for the Tamil language (this was enacted as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka
). India agreed to establish order in the North and East through a force dubbed the Indian Peace Keeping Force
(IPKF), and to cease assisting Tamil insurgents. Militant groups including the LTTE, although initially reluctant, agreed to surrender their arms to the IPKF, which initially oversaw a cease-fire and a modest disarmament
of the militant groups.
The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, so soon after JR Jayawardene's declaration that he would fight the Indians to the last bullet, led to unrest in south. The arrival of the IPKF to take over control of most areas in the North of the country enabled the Sri Lanka government to shift its forces to the south (in Indian aircraft) to quell the protests. This led to an uprising
by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
in the south, which was put down bloodily over the next two years.
While most Tamil militant groups laid down their weapons and agreed to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, the LTTE refused to disarm its fighters. Keen to ensure the success of the accord, the IPKF then tried to demobilize the LTTE by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with them. The three year long conflict was also marked by the IPKF being accused of committing various abuses of human rights by many human rights groups as well as some within the Indian media. The IPKF also soon met stiff opposition from the Tamils. Simultaneously, nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence in Sri Lanka. These led to the Sri Lankan government's call for India to quit the island, and they allegedly entered into a secret deal with the LTTE that culminated in a ceasefire. The LTTE and IPKF continued to have frequent hostilities, and according to some reports, the Sri Lankan government even armed the rebels in order to see the back of the Indian forces. Although casualties among the IPKF mounted, and calls for the withdrawal of the IPKF from both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict grew, Gandhi refused to remove the IPKF from Sri Lanka. However, following his defeat in Indian parliamentary elections in December 1989, the new prime Minister V. P. Singh
ordered the withdrawal of the IPKF, and their last ship left Sri Lanka on March 24, 1990. The 32 month presence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka resulted in the deaths of 1100 Indian soldiers and over 5000 Sri Lankans. The cost for the Indian government was estimated at over 20 billion rupees.
by suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam
. The Indian press has subsequently reported that Prabhakaran decided to eliminate Gandhi as he considered Gandhi to be against the Tamil liberation struggle and feared that Gandhi might re-induct the IPKF, which Prabhakaran termed the "satanic force", if he won the 1991 Indian elections. In 1998 a court in India presided over by Special Judge V. Navaneetham found the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for the assassination. and in a 2006 interview, LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham stated regret over the assassination, although he stopped short of outright acceptance of responsibility for it.
India remains an outside observer to the ongoing peace process, with frequent demands by many groups for an extradition of Velupillai Prabhakaran
, now deceased.
, and hence support to Tamils in Sri Lanka. Following the historically pro-Tamil DMK party's accession to power in Tamil Nadu and the centre, it was seen as though there would be more political support from India. In 2008, party chief and TN CM Karunanidhi accepted the resignation of multiple MP's of his party in protest against an increasing casualty count of Tamil civilians in the war. Following this, MDMK founder and general secretary
, Vaiko, courted arrest on charges of sedition in saying he would take up arms to fight on the side of the Tamils. He then charged the Indian Government with abetting the Sri Lankan Government in order to eliminate the Tamils there. He added that Sri Lanka would heed a request for a ceasefire if India imposed economic sanctions on the country.
In a rare show of unanimity, all the parties in Tamil Nadu assembly unanimously demanded a ceasefire in conflict, while appealing to the Centre to make efforts to stop the Sri Lankan military offensive.
Even the Congress party, which had seen the issue as an untouchable subject for more than a decade, said there could be no two opinions on the need for a ceasefire. To this, party floor leader, D Sudarsanam, said that the Centre was making efforts to stop the war and the results would soon be known. Congress whip, Peter Alphonse, denied that his party was acting against the interests of the Sri Lankan Tamils and said he was ready to list his party's efforts for the welfare of the said Tamils. The deputy leader of the opposition and senior AIADMK leader, O Panneerselvam, made a charge that the "intransigent attitude" of the Sri Lankan government was the reason for the continuation of the war. He added that the Sri Lankan army was bombing schools and public places that had resulted in the deaths of innocent people, including children.
The LTTE, which was cornered in a tiny section of the island, desperately pleaded with the Indian Tamil parties to demand a ceasefire, in order to save their leadership from annihilation, which led to several Indian Tamil politicians requesting the Sri Lankan Government to call for an immediate ceasefire.
and merging the Northern and the Eastern Provinces of the country.
Yet the violence continued, as the LTTE continued to massacre innocent villagers living in the deep rural Eastern and North-Eastern areas. The Dollar and Kent Farm massacres, where hundreds of men, women and children were attacked during the night as they slept and were hacked to death with fatal blows to the head from axes, are two clear examples of the acts committed by the LTTE. Some of the men who defended themselves were executed their hands tied behind their backs. The LTTE used these terror tactics to scare Sinhalese and Muslim farmers away from these areas and swiftly took control of significant parts of the North, which could be considered an act of ethnic cleansing. When the Indian Peace Keeping Force
withdrew, the LTTE established many government-like functions in the areas under its control. A tentative ceasefire held in 1990 as the LTTE occupied itself with destroying rival Tamil groups while the government cracked down on the JVP uprising. When both major combatants had established their power bases, they turned on each other and the ceasefire broke down. The government launched an offensive to try to retake Jaffna.
This phase of the war soon acquired the name Eelam War II. It was marked by unprecedented brutality. The LTTE massacred 600-774 Policemen after they had surrendered
on promises of safe conduct. The government placed an embargo on food and medicine entering the Jaffna peninsula and the air force relentlessly bombed LTTE targets in the area. The LTTE responded by attacking Sinhalese and Muslim villages and massacring civilians. One of the largest civilian massacres of the war occurred when the LTTE massacred 166 Muslim civilians at Palliyagodella
. The government trained and armed Home Guard Muslim units then took revenge on Tamil villages. There was also significant massacre of Tamil civilians attributed to government forces, especially in the Eastern Province. Notable international jurist Neelan Thiruchelvam
, in a speech at the ICES-Colombo, indicated that the appropriate investigations into massacres and disappearances of civilians including many children in the Sathurukondan, Eastern University
, Mylanthanai
and the mass murder and burial of school children at Sooriyakanda
were hampered by the adoption of emergency
regulations which were contributing to a climate of impunity. Along roadsides in the North and East, burning bodies became a common sight. Throughout the country, government death squads hunted down, kidnapped, or killed Sinhalese or Tamil youth suspected of being JVP or LTTE sympathizers, respectively. In October 1990, the LTTE expelled all the Muslims residing in Jaffna
. A total of 28,000 Muslims were forced to leave their homes taking nothing but the clothes on their backs.
The largest battle of the war was in July 1991, when the army's Elephant Pass
(Alimankada) base, which controlled access to the Yapanaya (Jaffna) peninsula, was surrounded by 5,000 LTTE troops. More than 2,000 died on both sides in the month-long siege, before 10,000 government troops arrived to relieve the base.
In February 1992, another series of government offensives failed to capture Jaffna due to Indian intervention, which led to a military stand-off as Indian threatened to invade Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government backed off and ordered the withdrawal of its forces, only days away from capturing LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabharan, whilst he lay surrounded in his home town of Vellvetithurai. Lt. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa
together with Major General Vijaya Wimalaratne
and Rear Admiral
Mohan Jayamaha, died on August 8, 1992, at Araly (Aeraella) point Jaffna
due to a land mine
blast, which badly affected military morale.
The LTTE, for its part, scored a major victory when one of their suicide bombers killed Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa
in May 1993. In November 1993 the LTTE succeeded in the Battle of Pooneryn
.
, headed by Chandrika Kumaratunga
, came to power on a peace platform. Chandrika Kumaratunga
won the presidential elections as well after the LTTE assassinated the opposition leader Gamini Dissanayake
. A ceasefire was agreed in January 1995, but the ensuing negotiations proved fruitless. The LTTE broke the ceasefire on April 19 and thus began the next phase of the war, dubbed Eelam War III.
The new government then pursued a policy of "war for peace". Determined to retake the key rebel stronghold of Jaffna, which was occupied by 2,000 rebels, it poured troops into the peninsula. In one particular incident in August 1995, Air Force jets bombed St. Peter's church at Navali (Naavaella), killing
at least 65 refugees and wounding 150 others. Government troops initially cut off the peninsula from the rest of the island, and then after 7 weeks of heavy fighting succeeded in bringing Jaffna under government control for the first time in nearly a decade. In a high profile ceremony, Sri Lankan Defense Minister Anurudda Ratwatte raised the national flag inside the Jaffna fort on December 5, 1995. The government estimated that approximately 2500 soldiers and rebels were killed in the offensive, and an estimated 7,000 wounded. Many civilians were killed as part of this conflict such as the Navaly church bombing in which over 125 civilians died. The LTTE and more than 350,000 civilians, compelled by LTTE pressure to leave Jaffna, fled to the Vanni region in the interior. Most of the refugees returned later the next year.
The LTTE responded by launching Operation Unceasing Waves and decisively won the Battle of Mullaitivu in July 1996.
The government launched another offensive in August 1996. Another 200,000 civilians fled the violence. The town of Kilinochchi
(GiraaNikke) was taken on September 29. On May 13, 1997, 20,000 government troops tried to open a supply line through the LTTE-controlled Vanni, but failed. Civilians were regularly killed and wounded by both sides.
As violence continued in the North, LTTE suicide and time bombs were exploded numerous times in populated city areas and public transport in the south of the country, killing hundreds of civilians. In January 1996, the LTTE carried out one of their deadliest suicide bomb attacks at the Central Bank
in Colombo, killing 90 and injuring 1,400. In October 1997 they bombed the Sri Lankan World Trade Centre and, in January 1998, detonated a truck bomb in Kandy
(Mahanuvara), damaging the Temple of the Tooth
, one of the holiest Buddhist shrines in the world. In response to this bombing, the Sri Lankan government outlawed the LTTE and with some success pressed other governments around the world to do the same, significantly interfering with their fund-raising activities.
On September 27, 1998, the LTTE launched the Operation Unceasing Waves II and after heavy fighting captured Kilinochchi, thus winning Battle of Kilinochchi.
In March 1999, in Operation Rana Gosa, the government tried invading the Vanni from the south. The army made some gains, taking control of Oddusuddan (Oththan-thuduva) and Madhu, but could not dislodge the LTTE from the region. In September 1999 the LTTE massacred 50 Sinhalese civilians at Gonagala
The LTTE returned to the offensive with the Operation Unceasing Waves III on November 2, 1999. Nearly all the Vanni rapidly fell back into LTTE hands. The LTTE launched 17 successful attacks in the region which culminated in the overrunning of the Paranthan (Puranthaenna) Chemicals Factory base and the Kurrakkan Kaddukulam (kurakkan-kaela vaeva) base. Thousands were killed in the fighting. The rebels also advanced north towards Elephant Pass (Alimankada) and Jaffna (Yapanaya). The LTTE was successful in cutting all land and sea supply lines of the Sri Lankan armed forces to the south, west and north of the town of Kilinochchi. In December 1999 the LTTE attempted to assassinate President Chandrika Kumaratunga in a suicide attack at a pre-election rally. She lost one eye, among other injuries, but was able to defeat opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Presidential election and was reelected for her second term in office.
On April 22, 2000, the Elephant Pass military complex, which had separated the Jaffna peninsula from the Vanni mainland for 17 years, completely fell to the hands of the LTTE. The army then launched Operation Agni Khiela to take back the southern Jaffna Peninsula, but sustained losses. The LTTE continued to press towards Jaffna, and many feared it would fall to the LTTE, but the military repulsed LTTE offensives and was able to maintain control of the city.
developed in the late 1990s, with many organizations holding peace camps, conferences, trainings and peace meditations, and many other efforts to bridge the two sides at all levels. As early as February 2000, Norway
was asked to mediate by both sides, and initial international diplomatic moves began to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Hopes for peace gained ground as the LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire in December 2000, but they canceled it on April 24, 2001, and launched another offensive against the government. After securing a vast area controlled by the military, the LTTE further advanced northwards. This advancement of the LTTE was posing a serious threat to the Elephant Pass (Alimankada) military complex that housed 17,000 troops of the Sri Lankan forces.
In July 2001, the LTTE carried out a devastating suicide attack on Bandaranaike International Airport
, destroying eight of the air force's planes (2 IAI Kfir
s, 1 Mil-17
, 1 Mil-24
, 3 K-8 trainers
, 1 MiG-27
) and four Sri Lankan Airlines planes (2 Airbus
A330
s, 1 A340
and 1 A320
), dampening the economy and causing tourism, a vital foreign exchange earner for the government, to plummet.
, saw a sweeping victory for the United National Front, led by Ranil Wickremasinghe
, who campaigned on a pro-peace platform and pledged to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
On December 19, amidst efforts by Norway to bring the government and the Tamil Tigers to the negotiating table, the LTTE announced a 30 day ceasefire with the Sri Lankan government and pledged to halt all attacks against government forces. The new government welcomed the move, and reciprocated it 2 days later, announcing a month long ceasefire and agreeing to lift a long standing economic embargo
on rebel-held territory.
The two sides formalized a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on February 22, 2002, and signed a permanent ceasefire agreement (CFA). Norway was named mediator
, and it was decided that they, together with the other Nordic countries, monitor the ceasefire through a committee of experts named the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
. In August, the government agreed to lift the ban on the LTTE and paved the way for the resumption of direct negotiations with the LTTE.
Following the signing of the ceasefire agreement, commercial air flights to Jaffna began and the LTTE opened the key A9 highway, which linked government controlled area in the south with Jaffna and ran through LTTE territory, allowing civilian traffic through the Vanni region for the first time in many years, but only after paying a tax to the LTTE. Many foreign countries also offered substantial financial support if peace was achieved and optimism grew that an end to the decades-long conflict was in sight.
The much-anticipated peace talks began in Phuket
, Thailand
on September 16, and 5 further rounds followed in Phuket, Norway and Berlin
, Germany
. During the talks, both sides agreed to the principle of a federal solution and the Tigers dropped their long-standing demand for separate state. This was a key compromise from the LTTE, which had always insisted on an independent Tamil state and it also represented a compromise from the government, which had seldom agreed to more than minimal devolution. Both sides also exchanged prisoners of war for first time.
favoured a federal solution to the conflict, while hard-line elements within President Kumaratunga's party and other Sinhala nationalist groups allied to her opposed one as they did not trust the LTTE, which continued to levy taxes, strengthen themselves by smuggling in arms and ammunition, recruit child soldiers, and engage in killings of members of rival Tamil groups and government intelligence agents. During this time the LTTE also succeeded in setting up a series of vital bases around the Trincomalee (Gokanna) harbour (see Eelam War IV
) and the Eastern Province.
The talks broke down on April 21, 2003, when the Tamil Tigers announced they were suspending any further talks due to their "displeasure" at the handling of some "critical issues". Among the reasons the Tigers gave were their exclusion from reconstruction talks in Washington DC on April 14 and a more general insinuation that they were not receiving the full economic rewards of peace. They cited the failure, as they saw it, of peace-dividends to transfer to security withdrawals on the ground and the disparity, as they saw it, between the relative calm of the government-held northeast and continuing violence in Tiger-held areas. However, the LTTE maintained it was committed to a settlement to the two-decade conflict, but stated that progress had to be made on the ground before the settlement proceeded.
On October 31, the LTTE issued its own peace proposal, calling for an Interim Self Governing Authority
(ISGA). The ISGA would be fully controlled by the LTTE and would have broad powers in the North and East. (see the Full text of the proposals) This provoked a strong backlash among the hardline elements in the South, who accused Prime Minister Wickremasinghe of handing the North and East to the LTTE. Under pressure from within her own party to take action, Kumaratunga declared a state of emergency and took three key government ministries, the Ministry of Mass Media, the Interior Ministry and the crucial Defense Ministry. She then formed an alliance with the JVP, called the United People's Freedom Alliance
, opposed to the ISGA and advocating a harder line on the LTTE, and called for fresh elections. The elections
, held on April 8, 2004, resulted in victory for the UPFA with Mahinda Rajapakse appointed as Prime Minister. Initial fears of a resumption of the conflict were proved unfounded when the new government expressed its desire to continue the peace process and find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
, the Eastern commander of the LTTE and one of Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants, pulled 5,000 eastern cadres out of the LTTE, claiming insufficient resources and power were being given to Tamils of the eastern part of the island. It was the biggest expression of dissension in the history of the LTTE and a civil war within the LTTE seemed imminent. After the parliamentary elections, brief fighting south of Trincomalee (formerly known as Gokanna) led to a rapid retreat and capitulation of Karuna's group, their leaders eventually going into hiding including Karuna himself, who was helped to escape by Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana
, a powerful politician from the ruling party. However, the "Karuna faction" maintained a significant presence in the East and continued to launch attacks against the LTTE. The LTTE accuses the army of covertly backing the breakaway group, which subsequently formed a political party named the TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal
(TMVP) and hopes to contest in future elections.
The ceasefire largely held through all this turmoil, with over 3000 infractions by the LTTE and some 300 by the SLA recorded by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by 2005. The situation was further complicated by allegations that both sides were carrying out covert operations against each other. The government claimed that the LTTE was killing political opponents, recruiting children, importing arms, and killing government security and intelligence officers. The rebels accused the government of supporting paramilitary groups against them, especially the Karuna group.
The legality of P-TOMS was also challenged in the courts. President Kumaratunga eventually had to scrap P-TOMS, which led to widespread criticism that sufficient aid was not reaching the North and East of the country. However, immediately following the tsunami there was a marked decrease in violence in the North.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar
, a Tamil who was highly respected by foreign diplomats and who had been sharply critical of the LTTE, was assassinated at his home on August 12, 2005, allegedly by an LTTE sniper. His assassination led to the marginalization of the LTTE from the international community, and is thought to be the instant when the LTTE lost much of its sympathy in the eyes of foreign nations. Hence the silence of the international community when the Sri Lankan government took military action against the LTTE in 2006, when the latter closed the Mavil Oya (Mavil aru) sluice.
Further political change occurred when the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
declared President Kumaratunga's second and final term over and ordered her to hold fresh presidential elections. The main candidates for the election
, which was held in November, were the UNF candidate, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, who advocated the reopening of talks with the LTTE, and the UPFA candidate, Prime Minister Rajapaksa, who called for a tougher line against the LTTE and a renegotiation of the ceasefire. The LTTE openly called for a boycott
of the election by the Tamils. Many of them were expected to vote for Wickremasinghe, and the loss of their votes proved fatal to his chances as Rajapakse achieved a narrow win.
Following the election, the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
stated in his annual address that the Tigers would "renew their struggle" in 2006 if the government did not take serious moves toward peace.
attacks which killed 150 government troops, clashes between the Sea Tigers
and the Sri Lanka navy, and the killings of sympathizers on both sides including Taraki Sivaram
, a pro-LTTE journalist, and Joseph Pararajasingham
, a pro-LTTE MP allegedly by the government of Sri Lanka.
At the beginning of 2008, the focus of the civil war turned to civilian targets, with commuter bus and train bombings carried out in most parts of the country,
including a series of attacks against commuters in and around Colombo.
Donor conference called on both parties to return to the negotiating table. The co-chairs—the United States in particular—were heavily critical of the violence perpetrated by the LTTE. US State Department officials, as well as the US ambassador to Sri Lanka, gave warnings to the Tigers claiming a return to hostilities would mean that the Tigers would face a "more capable and more determined" Sri Lankan military. While the talks were going on there was violence targeted towards civilians such as massacre of 5 Tamil students on January 2, 2006, in Trincomalee
when high school students playing by the beach were briefly detained and then shot dead.
In a last-minute effort to salvage an agreement between the parties, the Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim
and the LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham arrived in the island. The parties severely disagreed on the location of the talks; however, continued efforts produced a breakthrough when both parties agreed on February 7, 2006, that new talks could be held in Geneva
, Switzerland
on February 22 and February 23. These talks were reported to have gone "above expectations", with both the government and the LTTE agreeing to curb the violence and to hold further talks on April 19–21.
During the weeks after the talks, there was a significant decrease in violence. However, the LTTE resumed attacks against the military in April beginning with a Claymore
anti-personnel mine attack on military vehicles which killed 10 navy sailors on April 11. The following day, coordinated bombings by rebels and rioting in the north-eastern part of the country left 16 dead. First, a Claymore anti-personnel mine exploded in Trincomalee
, killing two policemen in their vehicle. Another blast, set off in a crowded vegetable market, killed one soldier and some civilians. Ensuing rioting by civilians left more than a dozen dead. Responsibility for these attacks was claimed by an organisation called the Upsurging People's Force
, which the military accused of being a front for the LTTE.
In light of this violence, the LTTE called for a postponement of the Geneva talks until April 24–25, and the government initially agreed to this. Following negotiations, both the government and the rebels agreed to have a civilian vessel transport the regional LTTE leaders with international truce monitors on April 16, which involved crossing government-controlled territory. However, the climate shifted drastically when the Tamil Tigers canceled the meeting, claiming not to have agreed to a naval escort. According to the SLMM, the Tamil rebels had previously agreed to the escort. This led to Helen Olafsdottir, spokesperson for the SLMM saying "It was part of the agreement. The rebels should have read the clauses carefully. We are frustrated."
On April 20, 2006, the LTTE officially pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. While they stated that transportation issues had prevented them from meeting their regional leaders, some analysts and the international community held a deep skepticism, seeing the transportation issue as a delaying tactic by the LTTE in order to avoid attending peace talks in Geneva.
Violence continued to spiral and on April 23, 2006, six Sinhalese rice farmers were massacred
in their paddy fields by suspected LTTE cadres in the Trincomalee
district. The following day, two suspected Tamil Tiger rebels were shot dead in Batticaloa
when caught planting mines after rebels reportedly hacked a young mother to death and kidnapped her infant.
After LTTE launched a suicide assault on a naval convoy in which 18 sailors died, the Allaipiddy massacre of May 13, 2006, happened in which 13 minority Tamil civilians were killed in separate incidents in three villages in the islet of Kayts (Uruthota) in northern Sri Lanka.
International condemnation against the LTTE skyrocketed following the attempted assassination of the commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka
by a pregnant LTTE Black Tiger suicide bomber Anoja Kugenthirasah, who blew herself up at the Sri Lankan Army
headquarters in the capital, Colombo
. Lt. Gen. Fonseka and twenty-seven others were injured, while ten people were killed in the attack. For the first time since the 2001 ceasefire, the Sri Lanka Air Force carried out aerial assaults on rebel positions in the north-eastern part of the island nation in retaliation for the attack.
This attack, along with the assassination of Lakshman Kadiragamar a year earlier and an unsuccessful attack against a naval vessel carrying 710 unarmed security force personnel on holiday, proved the catalysts as the European Union decided to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organisation on May 19, 2006. It resulted in the freezing of LTTE assets in the member nations of the EU, and put an end to its efforts to raise funds its campaign in Sri Lanka. In a statement, the European Parliament
said that the LTTE did not represent all the Tamils and called on it to "allow for political pluralism and alternate democratic voices in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka".
As the North and East of the country continued to be rocked by attacks, new talks were scheduled in Oslo, Norway, between June 8–9. Delegations from both sides arrived in Oslo, but the talks were canceled when the LTTE refused to meet directly with the government delegation claiming its fighters were not been allowed safe passage to travel to the talks. Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim told journalists that the LTTE should take direct responsibility for the collapse of the talks.
Further violence followed, including the Vankalai massacre in which a family of four minority Sri Lankan Tamils from the village of Vankalai
in the district of Mannar
in Sri Lanka on June 8, 2006, were tortured and killed. Both the mother and the nine year old daughter were allegedly raped before being killed. The gory images of the corpses published by the pro rebel Tamilnet
news site created controversy in Sri Lanka and abroad. The Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels have blamed each other for the killings. There was also the Kebithigollewa massacre
on June 15, 2006, in which the LTTE attacked a bus killing at least 64 Sinhalese civilians and prompting more air strikes by the Air Force, and the assassination of Sri Lanka's third highest-ranking army officer and Deputy Chief of Staff General Parami Kulatunga
on June 26 by an LTTE suicide bomber. These events led the SLMM
to question whether a ceasefire could still be said to exist. However most analysts continued to believe that the return to full-scale war was unlikely and the "low-intensity conflict" would continue.
) reservoir
on July 21 and cut the water supply
to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. After initial negotiations and efforts by the SLMM to open the gates failed, the Air Force attacked LTTE positions on July 26, and ground troops began an operation to open the gate.
The sluice gates were eventually reopened on August 8, with conflicting reports as to who actually opened them. Initially, the SLMM claimed that they managed to persuade the LTTE to lift the waterway blockade conditionally. However a government spokesman said that "utilities could not be used as bargaining tools" by the rebels and government forces launched fresh attacks on LTTE positions around the reservoir. These attacks prompted condemnation from SLMM Chief of Staff, who stated "(The government) have the information that the LTTE has made this offer." "It is quite obvious they are not interested in water. They are interested in something else." The LTTE then claimed they opened the sluice gates "on humanitarian grounds" although this was disputed by military correspondents, who stated the water began flowing immediately after the security forces carried out a precise bombing of the Mavil Aru anicut. Eventually, following heavy fighting with the rebels, government troops gained full control of the Mavil Aru reservoir on August 15.
Soon afterwards, 17 persons working for the International French charity Action Against Hunger
(ACF) in Mooduthara (Muthur), were found executed
. They were found lying face down on the floor of their office, with bullet wounds, still wearing their clearly marked T-shirts indicating they were international humanitarian workers. The murders prompted widespread international condemnation. The SLMM claimed that the government was behind the attack, but the government denied the allegation calling it "pathetic and biased", and stated that the SLMM had "no right to make such a statement because they are not professionals in autopsy or post-mortem." An official investigation launched by the government with the aid of international forensic experts is currently ongoing.
Meanwhile, in the north of the country, some of the bloodiest fighting since 2001 took place after the LTTE launched massive attacks on Sri Lanka Army defence lines in the Jaffna peninsula on August 11. The LTTE used a force of 400 to 500 fighters in the attacks which consisted of land and amphibious assaults, and also fired a barrage of artillery at government positions, including the key military airbase at Paluyaala (Palaly). Initially, the Tigers broke through army defense lines around Muhamalai (Mahakanda), and advanced further north, but they were halted after 10 hours of fierce fighting. Isolated battles continued over the next few days, but the LTTE was forced to give up its offensive due to heavy casualties. The LTTE is estimated to have lost over 250 cadres in the operation, while 90 Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors were also killed.
i High Commissioner
to Sri Lanka Bashir Wali Mohamed was attacked by a claymore antipersonnel mine
concealed within an auto rickshaw
. The High Commissioner escaped unhurt, but seven people were killed and a further seventeen injured in the blast. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Sri Lankan government blamed the LTTE. The Pakistan
i High Commissioner
, Bashir Wali Mohamed, claimed that India was strongly believed to have carried it out, in order to intimidate Pakistan, which is one of the main suppliers of military equipment to the Sri Lankan government. Pakistan had promised one shipload of the wherewithal every 10 days in coming months, it was Pakistan’s assurance of solid support which prompted Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse to publicly state that Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the LTTE, would be liberated by the end of December.
Following the clashes in Mavil Aru (Mavil Oya) and Muttur (Mooduthara), the LTTE had intensified attacks targeting the naval base in Trincomalee (Gokanna), and in a speech on August 21, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse made clear the government intentions were to neutralize the LTTE threat from Sampur. On August 28, the Sri Lankan military launched an assault to retake the LTTE camps in Sampur and the adjoining Kaddaiparichchan (Gaeta-bara-hena)and Thoppur (Thupapura) areas. This led the LTTE to declare that if the offensive continued, the ceasefire would be officially over.
After steady progress, Sri Lankan security forces led by Brigade Commander Sarath Wijesinghe re-captured Sampur (Somapura) from the LTTE on September 4, and began to establish military bases there, as the LTTE admitted defeat and stated their cadres "withdrew" from the strategically important town. It marked the first significant territorial change of hands since the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 2002. The Sri Lankan Military estimated that 33 personnel were killed in the offensive, along with over 200 LTTE cadres.
Two days later, LTTE Sea Tiger cadres launched an attack against the Dakshina naval base in the southern port city of Galle
. It was the farthest south any major LTTE attack had taken place, and involved 15 LTTE cadres who arrived in five suicide boats. The attack was repulsed by the government, and the damage to the naval base was minimum. All 15 LTTE suicide cadres are believed to have died in the attack, along with one Sri Lanka Navy sailor.
Despite these incidents, both parties agreed to unconditionally attend peace talks in Geneva on October 28–29. However the peace talks broke down due to disagreements over the reopening of the key A9 highway, which is the link between Jaffna and government controlled areas in the south. While the LTTE wanted the highway, which was closed following fierce battles in August, to be reopened, the government refused, stating the LTTE would use it to collect tax from people passing through and would use it to launch further offensives against government troops.
Following the dawn of the new year, suspected LTTE cadres carried out two bus bombings in the south of the country, killing 21 civilians. News reports stated that the attacks bore all the hallmarks of an LTTE attack. The Sri Lankan government condemned the attacks and blamed the LTTE for carrying them out, although the LTTE denied any involvement. Iqbal Athas, an analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly commented that the LTTE's targeting of civilians was a cause for concern, and that further attacks against civilians could not be ruled out. Other analysts too expressed fears that LTTE attacks, which had largely been confined to military and political targets during the ceasefire period, may now increasingly target civilians as in earlier stages of a conflict.
of Sri Lanka, and then use the full strength of the military to defeat the LTTE in the North of the country. Among the reasons cited by the military for the offensives in the East were the need to "free the civilians in the area from the LTTE", who the military stated was firing artillery towards civilian settlements and were using 35,000 people as human shields. These claims were later backed by the civilians who told reporters that they were held by force by the Tamil Tigers. On November 7, 2006, in the midst of conflicting claims over 45 Tamil civilians were killed in what is known as the Vaharai bombing
.
Subsequently, the Army began an offensive against the LTTE on December 8, 2006, in the Batticoloa district with the objective of taking Vakarai
, the principle stronghold of the LTTE in the East, but temporarily aborted it after a week of fighting due to the large number of civilians in the area and the difficulty in conducting combat operations due to the ongoing Monsoon
rain. Over the next few weeks, an estimated 20,000 civilians fled from Vaakare to Government controlled areas fearing the imminent assault. The Army launched a new offensive in mid January, and Vaakarr fell to the advancing troops on January 19, 2007. While the offensive in the East was ongoing, the LTTE and others accused the government of murdering 15 civilians in the Padahuthurai bombing
on January 2, 2007, when the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed what they claimed to be rebel LTTE naval base in Illuppaikadavai in Northern Sri Lanka.
The Army launched assaults from three different directions, and the LTTE and Defence Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella announced that "The people of Vaakare have been liberated from the clutches of the terrorists". The loss of Vaakare (Vakarai) has been predicted to cut off supply routes of the northern Tigers to their cadres in the East, thus weakening the Tigers' already diminishing grip on the East.
As the military offensive was ongoing, the LTTE continued to carry out attacks against civilians in government held territory. On April 1, 2007, the Sri Lankan military accused the LTTE of killing six Sinhalese tsunami aid workers in the Eastern district of Batticaloa. The next day, suspected LTTE cadres set off a bomb aboard a civilian bus in Ampara which killed seventeen people, including three children.
Troops mostly operating in small groups of Special Forces and Commando units began a new operation in February to clear the last remaining LTTE cadres from the Eastern Province. As part of the operation, troops captured the key LTTE base in Gokatugolla (Kokkadicholai) on March 28, and the strategic A5 highway on April 12, bringing the entire highway under government control for the first time in 15 years. This meant the LTTE's presence in the East was reduced to a 140 square kilometer pocket of jungle land in the Thoppigala area north-west of Madakalapuva (Batticaloa). The offensive had left nine soldiers dead along with 184 Tiger cadres, with no civilian casualties, according to military estimates.
By December 22, 2007, the LTTE defences at Uyilankulama and Thampanai were lost to advancing troops of the Sri Lanka Army.
On December 29, 2007, the Army overran the LTTE stronghold at Parappakandal, in Mannar District
.
In an interview with the Sunday Observer the Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said that the Army had occupied the LTTE's Forward Defence Lines and surrounded the Wanni LTTE bases from all directions. He also said that there were around 3,000 Tigers remaining and that the military intended to annihilate them within the first six months of the next year.
A day later there were less optimistic statements by Army, Air Force and Navy Commanders. The Army was to face an estimated 5,000 Tiger cadres in the Wanni. The Commander of the Army intended to shift the current battles in the Forward Defence Lines to a decisive phase in August 2008. In the Commanders' view, it was quite possible to defeat the LTTE in 2008.
The military of Sri Lanka claimed that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran
, was seriously injured during air strikes carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force on a bunker complex in Jayanthinagar on November 26, 2007. Earlier, on November 2, 2007, S. P. Thamilselvan
, who was the head of the rebels' political wing, was killed during another government air raid. The Sri Lanka Air Force openly vowed to destroy the entire leadership of the LTTE. On January 5, 2008, Colonel Charles, Head of LTTE Military Intelligence, was killed in a claymore mine ambush by a suspected Sri Lanka Army Deep Penetration Unit, according to a pro-LTTE website.
urged the government to abandon the ceasefire agreement on December 29, 2007, and on January 2, 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially did so. Between February 2002 to May 2007, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
had documented 3,830 ceasefire violations by the LTTE, with respect to 351 by the security forces. From May 2007, the SLMM ceased making determinations on ceasefire violations. Thus the government stated there was no need for a ceasefire anymore. Donor countries such as the United States, Canada, and Norway, as well as India, The LTTE formally responded that since the government had unilaterally withdrawn from the ceasefire agreement without any justification and that they were prepared to continue to honour the agreement, the international community ought to immediately remove the bans it had placed on the LTTE.
The government then attempted to open a third front along the Muhamalai Forward Defence Line
. After an initial setback on April 23, the Sri Lankan Army advanced rapidly, capturing the town of Adampan on May 9, Vidattaltivu
on July 16, and Iluppaikkadavai on July 20.
On July 21, 2008, the LTTE announced that it would be declaring a unilateral ceasefire from July 28 to August 4, to coincide with the 15th summit of the heads of state of SAARC to be held in Colombo. However, the government of Sri Lanka dismissed the LTTE's offer as needless and treacherous.
, fell to the advancing SLA troops, completing the eight-month effort to recapture the district. The Army followed this up by taking control of Mallavi
on September 2, following weeks of heavy military confrontation. The LTTE countered with a surprise attack on the Vavuniya
air base on September 9, in which both sides claimed victory.
From Mannar, the Army had entered Kilinochchi District
, the last stronghold of the LTTE, at the end of July, with the intention of taking Kilinochchi
before the end of the year. On October 3, 2008, a UN aid convoy managed to unload all its cargo in Kilinochchi District and described Kilinochchi town as having been nearly abandoned, but the LTTE were able to kill retired Major General Janaka Perera
along with 26 other victims in a suicide blast on October 6.
On October 17, 2008, SLA troops cut off the Mannar-Poonaryn (A-32) road north of Nachchikuda, the main remaining Sea Tiger stronghold on the northwestern coast of the island, thus effectively encircling it. They began their assault on October 28 and captured it the next day.
After that the Army Task Force 1 continued their advance towards Pooneryn and captured Kiranchchi, Palavi, Veravil, Valaipadu and Devil's Point. On November 15, 2008, troops of the Army Task Force 1 entered the strategically important Tamil Tiger stronghold of Pooneryn
. Simultaneously, the newly created Army Task Force 3 was introduced into the area of Mankulam with the objective of engaging the LTTE cadres in a new battlefront towards the east of the Jaffna–Kandy (A-9) road. SLA troops captured Mankulam
and the surrounding area on November 17, 2008.
Meanwhile, the situation of more than 200,000 civilians who had been displaced in the latest round of fighting was turning into a humanitarian disaster; however, due to a number of reasons including doubts regarding the sincerity of the LTTE's negotiations, neither Western governments nor India intervened to broker a new ceasefire.
Not until January 1, 2009, were SLA troops able to capture Paranthan
, located to the north of Kilinochchi along the A-9 route. This isolated the southern periphery of the Elephant Pass LTTE foothold and also exposed the LTTE's main fortification at Kilinochchi. This made the capture of Kilinochchi, which the rebels had used for over a decade as their de facto administrative capital, far simpler, and they were able to accomplish this on January 2. The loss of Killinochchi caused a substantial dent in the LTTE's image as a capable, ruthless terrorist group, and observers forecasted the LTTE was likely to collapse before long under unbearable military pressure on multiple fronts.
The Tigers quickly abandoned their positions on the Jaffna peninsula to make a last stand in the jungles of Mullaitivu
, their last main base. The entire Jaffna peninsula was captured by the Sri Lanka Army by January 14, 2009. However, they were unable to hold out for long, and on January 25, SLA troops captured Mullaitivu. The last Sea Tiger base in Chalai was next to fall on February 5, reducing the territory under rebel control to less than some 200 km2.
This stage of the war was marked by increased brutality against civilians and rapidly mounting civilian casualties. On February 19, 2009, Human Rights Watch
issued a report accusing the Sri Lankan army of "slaughtering" the civilians during indiscriminate artillery attacks (including repeated shelling of hospitals) and calling on the Sri Lankan government to end its policy of "detaining displaced persons" in military-controlled internment camps. Human Rights Watch also urged the Tamil Tigers to permit trapped civilians to leave the war zone and to "stop shooting at those who try to flee". The UN was also concerned over the condition of internally displaced persons and estimated that some 200,000 people were being squeezed into a narrow 14 square kilometre patch of land on the coast in Vanni, which the government had declared the 'no-fire zone'.
On February 20, 2009, two LTTE planes on a suicide mission
attacked the Sri Lankan capital Colombo
, killing 2 and wounding 45, but both planes were shot down by the Sri Lankan Air Force
before they could damage the intended targets which were the Army Headquarters and the main Air Force base.
By late March, the Tamil Tigers controlled only one square kilometre outside the no-fire zone. down from about 15,000 km2 a mere three years previous. Political pressure was placed on Mahinda Rajapaksa to find a political solution to the conflict and he called for a meeting with parliamentarians allied with the Tigers, but they refused until the government resolved the humanitarian crisis faced by civilians trapped in the fighting.
in the no-fire zone, trapping over 30,000 civilians, but the SLA was able to destroy this.
On April 21, Sri Lankan troops launched an assault, targeting LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran. At the same time, a mass Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' was underway. The next day, two senior LTTE members (LTTE media co-ordinator Velayuthan Thayanithi, alias Daya Master, and a top interpreter Kumar Pancharathnam, alias George) surrendered to the advancing Sri Lankan army. This came as "a rude shock" and a major setback for the rebel leadership. When asked why they had surrendered, both men stressed that rebels were shooting at the civilians and preventing them from escaping from the 'no-fire zone' to safety in government-controlled areas. They also alleged that the LTTE were still abducting and conscripting children as young as 14 years old, and would fire at anyone who tried to resist.
By April 25, the area under the LTTE was reduced to 10 km2. While the Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' continued, the UN estimated that around 6,500 civilians may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded between January 2009 and April 2009. The BBC reported that the land recaptured by the army from the rebels was totally depopulated and utterly devastated.
As fighting continued, a group of independent United Nations experts called on the Human Rights Council to urgently set up an international inquiry to address the “critical” situation in Sri Lanka amid fighting between the Army and Tamil rebels. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA
), over 196,000 people fled the conflict zone, a shrinking pocket of land on the north-east coastline, where clashes continued between government troops and the LTTE, while at least 50,000 people were still trapped there. A UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, said more than 100 children died during the "large-scale killing of civilians" and described the situation in northern Sri Lanka as a "bloodbath". UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
said he was appalled at the killing of hundreds of Sri Lankan civilians caught in the middle of hostilities between the army and separatist Tamil rebels over the weekend. He voiced deep concern over the continued use of heavy weapons in the conflict zone, but also stressed that the “reckless disrespect shown by the LTTE for the safety of civilians has led to thousands of people remaining trapped in the area”.
On May 16, 2009, Sri Lankan troops broke through LTTE defences and captured the last section of coastline held by Tamil Tiger rebels. The army reported it was set to "clear" remaining rebel-held land within days. Later the military claimed, allegedly citing intercepted LTTE communication, that rebels were preparing for a mass suicide
after being effectively cut-off of escape routes. Some rebels have been reported to be blowing themselves up.
As many as 20,000 civilians may have been killed in the no-fire zone, both as a result of the Tigers as well as shelling by the Sri Lankan military, with up to 1,000 killed each day in the final two weeks of the war. However, the UN says it has no confirmed estimates of civilian casualties, with one UN officially calling it a "dangerous extrapolation", and the Sri Lankan government disputed the number. A number of deaths were reported by five doctors who worked in the no-fire zone, but they recanted their initial reports, stating that the casualty figures they released were exaggerated and were handed to them by the LTTE. They further stated that between January 2009 and the end of the war in May 2009 some 600–700 civilians were killed and twice that number had been injured. This contradicts the figures issued by international aid agencies: the United Nations
says that 6,500 were killed between late January and early April; and the Red Cross evacuated 14,000 sick and injured people between mid-February and mid-May.
summit in Jordan
, President
Mahinda Rajapaksa
stated "my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily". Sri Lankan Commander of the Army
Sarath Fonseka
also declared victory over LTTE. Sri Lankan troops raced to clear the last LTTE pockets of resistance. As the last LTTE strongpoints crumbled, Sri Lankan troops killed 70 rebels attempting to escape by boat. The whereabouts of LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and other major rebel leaders were not certain.
, was killed in the morning of May 18, 2009 while he was trying to flee the conflict zone in an ambulance. The announcement on state television came shortly after the military said it had surrounded Prabhakaran in a tiny patch of jungle in the north-east. The Daily Telegraph wrote that, according to Sri Lankan TV, Prabhakaran was "... killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack as he tried to escape the war zone in an Ambulance with his closest aides. Colonel Soosai
, the leader of his "Sea Tigers
" navy, and Pottu Amman
, his intelligence chief were also killed in the attack."
The head of the Sri Lankan army, General
Sarath Fonseka
, said the military had defeated the rebels and "liberated the entire country". Military spokesman Brigadier
Udaya Nanayakkara
stated 250 Tamil Tigers, who were hiding and fighting from within the no fire zone, were killed overnight.
Mahinda Rajapaksa
delivered a victory address to the Parliament
and declared that Sri Lanka is liberated from terrorism. Around 9:30 a.m. troops attached to Task Force VIII of Sri Lanka Army, reported to its commander, Colonel
G.V. Ravipriya that a body similar to Velupillai Prabhakaran has been found among the mangroves in Nandikadal lagoon. It was identified by the officer. At 12:15 p.m. Army Commander Sarath Fonseka
officially announced Prabhakaran's death, through the State television ITN
. At around 1:00 p.m. his body was shown in Swarnavahini
for the first time. Prabakaran's identity was confirmed by Karuna Amman, his former confidant, and through DNA testing against his son's genetic material who had been killed earlier by the Sri Lanka Military. However, LTTE Chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan on the same day claimed that "Our beloved leader is alive and safe." But on 24 May 2009, he admitted the death of Prabhakaran, retracting the previos statement.
leader Ranil Wickremasinghe
, through a telephone call, congratulated President Mahinda Rajapaksa
and the state's security forces on 18 May 2009 for their victory over the LTTE. In a press release issued that day, Roman Catholic Archbishop
Oswald Gomis
said:
With the announced end of the war, Sri Lanka's stock exchange
registered its sixth highest percentage gain ever.
United Nations – At a press conference in Geneva
on 19 May 2009, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
said, "I am relieved by the conclusion of the military operation, but I am deeply troubled by the loss of so many civilian lives. The task now facing the people of Sri Lanka is immense and requires all hands. It is most important that every effort be undertaken to begin a process of healing and national reconciliation. I listened very carefully to what President Rajapaksa said in his address to Parliament today. The legitimate concerns and aspirations of the Tamil people and other minorities must be fully addressed." The Secretary General went on to announce his upcoming visit to the wartorn region.
European Union – The European Council
met in Brussels
on 18 May 2009, during which it adopted a statement calling on "the Government of Sri Lanka urgently to proceed towards a comprehensive political process" and "the President of Sri Lanka to outline a clear process leading to a fully inclusive political solution, based on consent, equality and the rule of law". The Council stated that such moves are the only way toward long-term security, post-conflict reconstruction and prosperity in Sri Lanka. The statement concluded: "The EU continues to call for appropriate action by the United Nations Human Rights Council." The Times reported that EU member nations sold arms to the Sri Lankan government in spite of fears of human rights abuses.
stated "Canadians are very concerned about the aftermath of the military action in Sri Lanka and the appalling effect it has had on civilians. This terrible, decades-long war has inflicted untold devastation and heartbreak on Sri Lankans. The Government of Canada wishes to express its concerns about civilian casualties, and to convey its condolences to the people of Sri Lanka and those around the world who have lost friends and family members in this horrific conflict.
Canada urges the Government of Sri Lanka to begin to find a long-term political solution that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Sri Lanka. Canada is prepared to assist Sri Lankan efforts to find political reconciliation and a lasting peace."
– The Indian Ministry of External Affairs
issued a statement on 18 May 2009 saying "In a telephone conversation with External Affairs Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee
earlier today, the President of Sri Lanka confirmed that armed resistance by the LTTE has come to an end and that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead.
India will work with the people and Government of Sri Lanka to provide relief to those affected by the tragic conflict, and to rapidly rehabilitate all those who have been displaced, bringing their lives to normalcy as soon as possible.
It is our view that as the conventional conflict in Sri Lanka comes to an end, this is the moment when the root causes of conflict in Sri Lanka can be addressed. This would include political steps towards the effective devolution of power within the Sri Lankan Constitution so that Sri Lankans of all communities, including the Tamils, can feel at home and lead lives of dignity of their own free will."
– Foreign Minister
of the Islamic Republic of Iran Manouchehr Mottaki
telephoned Foreign Minister
Rohitha Bogollagama
on 19 May 2009 to extend his warm congratulations to the President, the Foreign Minister and the Government of Sri Lanka on the success achieved by Sri Lanka in defeating LTTE terrorism.
"Iran has maintained close relations with Sri Lanka and has always condemned terrorism and, consistently upheld the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka". He states that he was speaking on behalf of the President of Iran who has conveyed his best wishes to Sri Lanka and will personally speak to the President of Sri Lanka
at a mutually convenient time. Iran has also offered assistance through the Red Crescent, for the emergency relief operations for the IDPs in the North.
– The Japanese premier's office released a statement of Prime Minister
Taro Aso
's telephone conversation with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse. The statement said the Prime Minister "welcomed the end of the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam", and that "it is now important to help internally displaced people and their resettlement as well as to start showing improvement in the political process towards peace-building".
It also outlined that poverty was one of the factors that create fertile ground for terrorism and said he would like to see Sri Lanka build infrastructure, adding that Japan would support Sri Lanka's efforts as much as possible.
– Both President
Mohamed Nasheed
and Vice-president
Mohammed Waheed Hassan
congratulated the government and people of Sri Lanka for their tremendous success in effecting an end to the decades-old conflict in their country.
The President reaffirmed continued their support and solidarity with the government and people of Sri Lanka, as Sri Lanka celebrates as a unified nation. “I take this opportunity to express on behalf of the Government and the people of Maldives our sincerest best wishes to Your Excellency and the people of Sri Lanka”.
”This momentous occasion in Sri Lanka’s history will pave the way towards realising greater equality and justice for all Sri Lankans.”
– Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement "our thoughts go to all who have lost relatives and loved ones in the war. We must cooperate to aid the victims. People in the refugee camps must quickly be allowed to return home."
Store also said the situation in the refugee camps for internally displaced people must be improved, in line with demands made by the United Nations.
– Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, Nawabzada Malik Amad Khan
telephoned Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, Hussein A. Bhaila congratulating Sri Lanka's "great victory over terrorism".
The Pakistani State Minister stated that Pakistan has always been a steadfast friend of Sri Lanka and strongly supported the country's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and re-affirmed his government's continued cooperation with Sri Lanka in countering terrorism. He requested the Deputy Minister to convey his good wishes and felicitations to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama.
– A Department of Foreign Affairs press release, dated 22 May 2009: "welcomes the return of law and order in northern Sri Lanka and supports the Government of Sri Lanka’s search for a comprehensive, fair, and lasting political solution to the problems faced by its Tamil minority.
The Philippines hopes that a lasting political solution will be crafted in order that the Tamil minority share in the fruits of peace in their country."
– "The government of Russia has extended warmest congratulations to the president and the government of Sri Lanka on the success achieved by the island nation in defeating LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) terrorism," the Department of Government Information said in a statement.
Officials from Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said Russia has said that it supports the fight of the Sri Lankan government against terrorism and separatism.
Russia hoped that the end to the bloody armed conflict that lasted in Sri Lanka for more than a quarter century will be a guarantee of the establishment of an enduring peace, security and stability in the country.
– The South African government released a statement through Deputy International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ehrahim Ebrahim regarding the end of military operations in Sri Lanka.
“The South African government expresses grave regret at the manner in which the military offensive was conducted and urges the United Nations Human Rights Commission to urgently investigate possible violations of international human rights law and contraventions of the Geneva Convention.”, said Ebrahim. The statement also called for immediate humanitarian aid and international media access to the areas affected.
“The South African government has noted the conciliatory tone in the speech of President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 19 May 2009 and express our hope that the end of the military campaign will result in a peaceful dialogue with all minorities to address their long standing grievances. We will continue to support any efforts aimed at bringing about peace and reconciliation between the parties”
– The Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs
issued the following statement 29 May 2009 after Minister for Foreign Affairs
George Yeo
met Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs
Rohitha Bogollagama
at the Shangri-La Dialogue
held in Singapore
: "Singapore is relieved to see an end to the long-standing conflict in Sri Lanka. The conflict had taken a great toll on the country. Not only have tens of thousands of lives been lost, but hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians have also been displaced from their homes. The final cessation of military operations by the Sri Lankan Government provides a short window of opportunity to close a sad chapter of history and quickly begin a process of genuine national healing and reconciliation. A long term agreement taking into full consideration the interests of all communities within Sri Lanka must be forged and implemented to ensure a lasting peace."
George Yeo congratulated Rohitha Bogollagama and the Sri Lankan government over the victory of LTTE terrorists.
– In a press statement dated 19 May 2009, Switzerland's government welcomed the end of the armed conflict. However, Switzerland "regrets that international humanitarian law has been violated and appeals to all parties to comply with and to ensure respect for international regulations and obligations in all circumstances."
"Switzerland calls on all parties to refrain from incitement to hatred and to work towards reconciliation by means of unilateral or jointly agreed measures. All parties and groupings as well as members of the diaspora should work openly and in conjunction with international institutions to initiate a reconciliation process and a sustainable solution in the framework of a political dialogue."
– The president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa
, telephoned the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül
. The conversation was released by the Turkish Presidency Media Center. The Sri Lankan president informed Gül about the recent achievements in the fight against terrorism. President Gül stated that he was pleased with the recent events and Turkey was ready to provide humanitarian aid, in the telephone conversation.
– Foreign Secretary
David Miliband
made the following written statement to the House of Commons on 19 May 2009: "On 19 May, the Sri Lankan President formally announced that on 18 May military forces had retaken all the territory once held by the LTTE and that they had captured or killed the senior leadership of that organisation. Many Sri Lankans of all communities, Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim, will be relieved that the long and brutal conflict may at last be over. Sri Lanka has before it an historic opportunity to resolve the underlying causes of the conflict and ensure a lasting peace. We must continue to work with Sri Lanka’s Government and all its communities to ensure that this opportunity is taken and that it leads to a sustainable end to the conflict. The continuing focus of this Government’s activity over the coming days and weeks, will be to work with international partners in encouraging the Sri Lankan Government to devote as much energy to winning the peace as it did to winning the war."
Lord Malloch Brown, the Minister of State Foreign and Commonwealth office in UK said, in the House of Lords
, "Indeed, in our initial contacts with the president, we congratulated him on finishing of a brutal 26-year war, which was instigated by the Tamil Tigers-a terrorist group" replying to Lord Naseby who raised the matter in the House of Lords. Agreeing with Lord Naseby, Lord Malloch Brown said, "the political solution to this must come from inside Sri Lanka from a process set up and led by President Rajapaksa."
Speaking further, Brown said, "But we also made it extremely clear to him that, whether or not that victory would be seen as the opening of a new and happier chapter in Sri Lanka depended on whether he could now go that next step and show the statesmanship to find a political as well as humanitarian solution to this community's issues."
He further said, "On 17 May, the Prime Minister announced an additional œ5 million in humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka, taking the total to œ12.5 million since September 2008." Speaking before him Lord Naseby said, "My Lords, have Her Majesty's Government congratulated the Sri Lankan Government on defeating the Tamil Tigers and bringing peace to the country? On the international front, is it Her Majesty's Government's policy primarily to tackle the resettlement of the 250,000 Tamils and the 100,000 Muslims who were ethnically cleansed from Jaffna, or is it to continue to lecture that there should be a constitutional settlement, which really rests with the Parliament of Sri Lanka?"
– At a press conference in Washington, D.C.
, on 18 May 2009, United States Department of State
spokesman Ian Kelly said: "The Department of State welcomes the fact that the fighting has ended, and we are relieved that the immense loss of life and killing of innocent civilians appears to be over. This is an opportunity for Sri Lanka to turn the page on its past and build a Sri Lanka rooted in democracy, tolerance, and respect for human rights. Now is the time for the government to engage the Tamils, Sinhalese, and other Sri Lankans to create a political arrangement that promotes and protects the rights of all Sri Lankans.
It is also vital for the government to provide for the needs of the 280,000 civilians now living in relief camps. Providing food, water, shelter, basic health care, and sanitation, as well as expediting their return to their homes should be a top priority for the government."
The Sri Lankan defence ministry said that US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Robert O. Blake, Jr.
, called Foreign Minister
Rohitha Bogollagama
on 18 May 2009 regarding humanitarian aid to displaced persons and reconciliation with the Tamil people.
– On 21 May 2009, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Le Dung released the following statement in response to journalist inquiries:
"Vietnam welcomes the recent victory of the Government and people of Sri Lanka. This victory will create favorable conditions for Sri Lanka to concentrate on the cause of national construction and development, contributing to peace, stability and development in the region."
said on an interview with state television that 23,790 Sri Lankan military personnel were killed since 1981 (it was not specified if police or other non-armed forces personnel were included in this particular figure). From the August 2006 recapture of the Mavil Aru reservoir until the formal declaration of the cessation of hostilities (on May 18), 6261 Sri Lankan soldiers were killed and 29,551 were wounded.
The Sri Lankan military estimates that up to 22,000 LTTE militants were killed in the last three years of the conflict.
The final five months of the civil war saw the heaviest civilian casualties. The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies as well civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January 2009, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April 2009. There are no official casualty figures after this period but estimates of the death toll for the final four months of the civil war (mid-January to mid-May) range from 15,000 to 20,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties were not recorded. A former UN official has claimed that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the civil war.
under the "Uthuru Wasanthaya" program after the end of war.
(TNA), also the largest political group representing Sri Lankan Tamil community, dropped its demand for a separate state
, in favour of a federal
solution. There are ongoing bilateral talks between President Rajapaksa's UPFA
government and the TNA, on a viable political solution and devolution of power.
However, in an interview to Headlines Today
, television channel from India Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka & brother of President
Mahinda Rajapaksa
trashed "the political solution talk", asserting, among other things, that it was "simply irrelevant" because "we have ended this terrorism" in Sri Lanka.
aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to relocate to the safe zone and wait until the army could move them into safer locations. The Sri Lankan military promised not to fire into the area. However, only small numbers of civilians actually crossed into the Safe Zone, and the Sri Lankan government, the United Nations
, and Human rights
organizations accused the LTTE of preventing civilians from leaving. The fighting eventually caused civilians to flee the safe zone to a narrow strip of land between Nanthi Kadal
and the Indian Ocean. The Sri Lankan military declared a new 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi) Safe Zone northwest of Mullativu on February 12. Over the next three months, the Sri Lankan military repeatedly attacked the Safe Zone with aircraft and artillery to destroy the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers trapped there. The Sri Lankan government claimed that it was trying to hit Tamil Tiger positions, and claimed that these raids started on February 15 and ended on April 19, the day before the Army breached Tamil Tiger defenses, and civilians started to pour out. However, these attacks caused heavy damage. Thousands of civilians were killed or injured, and the Tamil Tigers reportedly held many as human shields. The final stages of the war created 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were transferred to camps in Vavuniya District
and detained there against their will. This, together with the conditions inside the camps, has attracted much criticism from inside and outside Sri Lanka. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire, and internees attempting to escape were shot. The government has stated that it will release civilians from the camps once it completes a screening process to weed out Tamil Tigers hiding among civilians in the camps, as well as demining operations. On 7 May 2009 the Sri Lankan government announced plans to resettle 80% of the IDPs by the end of 2009. After the end of the civil war President Rajapaksa gave assurances to foreign diplomats that the bulk of the IDPs would be resettled in accordance with the 180 day plan. By 28 April 2011, 96% (372,000) of the IDPs had been released or returned to their places of origin, with 18,000 still living in the camps. The people awaiting resettlement are almost entirely (98%) from areas in Mullaitivu District
, which is heavily contaminated with landmines. In June 2011, government claimed that all former female LTTE combatants were released.
Since the end of the war, more than 5,000 Tamil youths have been gathering at selected police stations in Eastern Province for interviews to join the police force as the government has called for interviews. The Sri Lankan government had planned to recruit 2,000 new police officers to the department, especially for the services in the northern region of the country.
communities around the world protested the civilian casualties in Northern Province, Sri Lanka
and the war in general. Active protests occurred in the major and/or capital cities of India
, Britain
, Canada
, Australia
, Norway
, Switzerland
, Denmark
, Germany
and the United States
. The collective objective of the protests was to persuade world national leaders to stop the civil war and bring a permanent ceasefire with an internationally coordinated diplomatic strategy.
A United Nations
expert panel investigating violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. The panel has called on the UN Secretary General to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law. The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any investigation. In a significant announcement in August 2011, the Sri Lankan Government has acknowledged the civilian casualties occurred in the final phase of the war.
During a counter-insurgency
seminar conducted by Sri Lanka Army in June 2011, Lawrence Smith - an attaché of the American embassy in Sri Lanka from 2008 revealed "...from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE -- Nadesan
, KP -- people who weren't and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE. So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real..." However the US State Department
characterized the statement as "personal opinion".
Government reports
Maps
Independent reports, documentaries and texts
Analysis
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a separatist militant organization formerly based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976 by Vellupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a violent secessionist and nationalist campaign to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil...
(the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), a separatist
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
militant organization which fought to create an independent
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...
state named Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
in the north and the east of the island. After a 26 year long military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.
For over 25 years, this civil war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy
Economy of Sri Lanka
With an economy worth $56 billion , and a per capita GDP of about $7000 , Sri Lanka has mostly had strong growth rates in recent years...
of the country, with an estimated 80,000–100,000 people killed during its course. The tactics employed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resulted in their being branded as a terrorist organization in 32 countries, including the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the member nations of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. The Sri Lankan government forces have also been accused of human rights abuses.
After two decades of fighting and four failed tries at peace talks, including the unsuccessful deployment of the Indian Army
Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War
The Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War was the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka intended to perform a peacekeeping role...
, the Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990...
from 1987 to 1990, a lasting negotiated settlement to the conflict appeared possible when a cease-fire was declared in December 2001, and a ceasefire agreement signed with international mediation in 2002. However, limited hostilities renewed in late 2005 and the conflict began to escalate until the government launched a number of major military offensives against the LTTE beginning in July 2006, driving the LTTE out of the entire Eastern province
Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
The Eastern Province is one of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but they didn't have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Between 1988 and 2006 the province was...
of the island. The LTTE then declared they would "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood".
In 2007, the government shifted its offensive to the north of the country, and formally announced its withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement on January 2, 2008, alleging that the LTTE violated the agreement over 10,000 times. Since then, aided by the destruction of a number of large arms smuggling vessels that belonged to the LTTE, and an international crackdown on the funding for the Tamil Tigers, the government took control of the entire area previously controlled by the Tamil Tigers, including their de-facto capital Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi is a city in the Kilinochchi District, part of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some south-east of Jaffna...
, main military base Mullaitivu
Mullaitivu
Mullaitivu is a small town on the north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka. It is the capital of Mullaitivu District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. A largely fishing settlement, the town in the early 20th century grew as an anchoring harbour of the small sailing vessels transporting goods between...
and the entire A9 highway, leading the LTTE to finally admit defeat on May 17, 2009. Following the end of the war, the Sri Lankan government has described Sri Lanka as the first country in the modern world to eradicate terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
on its own soil. Following the LTTE's defeat, pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance
Tamil National Alliance
The Tamil National Alliance 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...
dropped its demand for a separate state
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
, in favour of a federal
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
solution.
Origin and evolution
The root of modern conflict goes back to British colonial rule when the country was known as Ceylon. A nationalist political movement from SinhaleseSinhalese people
The Sinhalese are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group,forming the majority of Sri Lanka,constituting 74% of the Sri Lankan population.They number approximately 15 million worldwide.The Sinhalese identity is based on language, heritage and religion. The Sinhalese speak Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language and the...
communities arose in the country in the early 20th century with the aim of obtaining political independence, which was eventually granted by the British after peaceful negotiations in 1948. Disagreements between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic communities flared up when drawing up the country's first post-independence constitution.
After their election to the State Council
State Council of Ceylon
The State Council of Ceylon was the unicameral legislature for Ceylon , established in 1931 by the Donoughmore Constitution. The State Council gave universal adult franchise to the people of the colony for the first time...
in 1936, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
Lanka Sama Samaja Party
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka....
(LSSP) members N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena
Philip Gunawardena
Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena introduced Trotskyism to Sri Lanka, where he is a national hero, known as 'the Father of Socialism' and as 'the Lion of Boralugoda'.-Early life & education:...
demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. In November 1936, a motion that 'in the Municipal and Police Courts of the Island the proceedings should be in the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
' and that 'entries in police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
s should be recorded in the language in which they are originally stated' were passed by the State Council and referred to the Legal Secretary. However, in 1944, J.R. Jayawardene moved in the State Council that Sinhala should replace English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as the official language. In 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike's passage of the "Sinhala Only Act
Sinhala Only Act
The Sinhala Only Act was a law passed in the Ceylonese parliament in 1956...
" led to ethnic riots. The civil war is a direct result of the escalation of the confrontational politics that followed.
In 1963, shortly after the nationalisation of oil companies by the Sri Lankan government, documents relating to a separate Tamil state of 'Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
' began to circulate. At this time, Anton Balasingham
Anton Balasingham
Anton Stanislaus Balasingham was the chief political strategist and chief negotiator of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam a militant organization...
, an employee of the British High Commission in Colombo, began to participate in separatist activities. He later migrated to Britain, where he became the chief theoretician of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In the late 1960s, several Tamil youth, among them Velupillai Prabhakaran
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
also became involved in these activities. These forces together formed the Tamil New Tigers
Tamil New Tigers
The Tamil New Tigers was a militant Tamil organization founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran on May 22, 1972. The group was composed of a few close associates of Prabhakaran, who was 17 years old when he founded the group...
in 1972. This was formed around an ideology which looked back to the 1st Millennium Chola Empire – the Tiger was the emblem of that empire.
A further movement, the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, formed in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
; it became the backbone of the Eelamist movement in the diaspora, arranging passports and employment for immigrants and levying a heavy tax on them. It became the basis of the Eelamist logistical organization, later taken over entirely by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a separatist militant organization formerly based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976 by Vellupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a violent secessionist and nationalist campaign to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil...
.
The formation of the Tamil United Liberation Front
Tamil United Liberation Front
The Tamil United Liberation Front is a political party in Sri Lanka which seeks independence for the Tamil-populated areas of Sri Lanka.-Formation:...
(TULF) with its Vaddukkodei (Vattukottai) resolution of 1976 led to a hardening of attitudes.
The TULF supported the armed actions of the young militants of the TNT who were dubbed "our boys". These "boys" were the product of the post-war population explosion. Many partially educated, unemployed Tamil youth fell for revolutionary solutions to their problems. The leftist parties had remained "non-communal" for a long time, but the Federal Party (as well as its off-shoot, the TULF), deeply conservative and dominated by Vellala casteism, did not attempt to form a national alliance with the leftists in their fight for language rights.
Following the sweeping electoral victory of the UNP in July 1977, the TULF became the leading opposition party, with around one sixth of the total electoral vote winning on a party platform of secession from Sri Lanka.
In August 1977, Junius Richard Jayawardene's new UNP government followed its attack on the Left with a well organised pogrom against Tamils living in majority Sinhalese areas. In August the government granted only the educational rights demanded by the Tamils. But to the Tamil leadership that was losing the control it had on the Tamil militants after not being able to follow through with the election promise of seceding from Sri Lanka to form Tamil, it was too little too late.
Outbreak of civil war
Supported by the on-going politics of conflict in Sri Lanka, politicized Tamil youth in the north and the east started to form militant groups. These groups developed independently of the Colombo Tamil leadership, and in the end rejected and annihilated them. The most prominent of these groups was the TNT, which changed its name to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or the LTTE in 1976. The LTTE initially carried out a campaign of violence against the state, particularly targeting policemen and also moderate Tamil politicians who attempted a dialogue with the government. Their first major operation was the assassination of the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred DuraiappahAlfred Duraiappah
Alfred Duraiappah was a former MP and mayor of Jaffna, Sri Lanka who was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers.-First political murder:A member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Alfred Duraiappah was a former MP and mayor of Jaffna...
in 1975 by Prabhakaran.
The LTTE 's modus operandi of the early war was based on assassinations. The assassination in 1977 of a Tamil Member of Parliament, M. Canagaratnam, was carried out personally by Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE.
In July 1983, the LTTE launched a deadly ambush on a Sri Lanka Army patrol Four Four Bravo
Four Four Bravo
Four Four Bravo was the call sign of an fifteen-man Sri Lankan Army patrol, deployed in the Jaffna Peninsula on July 23, 1983. The patrol was ambushed and thirteen of its members were killed by the LTTE...
outside the town of Thirunelveli
Thirunelveli (Sri Lanka)
Thirunelveli is a town in Jaffna District, Sri Lanka. Some say in Tamil it translates to God's-paddy-field. It is located about 5 km from Jaffna. This is the location of an LTTE attack that killed 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers in July 1983, triggering the Sri Lankan Civil War....
, killing an officer and 12 soldiers. Using the nationalistic sentiments to their advantage, the Jayawardena organized massacres and pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s in Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
, the capital, and elsewhere (see Black July
Black July
Black July is the commonly used name for the anti-Tamil pogrom and attacks carried out by mobs in Sri Lanka which began on July 23, 1983. The riots occurred following a deadly ambush by a Tamil militant organization known as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which killed 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers...
). Between 400 and 3,000 Tamils were estimated to have been killed, and many more fled Sinhalese-majority areas. This is usually considered the beginning of the civil war.
Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups. The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one. Initially, the LTTE gained prominence due to devastating attacks such as the massacre of civilians at the Kent and Dollar Farms
Kent and Dollar Farm massacres
The Kent and Dollar Farm massacres was one of the earliest massacres of Sinhalese civilians carried out by the LTTE during the Sri Lankan Civil War...
in 1984 and the Anuradhapura massacre of 146 civilians
Anuradhapura massacre
The Anuradhapura massacre occurred in Sri Lanka in 1985 and was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This was the largest massacre of Sinhalese civilians by the LTTE to date; it was also the first major operation carried out by the LTTE outside a Tamil majority area.-Incident:The...
in 1985. The Anuradhapura massacre was apparently answered by government forces with the Kumudini boat massacre
Kumudini boat massacre
The Kumudini or Kumuthini boat massacre happened on 15 May 1985 when at least 23 minority Sri Lankan Tamil men, women and children on a ferry boat named Kumudini sailing from the island of Delft to the island of Nainathievu were alleged to have been killed by Sri Lankan Navy personnel.According to...
in which over 23 Tamil civilians died. Over time, the LTTE merged with or largely exterminated almost all the other militant Tamil groups. As a result, many Tamil splinter groups ended up working with the Sri Lankan government as paramilitaries or denounced violence and joined mainstream politics, and some legitimate Tamil-oriented political parties remain, all opposed to LTTE's vision of an independent state.
Peace talks between the LTTE and the government began in Thimphu
Thimphu
Thimphu also spelt Thimpu, is the capital and largest city of Bhutan. It is situated in the western central part of Bhutan and the surrounding valley is one of Bhutan's dzongkhags, the Thimphu District. The city became the capital of Bhutan in 1961...
in 1985, but they soon failed, and the war continued. In 1986, many civilians were massacred
Akkaraipattu massacre
Akkaraipattu massacre happened on 19 February 1986 when approximately 80 minority Sri Lankan Tamil farm workers were allegedly killed by the Sri Lankan Army personnel and their bodies burned in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka....
as part of this conflict. In 1987, government troops pushed the LTTE fighters to the northern city of Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
. In April 1987, the conflict exploded with ferocity, as both the government forces and the LTTE fighters engaged in a series of bloody operations.
The Sri Lankan military launched an offensive, called “Operation Liberation” or “Vadamarachchi Operation”, during May–June 1987, to regain control of the territory in the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. This offensive marked the Sri Lankan military's first conventional warfare on Sri Lankan soil since independence. The offensive was successful, and the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and the Sea Tiger leader Soosai narrowly escaped from advancing troops at Valvettithurai. The key military personnel involved in the operation were Lt Col. Vipul Boteju, Lt Col. Sarath Jayawardane, Col. Vijaya Wimalaratne
Vijaya Wimalaratne
Major General Vijaya Wimalaratne RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, psc, GR was a Sri Lankan army officer and one of the most distinguished generals in Sri Lanka.-Education:...
, Brig. Denzil Kobbekaduwa
Denzil Kobbekaduwa
Lieutenant General Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, rcds, psc, SLAC was a highly decorated and respected General in the Sri Lanka army...
and Maj. Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
In July 1987, the LTTE carried out their first suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
attack. "Captain Miller
Captain Miller
Vallipuram Vasanthan also known as Captain Miller, was the first Black Tiger for the LTTE. of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.- Personal life :...
" of the Black Tigers drove a small truck carrying explosives through the wall of a fortified Sri Lankan army camp, reportedly killing forty soldiers. They carried out over 170 suicide attack
Suicide attack
A suicide attack is a type of attack in which the attacker expects or intends to die in the process.- Historical :...
s, more than any other organization in the world, and the suicide attack became a trademark of the LTTE and a characteristic of the civil war.
The killings of Father Mary Bastian
Mary Bastian
Father Mary Bastian was a minority Tamil Human Rights activist and local Roman Catholic parish priest from Sri Lanka...
and George Jeyarajasingham
George Jeyarajasingham
George Jeyarajasingham was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil Human Rights activist and a Methodist missionary from the Mannar district of Sri Lanka. He and three others were shot dead on December 13, 1984 when they were traveling in his vehicle. Later their bodies were burnt along with his...
, both human rights activists, have been attributed to the government forces. These are but two examples of the thousands murdered in this period.
Indian involvement
IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
became involved in the conflict in the 1980s for a number of reasons, including its leaders' desire to project India as the regional power in the area and worries about India's own Tamils seeking independence. The latter was particularly strong in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
, where ethnic kinship led to strong support for independence for Sri Lankan Tamils. Throughout the conflict, the Indian central and state governments have supported both sides in different ways. Beginning in the 1980s, India, through its intelligence agency R&AW
Research and Analysis Wing
The Research and Analysis Wing is India's external intelligence agency. It was formed in September 1968 after the poor performance of the Intelligence Bureau in the Sino-Indian war of 1962 and the India-Pakistani war of 1965 convinced the then government of India that a specialized, independent...
, provided arms, training and monetary support to a number of Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE and its rival Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization
Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization
The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization is an Eelam Tamil organisation campaigning for the establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam in the northeast of Sri Lanka. The TELO was originally created as a militant group, and functioned as such until 1986, when most of its membership was killed in a...
(TELO) . The LTTE's rise is widely attributed to the initial backing it received from R&AW. It is believed that by supporting different militant groups, the Indian government hoped to keep the Tamil independence movement divided and be able to exert overt control over it.
India became more actively involved in the late 1980s, and on June 5, 1987, the Indian Air Force
Indian Air Force
The Indian Air Force is the air arm of the Indian armed forces. Its primary responsibility is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during a conflict...
airdropped food parcels
Operation Poomalai
Operation Poomalai or Eagle Mission 4 was the codename assigned to a mission undertaken by the Indian Air Force to airdrop supplies over the besieged town of Jaffna in Sri Lanka on 4 June 1987 in support of Tamil Tigers during the Sri Lankan Civil War....
to Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
while it was under siege by Sri Lankan forces. At a time when the Sri Lankan government stated they were close to defeating the LTTE, India dropped 25 tons of food and medicine by parachute into areas held by the LTTE in a direct move of support toward the rebels. Negotiations were held, and the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed on July 29, 1987, by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
and Sri Lankan President Jayewardene
Junius Richard Jayewardene
Junius Richard Jayewardene , famously abbreviated in Sri Lanka as JR, was the first executive President of Sri Lanka, serving from 1978 till 1989. He was a leader of the nationalist movement in Ceylon who served in a variety of cabinet positions in the decades following independence...
. Under this accord, the Sri Lankan Government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, including devolution
Devolution
Devolution is the statutory granting of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to government at a subnational level, such as a regional, local, or state level. Devolution can be mainly financial, e.g. giving areas a budget which was formerly administered by central government...
of power to the provinces
Provinces of Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, provinces are the first level administrative division. They were first established by the British rulers of Ceylon in 1833. Over the next century most of the administrative functions were transferred to the districts, the second level administrative division. By the middle of the...
, a merger—subject to later referendum—of the Northern and the Eastern provinces into the single province
North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
The North Eastern Province was one of the provinces of Sri Lanka. The province was created in September 1988 by merging the Northern and Eastern provinces. This merger was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2006. The province was formally demerged into the Northern and Eastern...
, and official status for the Tamil language (this was enacted as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka
Constitution of Sri Lanka
The Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka has been the constitution of the island nation of Sri Lanka since its original promulgation by the National State Assembly on 7 September 1978. It is Sri Lanka's second republican constitution, and its third constitution since the...
). India agreed to establish order in the North and East through a force dubbed the Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990...
(IPKF), and to cease assisting Tamil insurgents. Militant groups including the LTTE, although initially reluctant, agreed to surrender their arms to the IPKF, which initially oversaw a cease-fire and a modest disarmament
Disarmament
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms...
of the militant groups.
The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, so soon after JR Jayawardene's declaration that he would fight the Indians to the last bullet, led to unrest in south. The arrival of the IPKF to take over control of most areas in the North of the country enabled the Sri Lanka government to shift its forces to the south (in Indian aircraft) to quell the protests. This led to an uprising
Insurrection 1987-89
The 1987-89 insurrection in Sri Lanka, in which around 50,000 lives were lost, was carried out by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a Marxist Sinhalese political party in Sri Lanka.-Leadup to conflict in the 1980s:...
by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
The Janathā Vimukthi Peramuṇa is a Marxist-Leninist, Communist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was involved in two armed uprisings against the ruling governments in 1971 and 1987-89...
in the south, which was put down bloodily over the next two years.
While most Tamil militant groups laid down their weapons and agreed to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, the LTTE refused to disarm its fighters. Keen to ensure the success of the accord, the IPKF then tried to demobilize the LTTE by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with them. The three year long conflict was also marked by the IPKF being accused of committing various abuses of human rights by many human rights groups as well as some within the Indian media. The IPKF also soon met stiff opposition from the Tamils. Simultaneously, nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence in Sri Lanka. These led to the Sri Lankan government's call for India to quit the island, and they allegedly entered into a secret deal with the LTTE that culminated in a ceasefire. The LTTE and IPKF continued to have frequent hostilities, and according to some reports, the Sri Lankan government even armed the rebels in order to see the back of the Indian forces. Although casualties among the IPKF mounted, and calls for the withdrawal of the IPKF from both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict grew, Gandhi refused to remove the IPKF from Sri Lanka. However, following his defeat in Indian parliamentary elections in December 1989, the new prime Minister V. P. Singh
V. P. Singh
Vishwanath Pratap Singh was the seventh Prime Minister of India and the 41st Raja Bahadur of Manda.-Early life:...
ordered the withdrawal of the IPKF, and their last ship left Sri Lanka on March 24, 1990. The 32 month presence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka resulted in the deaths of 1100 Indian soldiers and over 5000 Sri Lankans. The cost for the Indian government was estimated at over 20 billion rupees.
Rajiv Gandhi's assassination
Support for the LTTE in India dropped considerably in 1991, after the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rajiv GandhiRajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
by suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam
Thenmuli Rajaratnam
Thenmozhi "Gayatri" Rajaratnam was the assassin who killed Rajiv Gandhi, herself, and 14 others in a suicide bombing on May 21, 1991, in the Indian town of Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, near Chennai. A member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , Rajaratnam was also known as Gayatri and Dhanu...
. The Indian press has subsequently reported that Prabhakaran decided to eliminate Gandhi as he considered Gandhi to be against the Tamil liberation struggle and feared that Gandhi might re-induct the IPKF, which Prabhakaran termed the "satanic force", if he won the 1991 Indian elections. In 1998 a court in India presided over by Special Judge V. Navaneetham found the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for the assassination. and in a 2006 interview, LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham stated regret over the assassination, although he stopped short of outright acceptance of responsibility for it.
India remains an outside observer to the ongoing peace process, with frequent demands by many groups for an extradition of Velupillai Prabhakaran
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
, now deceased.
Pan-Tamil support
In 2008, the central coalition in India was rocked by threats, resignations, and arrests based on Tamil nationalismTamil nationalism
Tamil nationalism in India is an aspiration by some Tamils to establish, at minimum, self determination or at maximum secession from India to establish an Independent Tamil State of which would consist of today's Tamil nadu, Puducherry and Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka...
, and hence support to Tamils in Sri Lanka. Following the historically pro-Tamil DMK party's accession to power in Tamil Nadu and the centre, it was seen as though there would be more political support from India. In 2008, party chief and TN CM Karunanidhi accepted the resignation of multiple MP's of his party in protest against an increasing casualty count of Tamil civilians in the war. Following this, MDMK founder and general secretary
General secretary
-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...
, Vaiko, courted arrest on charges of sedition in saying he would take up arms to fight on the side of the Tamils. He then charged the Indian Government with abetting the Sri Lankan Government in order to eliminate the Tamils there. He added that Sri Lanka would heed a request for a ceasefire if India imposed economic sanctions on the country.
In a rare show of unanimity, all the parties in Tamil Nadu assembly unanimously demanded a ceasefire in conflict, while appealing to the Centre to make efforts to stop the Sri Lankan military offensive.
Even the Congress party, which had seen the issue as an untouchable subject for more than a decade, said there could be no two opinions on the need for a ceasefire. To this, party floor leader, D Sudarsanam, said that the Centre was making efforts to stop the war and the results would soon be known. Congress whip, Peter Alphonse, denied that his party was acting against the interests of the Sri Lankan Tamils and said he was ready to list his party's efforts for the welfare of the said Tamils. The deputy leader of the opposition and senior AIADMK leader, O Panneerselvam, made a charge that the "intransigent attitude" of the Sri Lankan government was the reason for the continuation of the war. He added that the Sri Lankan army was bombing schools and public places that had resulted in the deaths of innocent people, including children.
The LTTE, which was cornered in a tiny section of the island, desperately pleaded with the Indian Tamil parties to demand a ceasefire, in order to save their leadership from annihilation, which led to several Indian Tamil politicians requesting the Sri Lankan Government to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Eelam War II
In the 1980s and 1990s, successive governments enacted a number of official acts to appease the Tamil community, including recognizing Tamil as an official languageOfficial language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
and merging the Northern and the Eastern Provinces of the country.
Yet the violence continued, as the LTTE continued to massacre innocent villagers living in the deep rural Eastern and North-Eastern areas. The Dollar and Kent Farm massacres, where hundreds of men, women and children were attacked during the night as they slept and were hacked to death with fatal blows to the head from axes, are two clear examples of the acts committed by the LTTE. Some of the men who defended themselves were executed their hands tied behind their backs. The LTTE used these terror tactics to scare Sinhalese and Muslim farmers away from these areas and swiftly took control of significant parts of the North, which could be considered an act of ethnic cleansing. When the Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force
Indian Peace Keeping Force was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990...
withdrew, the LTTE established many government-like functions in the areas under its control. A tentative ceasefire held in 1990 as the LTTE occupied itself with destroying rival Tamil groups while the government cracked down on the JVP uprising. When both major combatants had established their power bases, they turned on each other and the ceasefire broke down. The government launched an offensive to try to retake Jaffna.
This phase of the war soon acquired the name Eelam War II. It was marked by unprecedented brutality. The LTTE massacred 600-774 Policemen after they had surrendered
1990 massacre of Sri Lankan Police officers
The 1990 massacre of Sri Lankan Police officers was a mass murder of Sri Lankan Police officers that took place on June 11, 1990. Members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist organization, are alleged to have killed over 600 unarmed Sri Lanka Police officers in Eastern Province,...
on promises of safe conduct. The government placed an embargo on food and medicine entering the Jaffna peninsula and the air force relentlessly bombed LTTE targets in the area. The LTTE responded by attacking Sinhalese and Muslim villages and massacring civilians. One of the largest civilian massacres of the war occurred when the LTTE massacred 166 Muslim civilians at Palliyagodella
Palliyagodella massacre
The Palliyagodella massacre was carried out by the LTTE, an organization which has been banned in 33 countries including the US, Australia, EU, India and Canada due to its terrorist activities...
. The government trained and armed Home Guard Muslim units then took revenge on Tamil villages. There was also significant massacre of Tamil civilians attributed to government forces, especially in the Eastern Province. Notable international jurist Neelan Thiruchelvam
Neelan Thiruchelvam
Neelan Tiruchelvam was a Sri Lankan Tamil politician and an internationally respected academic. He was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber in July 1999....
, in a speech at the ICES-Colombo, indicated that the appropriate investigations into massacres and disappearances of civilians including many children in the Sathurukondan, Eastern University
Eastern University massacre
Eastern University massacre also known as Vantharamulai campus massacre refers to the arrest and subsequent mass murder of 158 minority Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who had taken refuge in the Eastern University campus close to the city Batticalo of on September 5, 1990. A witness identified the...
, Mylanthanai
Mylanthanai massacre
The Mylanthanai massacre happened on August 9, 1992 when 35 minority Sri Lankan Tamils, including 14 children, at Mylanthanai in Batticaloa District in Sri Lanka, were killed....
and the mass murder and burial of school children at Sooriyakanda
Sooriyakanda mass grave
The Sooriyakanda mass grave is the mass burial ground of murdered school children from Embilipitiya Maha Vidyalaya in Sri Lanka. These school children were killed and buried as part of the counter insurgency during the second JVP uprising in Sri Lanka. It was alleged that over 300 bodies were...
were hampered by the adoption of emergency
Emergency
An emergency is a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative...
regulations which were contributing to a climate of impunity. Along roadsides in the North and East, burning bodies became a common sight. Throughout the country, government death squads hunted down, kidnapped, or killed Sinhalese or Tamil youth suspected of being JVP or LTTE sympathizers, respectively. In October 1990, the LTTE expelled all the Muslims residing in Jaffna
Expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna
The expulsion of the Muslims and other nations from the Northern province was an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Tamil militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam organization in October 1990...
. A total of 28,000 Muslims were forced to leave their homes taking nothing but the clothes on their backs.
The largest battle of the war was in July 1991, when the army's Elephant Pass
Elephant Pass
Elephant Pass, Northern Province, Sri Lanka is an important military base and formerly the island's largest salt field, located in the gateway of Jaffna Peninsula. It has thus regularly been the site of battles during the civil war....
(Alimankada) base, which controlled access to the Yapanaya (Jaffna) peninsula, was surrounded by 5,000 LTTE troops. More than 2,000 died on both sides in the month-long siege, before 10,000 government troops arrived to relieve the base.
In February 1992, another series of government offensives failed to capture Jaffna due to Indian intervention, which led to a military stand-off as Indian threatened to invade Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government backed off and ordered the withdrawal of its forces, only days away from capturing LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabharan, whilst he lay surrounded in his home town of Vellvetithurai. Lt. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa
Denzil Kobbekaduwa
Lieutenant General Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, rcds, psc, SLAC was a highly decorated and respected General in the Sri Lanka army...
together with Major General Vijaya Wimalaratne
Vijaya Wimalaratne
Major General Vijaya Wimalaratne RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, psc, GR was a Sri Lankan army officer and one of the most distinguished generals in Sri Lanka.-Education:...
and Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. It is generally regarded as the lowest of the "admiral" ranks, which are also sometimes referred to as "flag officers" or "flag ranks"...
Mohan Jayamaha, died on August 8, 1992, at Araly (Aeraella) point Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
due to a land mine
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
blast, which badly affected military morale.
The LTTE, for its part, scored a major victory when one of their suicide bombers killed Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa
Ranasinghe Premadasa
Ranasinghe Premadasa was the 3rd President of Sri Lanka from January 2, 1989 to May 1, 1993. Before that, he served as the Prime Minister in the government headed by J. R. Jayewardene from February 6, 1978 to January 1, 1989...
in May 1993. In November 1993 the LTTE succeeded in the Battle of Pooneryn
Battle of Pooneryn
The Battle of Pooneryn was a battle fought on November 11, 1993 for the town of Pooneryn.-Background:The main target of the LTTE in the shorline offensive was the Sri Lankan government naval base at Pooneryn...
.
Eelam War III
In the 1994 parliamentary elections, the UNP was defeated and, amidst great hope, the People's AlliancePeople's Alliance (Sri Lanka)
The People's Alliance is a front of political parties in Sri Lanka, formed in 1994.It comprises the following parties:* Sri Lanka Freedom Party* Lanka Sama Samaja Party* Communist Party of Sri Lanka* Sri Lanka Mahajana Party...
, headed by Chandrika Kumaratunga
Chandrika Kumaratunga
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga born June 29, 1945) was the 4th Executive president of Sri Lanka, serving from November 12, 1994 to November 19, 2005. The daughter of two former Prime Ministers, she was also the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party until end of 2005...
, came to power on a peace platform. Chandrika Kumaratunga
Chandrika Kumaratunga
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga born June 29, 1945) was the 4th Executive president of Sri Lanka, serving from November 12, 1994 to November 19, 2005. The daughter of two former Prime Ministers, she was also the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party until end of 2005...
won the presidential elections as well after the LTTE assassinated the opposition leader Gamini Dissanayake
Gamini Dissanayake
Lionel Gamini Dissanayake was a prominent Sri Lankan politician and a former presidential candidate and Leader of the Opposition.-Early life:...
. A ceasefire was agreed in January 1995, but the ensuing negotiations proved fruitless. The LTTE broke the ceasefire on April 19 and thus began the next phase of the war, dubbed Eelam War III.
The new government then pursued a policy of "war for peace". Determined to retake the key rebel stronghold of Jaffna, which was occupied by 2,000 rebels, it poured troops into the peninsula. In one particular incident in August 1995, Air Force jets bombed St. Peter's church at Navali (Naavaella), killing
Navaly Church massacre
The Navaly Church bombing was the bombing of The Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Navaly or Navali in the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Air Force. It is estimated that at least 125 civilians, who found refuge from the fighting inside the church, have died as a result of...
at least 65 refugees and wounding 150 others. Government troops initially cut off the peninsula from the rest of the island, and then after 7 weeks of heavy fighting succeeded in bringing Jaffna under government control for the first time in nearly a decade. In a high profile ceremony, Sri Lankan Defense Minister Anurudda Ratwatte raised the national flag inside the Jaffna fort on December 5, 1995. The government estimated that approximately 2500 soldiers and rebels were killed in the offensive, and an estimated 7,000 wounded. Many civilians were killed as part of this conflict such as the Navaly church bombing in which over 125 civilians died. The LTTE and more than 350,000 civilians, compelled by LTTE pressure to leave Jaffna, fled to the Vanni region in the interior. Most of the refugees returned later the next year.
The LTTE responded by launching Operation Unceasing Waves and decisively won the Battle of Mullaitivu in July 1996.
The government launched another offensive in August 1996. Another 200,000 civilians fled the violence. The town of Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi is a city in the Kilinochchi District, part of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some south-east of Jaffna...
(GiraaNikke) was taken on September 29. On May 13, 1997, 20,000 government troops tried to open a supply line through the LTTE-controlled Vanni, but failed. Civilians were regularly killed and wounded by both sides.
As violence continued in the North, LTTE suicide and time bombs were exploded numerous times in populated city areas and public transport in the south of the country, killing hundreds of civilians. In January 1996, the LTTE carried out one of their deadliest suicide bomb attacks at the Central Bank
Central Bank Bombing
The Central Bank bombing was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks carried out by the LTTE during the Separatist civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers.The attack took place on January 31, 1996, Sri Lankan city of Colombo...
in Colombo, killing 90 and injuring 1,400. In October 1997 they bombed the Sri Lankan World Trade Centre and, in January 1998, detonated a truck bomb in Kandy
Kandy
Kandy is a city in the center of Sri Lanka. It was the last capital of the ancient kings' era of Sri Lanka. The city lies in the midst of hills in the Kandy plateau, which crosses an area of tropical plantations, mainly tea. Kandy is one of the most scenic cities in Sri Lanka; it is both an...
(Mahanuvara), damaging the Temple of the Tooth
Temple of the Tooth
Sri Dalada Maligawa or The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is located in the royal palace complex which houses the Relic of the tooth of Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is...
, one of the holiest Buddhist shrines in the world. In response to this bombing, the Sri Lankan government outlawed the LTTE and with some success pressed other governments around the world to do the same, significantly interfering with their fund-raising activities.
On September 27, 1998, the LTTE launched the Operation Unceasing Waves II and after heavy fighting captured Kilinochchi, thus winning Battle of Kilinochchi.
In March 1999, in Operation Rana Gosa, the government tried invading the Vanni from the south. The army made some gains, taking control of Oddusuddan (Oththan-thuduva) and Madhu, but could not dislodge the LTTE from the region. In September 1999 the LTTE massacred 50 Sinhalese civilians at Gonagala
Gonagala massacre
The Gongala Massacre was a massacre that occurred on September 18, 1999, in the small village of Gonagala, located in the Ampara District of Sri Lanka. According to reports, over 50 men, women and children were hacked to death in the middle of the night...
The LTTE returned to the offensive with the Operation Unceasing Waves III on November 2, 1999. Nearly all the Vanni rapidly fell back into LTTE hands. The LTTE launched 17 successful attacks in the region which culminated in the overrunning of the Paranthan (Puranthaenna) Chemicals Factory base and the Kurrakkan Kaddukulam (kurakkan-kaela vaeva) base. Thousands were killed in the fighting. The rebels also advanced north towards Elephant Pass (Alimankada) and Jaffna (Yapanaya). The LTTE was successful in cutting all land and sea supply lines of the Sri Lankan armed forces to the south, west and north of the town of Kilinochchi. In December 1999 the LTTE attempted to assassinate President Chandrika Kumaratunga in a suicide attack at a pre-election rally. She lost one eye, among other injuries, but was able to defeat opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Presidential election and was reelected for her second term in office.
On April 22, 2000, the Elephant Pass military complex, which had separated the Jaffna peninsula from the Vanni mainland for 17 years, completely fell to the hands of the LTTE. The army then launched Operation Agni Khiela to take back the southern Jaffna Peninsula, but sustained losses. The LTTE continued to press towards Jaffna, and many feared it would fall to the LTTE, but the military repulsed LTTE offensives and was able to maintain control of the city.
Early peace efforts
Exhaustion with the war was building as casualties mounted and there appeared to be no end in sight. By mid-2000, human rights groups estimated that more than one million people in Sri Lanka were internally displaced persons, living in camps, homeless and struggling for survival. As a result, a significant peace movementPeace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...
developed in the late 1990s, with many organizations holding peace camps, conferences, trainings and peace meditations, and many other efforts to bridge the two sides at all levels. As early as February 2000, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
was asked to mediate by both sides, and initial international diplomatic moves began to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Hopes for peace gained ground as the LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire in December 2000, but they canceled it on April 24, 2001, and launched another offensive against the government. After securing a vast area controlled by the military, the LTTE further advanced northwards. This advancement of the LTTE was posing a serious threat to the Elephant Pass (Alimankada) military complex that housed 17,000 troops of the Sri Lankan forces.
In July 2001, the LTTE carried out a devastating suicide attack on Bandaranaike International Airport
Bandaranaike Airport attack
The Bandaranaike Airport attack was an assault by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Bandaranaike International Airport, on July 24, 2001...
, destroying eight of the air force's planes (2 IAI Kfir
IAI Kfir
The Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir is an Israeli-built all-weather, multirole combat aircraft based on a modified Dassault Mirage 5 airframe, with Israeli avionics and an Israeli-made version of the General Electric J79 turbojet engine.-Background:...
s, 1 Mil-17
Mil Mi-17
The Mil Mi-17 is a Russian helicopter currently in production at two factories in Kazan and Ulan-Ude...
, 1 Mil-24
Mil Mi-24
The Mil Mi-24 is a large helicopter gunship and attack helicopter and low-capacity troop transport with room for 8 passengers. It is produced by Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant and operated since 1972 by the Soviet Air Force, its successors, and by over thirty other nations.In NATO circles the export...
, 3 K-8 trainers
Hongdu JL-8
The Hongdu JL-8 is a two-seat intermediate jet trainer and light attack aircraft designed in the People's Republic of China by China Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation. The primary contractor for this plane is the Hongdu Aviation Industry Corporation...
, 1 MiG-27
Mikoyan MiG-27
The Mikoyan MiG-27 is a variable-geometry ground-attack aircraft, originally built by the Mikoyan design bureau in the Soviet Union and later license-produced in India by Hindustan Aeronautics as the Bahadur . It is based on the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 fighter aircraft, but optimized for...
) and four Sri Lankan Airlines planes (2 Airbus
Airbus
Airbus SAS is an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS, a European aerospace company. Based in Blagnac, France, surburb of Toulouse, and with significant activity across Europe, the company produces around half of the world's jet airliners....
A330
Airbus A330
The Airbus A330 is a wide-body twin-engine jet airliner made by Airbus, a division of EADS. Versions of the A330 have a range of and can accommodate up to 335 passengers in a two-class layout or carry of cargo....
s, 1 A340
Airbus A340
The Airbus A340 is a long-range four-engine wide-body commercial passenger jet airliner. Developed by Airbus Industrie,A consortium of European aerospace companies, Airbus is now fully owned by EADS and since 2001 has been known as Airbus SAS. a consortium of European aerospace companies, which is...
and 1 A320
Airbus A320
The Airbus A320 family is a family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jet airliners manufactured by Airbus Industrie.Airbus was originally a consortium of European aerospace companies, and is now fully owned by EADS. Airbus's name has been Airbus SAS since 2001...
), dampening the economy and causing tourism, a vital foreign exchange earner for the government, to plummet.
Beginning of the ceasefire
Towards the end of 2001, however, following the attacks of September 11 attacks, the LTTE began to declare their willingness to explore measures for a peaceful settlement to the conflict. The LTTE are believed to have taken this action after fear of international pressure and even direct US support of the Sri Lankan Government as part of the War on Terror. In the south, the government was facing increasing criticism over its "war for peace" strategy, with peace nowhere in sight, and the economy in tatters. After losing a no-confidence motion, President Kumaratunga was forced to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections. The elections, held on December 5, 2001Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2001
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on December 6, 2001, just a little over a year after the last elections in October 2000.-Background:The People's Alliance government faced a blow when most of the SLMC MPs left the coalition...
, saw a sweeping victory for the United National Front, led by Ranil Wickremasinghe
Ranil Wickremasinghe
Ranil Shriyan Wickremesinghe , MP, is a Sri Lankan politician and current Leader of the Opposition in the Sri Lankan parliament. He was Prime Minister of Sri Lanka twice, from May 7, 1993 to August 19, 1994 and from December 9, 2001 to April 6, 2004...
, who campaigned on a pro-peace platform and pledged to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
On December 19, amidst efforts by Norway to bring the government and the Tamil Tigers to the negotiating table, the LTTE announced a 30 day ceasefire with the Sri Lankan government and pledged to halt all attacks against government forces. The new government welcomed the move, and reciprocated it 2 days later, announcing a month long ceasefire and agreeing to lift a long standing economic embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
on rebel-held territory.
Signing of Memorandum of Understanding
Mediation
Mediation, as used in law, is a form of alternative dispute resolution , a way of resolving disputes between two or more parties. A third party, the mediator, assists the parties to negotiate their own settlement...
, and it was decided that they, together with the other Nordic countries, monitor the ceasefire through a committee of experts named the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was established on 22 February 2002 under the terms of a ceasefire agreement signed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as a body that would monitor the ceasefire and enquire into reported violations of the ceasefire agreement...
. In August, the government agreed to lift the ban on the LTTE and paved the way for the resumption of direct negotiations with the LTTE.
Following the signing of the ceasefire agreement, commercial air flights to Jaffna began and the LTTE opened the key A9 highway, which linked government controlled area in the south with Jaffna and ran through LTTE territory, allowing civilian traffic through the Vanni region for the first time in many years, but only after paying a tax to the LTTE. Many foreign countries also offered substantial financial support if peace was achieved and optimism grew that an end to the decades-long conflict was in sight.
The much-anticipated peace talks began in Phuket
Phuket Province
Phuket , formerly known as Thalang and, in Western sources, Junk Ceylon , is one of the southern provinces of Thailand...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
on September 16, and 5 further rounds followed in Phuket, Norway and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. During the talks, both sides agreed to the principle of a federal solution and the Tigers dropped their long-standing demand for separate state. This was a key compromise from the LTTE, which had always insisted on an independent Tamil state and it also represented a compromise from the government, which had seldom agreed to more than minimal devolution. Both sides also exchanged prisoners of war for first time.
Political changes in the South
Following the elections of 2001, for the first time in Sri Lanka's history, the President and Prime Minister were of two different parties. This co-habitation was uneasy, especially since Prime Minister Wickremasinghe and the UNPUnited National Party
The United National Party, often referred to as the UNP ), , is a political party in Sri Lanka. It currently is the main opposition party in Sri Lanka and is headed by Ranil Wickremesinghe...
favoured a federal solution to the conflict, while hard-line elements within President Kumaratunga's party and other Sinhala nationalist groups allied to her opposed one as they did not trust the LTTE, which continued to levy taxes, strengthen themselves by smuggling in arms and ammunition, recruit child soldiers, and engage in killings of members of rival Tamil groups and government intelligence agents. During this time the LTTE also succeeded in setting up a series of vital bases around the Trincomalee (Gokanna) harbour (see Eelam War IV
Eelam War IV
Eelam War IV is the name given to the fourth phase of armed conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which is currently proscribed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries . Renewed hostilities began on the July 26, 2006 when Sri Lanka Air...
) and the Eastern Province.
The talks broke down on April 21, 2003, when the Tamil Tigers announced they were suspending any further talks due to their "displeasure" at the handling of some "critical issues". Among the reasons the Tigers gave were their exclusion from reconstruction talks in Washington DC on April 14 and a more general insinuation that they were not receiving the full economic rewards of peace. They cited the failure, as they saw it, of peace-dividends to transfer to security withdrawals on the ground and the disparity, as they saw it, between the relative calm of the government-held northeast and continuing violence in Tiger-held areas. However, the LTTE maintained it was committed to a settlement to the two-decade conflict, but stated that progress had to be made on the ground before the settlement proceeded.
On October 31, the LTTE issued its own peace proposal, calling for an Interim Self Governing Authority
Interim Self Governing Authority
The Interim Self Governing Authority was a proposal issued on October 2003 by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka for power sharing in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
(ISGA). The ISGA would be fully controlled by the LTTE and would have broad powers in the North and East. (see the Full text of the proposals) This provoked a strong backlash among the hardline elements in the South, who accused Prime Minister Wickremasinghe of handing the North and East to the LTTE. Under pressure from within her own party to take action, Kumaratunga declared a state of emergency and took three key government ministries, the Ministry of Mass Media, the Interior Ministry and the crucial Defense Ministry. She then formed an alliance with the JVP, called the United People's Freedom Alliance
United People's Freedom Alliance
The United People's Freedom Alliance is a political alliance in Sri Lanka. The current leader of the United People's Freedom Alliance is Mahinda Rajapaksa and Susil Premajayantha is the general secretary of UPFA.The alliance was formed by:...
, opposed to the ISGA and advocating a harder line on the LTTE, and called for fresh elections. The elections
Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2004
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 2 April 2004. The ruling United National Party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated, winning only eighty two seats in the 225-member Sri Lankan parliament. The opposition United People's Freedom Alliance won 105 seats...
, held on April 8, 2004, resulted in victory for the UPFA with Mahinda Rajapakse appointed as Prime Minister. Initial fears of a resumption of the conflict were proved unfounded when the new government expressed its desire to continue the peace process and find a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Split of the LTTE
Meanwhile, in March 2004 there had been a major fracturing between the northern and eastern wings of the LTTE. Colonel KarunaColonel Karuna
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan is a Sri Lankan politician and former militant. After fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for over 20 years, he rose to prominence as the leader of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal , a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers.After giving up arms and...
, the Eastern commander of the LTTE and one of Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants, pulled 5,000 eastern cadres out of the LTTE, claiming insufficient resources and power were being given to Tamils of the eastern part of the island. It was the biggest expression of dissension in the history of the LTTE and a civil war within the LTTE seemed imminent. After the parliamentary elections, brief fighting south of Trincomalee (formerly known as Gokanna) led to a rapid retreat and capitulation of Karuna's group, their leaders eventually going into hiding including Karuna himself, who was helped to escape by Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana
Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana
Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana is a popular Sri Lankan politician. He has been politically active since 1988, and was Member of Parliament from August 19, 1994 to December 5, 2001, and from April 9, 2004 to June 23, 2004, under the label of the United National Party...
, a powerful politician from the ruling party. However, the "Karuna faction" maintained a significant presence in the East and continued to launch attacks against the LTTE. The LTTE accuses the army of covertly backing the breakaway group, which subsequently formed a political party named the TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal
TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal
Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal , previously known as the "Karuna Group", is a political party in Sri Lanka. It was formed by Karuna Amman, a former leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, after he defected from the organization in 2004...
(TMVP) and hopes to contest in future elections.
The ceasefire largely held through all this turmoil, with over 3000 infractions by the LTTE and some 300 by the SLA recorded by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by 2005. The situation was further complicated by allegations that both sides were carrying out covert operations against each other. The government claimed that the LTTE was killing political opponents, recruiting children, importing arms, and killing government security and intelligence officers. The rebels accused the government of supporting paramilitary groups against them, especially the Karuna group.
Tsunami and aftermath
On December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Sri Lanka, killing more than 30,000 people, and leaving many more homeless. Aid poured in from donor countries, but disagreements arose instantly over how it should be distributed to the Tamil regions under LTTE control. By June 24, the government and LTTE agreed on the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS), but it received sharp criticism from the JVP, who left the government in protest.The legality of P-TOMS was also challenged in the courts. President Kumaratunga eventually had to scrap P-TOMS, which led to widespread criticism that sufficient aid was not reaching the North and East of the country. However, immediately following the tsunami there was a marked decrease in violence in the North.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar
Lakshman Kadirgamar
Sri Lankabhimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar PC was a Sri Lankan diplomat, politician and a lawyer. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka from 1994 to 2001 and again from April 2004 until his assassination in August 2005...
, a Tamil who was highly respected by foreign diplomats and who had been sharply critical of the LTTE, was assassinated at his home on August 12, 2005, allegedly by an LTTE sniper. His assassination led to the marginalization of the LTTE from the international community, and is thought to be the instant when the LTTE lost much of its sympathy in the eyes of foreign nations. Hence the silence of the international community when the Sri Lankan government took military action against the LTTE in 2006, when the latter closed the Mavil Oya (Mavil aru) sluice.
Further political change occurred when the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is the highest court of the nation of Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court is the highest and final judicial instance of record and is empowered to exercise its powers, subject to the provisions of the Constitution. The Court has ultimate appellate jurisdiction in...
declared President Kumaratunga's second and final term over and ordered her to hold fresh presidential elections. The main candidates for the election
Sri Lankan presidential election, 2005
The Sri Lankan presidential election of 2005 was the fifth presidential election of Sri Lanka. Nominations were accepted on 7 September 2005, and the election was held on 17 November 2005. Electoral participation was 73.73%...
, which was held in November, were the UNF candidate, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, who advocated the reopening of talks with the LTTE, and the UPFA candidate, Prime Minister Rajapaksa, who called for a tougher line against the LTTE and a renegotiation of the ceasefire. The LTTE openly called for a boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
of the election by the Tamils. Many of them were expected to vote for Wickremasinghe, and the loss of their votes proved fatal to his chances as Rajapakse achieved a narrow win.
Following the election, the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
stated in his annual address that the Tigers would "renew their struggle" in 2006 if the government did not take serious moves toward peace.
Resumption of hostilities
Just days after Prabhakaran's speech, a new round of violence erupted. Beginning in December 2005, there was increased guerrilla activity to the northeast, including Claymore mineM18A1 Claymore Antipersonnel Mine
The M18A1 Claymore is a directional anti-personnel mine used by the U.S. military. It was named after the large Scottish sword by its inventor, Norman A. MacLeod...
attacks which killed 150 government troops, clashes between the Sea Tigers
Sea Tigers
The Sea Tigers was the naval wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War. It was founded in 1984. The Sea Tigers had a number of small but effective suicide bomber vessels. During its existence it had gained a reputation as a capable adversary for the Sri Lankan Navy...
and the Sri Lanka navy, and the killings of sympathizers on both sides including Taraki Sivaram
Taraki Sivaram
Taraki Sivaram or Dharmeratnam Sivaram was a popular Tamil journalist of Sri Lanka. He was kidnapped by four men in a white van on April 28, 2005, in front of the Bambalapitya police station. His body was found the next day in the district of Himbulala, near the Parliament of Sri Lanka...
, a pro-LTTE journalist, and Joseph Pararajasingham
Joseph Pararajasingham
Joseph Pararajasingham was a Sri Lankan Member of Parliament and a poet who was known for his pro-Tamil Tiger views and advocacy of human rights...
, a pro-LTTE MP allegedly by the government of Sri Lanka.
At the beginning of 2008, the focus of the civil war turned to civilian targets, with commuter bus and train bombings carried out in most parts of the country,
including a series of attacks against commuters in and around Colombo.
Talks and further violence
In light of this violence, the co-chairs of the TokyoTokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
Donor conference called on both parties to return to the negotiating table. The co-chairs—the United States in particular—were heavily critical of the violence perpetrated by the LTTE. US State Department officials, as well as the US ambassador to Sri Lanka, gave warnings to the Tigers claiming a return to hostilities would mean that the Tigers would face a "more capable and more determined" Sri Lankan military. While the talks were going on there was violence targeted towards civilians such as massacre of 5 Tamil students on January 2, 2006, in Trincomalee
Trincomalee
Trincomalee is a port city in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka and lies on the east coast of the island, about 113 miles south of Jaffna. It has a population of approximately 100,000 . The city is built on a peninsula, which divides the inner and outer harbours. Overlooking the Kottiyar Bay,...
when high school students playing by the beach were briefly detained and then shot dead.
In a last-minute effort to salvage an agreement between the parties, the Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim
Erik Solheim
Erik Solheim is a Norwegian politician for the Socialist Left Party . He holds two posts in the current Norwegian cabinet, and carries the title Minister of the Environment and Minister of Development Cooperation...
and the LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham arrived in the island. The parties severely disagreed on the location of the talks; however, continued efforts produced a breakthrough when both parties agreed on February 7, 2006, that new talks could be held in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on February 22 and February 23. These talks were reported to have gone "above expectations", with both the government and the LTTE agreeing to curb the violence and to hold further talks on April 19–21.
During the weeks after the talks, there was a significant decrease in violence. However, the LTTE resumed attacks against the military in April beginning with a Claymore
Claymore
The term claymore refers to the Scottish variant of the late medieval longsword, two-handed swords with a cross hilt, of which the guards were in use during the 15th and 16th centuries.-Terminology:...
anti-personnel mine attack on military vehicles which killed 10 navy sailors on April 11. The following day, coordinated bombings by rebels and rioting in the north-eastern part of the country left 16 dead. First, a Claymore anti-personnel mine exploded in Trincomalee
Trincomalee
Trincomalee is a port city in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka and lies on the east coast of the island, about 113 miles south of Jaffna. It has a population of approximately 100,000 . The city is built on a peninsula, which divides the inner and outer harbours. Overlooking the Kottiyar Bay,...
, killing two policemen in their vehicle. Another blast, set off in a crowded vegetable market, killed one soldier and some civilians. Ensuing rioting by civilians left more than a dozen dead. Responsibility for these attacks was claimed by an organisation called the Upsurging People's Force
Upsurging People's Force
The Upsurging People's Force is a militant group in Sri Lanka. The group was unknown until February 2006, when it claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Sri Lankan army and navy cadre in the north and east of Sri Lanka in December 2005 and January 2006...
, which the military accused of being a front for the LTTE.
In light of this violence, the LTTE called for a postponement of the Geneva talks until April 24–25, and the government initially agreed to this. Following negotiations, both the government and the rebels agreed to have a civilian vessel transport the regional LTTE leaders with international truce monitors on April 16, which involved crossing government-controlled territory. However, the climate shifted drastically when the Tamil Tigers canceled the meeting, claiming not to have agreed to a naval escort. According to the SLMM, the Tamil rebels had previously agreed to the escort. This led to Helen Olafsdottir, spokesperson for the SLMM saying "It was part of the agreement. The rebels should have read the clauses carefully. We are frustrated."
On April 20, 2006, the LTTE officially pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. While they stated that transportation issues had prevented them from meeting their regional leaders, some analysts and the international community held a deep skepticism, seeing the transportation issue as a delaying tactic by the LTTE in order to avoid attending peace talks in Geneva.
Violence continued to spiral and on April 23, 2006, six Sinhalese rice farmers were massacred
Gomarankadawala massacre
Gomarankadawala is a tiny village in the Trincomalee District of Sri Lanka, where 6 Sinhalese civilians were gunned down by suspected LTTE cadres in an incident known as the Gomarankadawala massacre.- Incident :...
in their paddy fields by suspected LTTE cadres in the Trincomalee
Trincomalee
Trincomalee is a port city in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka and lies on the east coast of the island, about 113 miles south of Jaffna. It has a population of approximately 100,000 . The city is built on a peninsula, which divides the inner and outer harbours. Overlooking the Kottiyar Bay,...
district. The following day, two suspected Tamil Tiger rebels were shot dead in Batticaloa
Batticaloa
Batticaloa is a city in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. It is the seat of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka. It is on the east coast, south by south east of Trincomalee, and is situated on an island.-Etymology:...
when caught planting mines after rebels reportedly hacked a young mother to death and kidnapped her infant.
After LTTE launched a suicide assault on a naval convoy in which 18 sailors died, the Allaipiddy massacre of May 13, 2006, happened in which 13 minority Tamil civilians were killed in separate incidents in three villages in the islet of Kayts (Uruthota) in northern Sri Lanka.
International condemnation against the LTTE skyrocketed following the attempted assassination of the commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka
Sarath Fonseka
Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka, known as Sarath Fonseka is a former commander and General of the Sri Lanka Army and a former candidate for President of Sri Lanka. As Commander of the Army, he played an instrumental role in ending the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the...
by a pregnant LTTE Black Tiger suicide bomber Anoja Kugenthirasah, who blew herself up at the Sri Lankan Army
Sri Lankan Army
The Sri Lanka Army is the oldest and largest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and is responsible for land-based military and humanitarian operations. Established as the Ceylon Army in 1949, it was renamed when Sri Lanka became a republic in 1972...
headquarters in the capital, Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
. Lt. Gen. Fonseka and twenty-seven others were injured, while ten people were killed in the attack. For the first time since the 2001 ceasefire, the Sri Lanka Air Force carried out aerial assaults on rebel positions in the north-eastern part of the island nation in retaliation for the attack.
This attack, along with the assassination of Lakshman Kadiragamar a year earlier and an unsuccessful attack against a naval vessel carrying 710 unarmed security force personnel on holiday, proved the catalysts as the European Union decided to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organisation on May 19, 2006. It resulted in the freezing of LTTE assets in the member nations of the EU, and put an end to its efforts to raise funds its campaign in Sri Lanka. In a statement, the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
said that the LTTE did not represent all the Tamils and called on it to "allow for political pluralism and alternate democratic voices in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka".
As the North and East of the country continued to be rocked by attacks, new talks were scheduled in Oslo, Norway, between June 8–9. Delegations from both sides arrived in Oslo, but the talks were canceled when the LTTE refused to meet directly with the government delegation claiming its fighters were not been allowed safe passage to travel to the talks. Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim told journalists that the LTTE should take direct responsibility for the collapse of the talks.
Further violence followed, including the Vankalai massacre in which a family of four minority Sri Lankan Tamils from the village of Vankalai
Vankalai
Vankalai or Vangalai or Vangkaalai is a predominantly fishing and farming village situated in Mannar District of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It lies along the Naanaattan Road with the sea on its west connects to Indian Ocean...
in the district of Mannar
Mannar District
Mannar district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Mannar, Sri Lanka...
in Sri Lanka on June 8, 2006, were tortured and killed. Both the mother and the nine year old daughter were allegedly raped before being killed. The gory images of the corpses published by the pro rebel Tamilnet
Tamilnet
TamilNet is a news website that provides news and feature articles on current affairs in Sri Lanka, specifically related to the erstwhile Sri Lankan Civil War...
news site created controversy in Sri Lanka and abroad. The Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels have blamed each other for the killings. There was also the Kebithigollewa massacre
Kebithigollewa massacre
The Kebithigollewa massacre occurred on June 15, 2006 when 60 people were killed as a result of claymore attack on a bus. The U.S and the SLMM claimed that LTTE was the perpetrator. However, LTTE claimed that they did not perpetrate this attack.- Incident :...
on June 15, 2006, in which the LTTE attacked a bus killing at least 64 Sinhalese civilians and prompting more air strikes by the Air Force, and the assassination of Sri Lanka's third highest-ranking army officer and Deputy Chief of Staff General Parami Kulatunga
Parami Kulatunga
Lieutenant General Parami Sugandika Bandara Kulatunga RSP, VSV, USP, GW was Deputy Chief of Staff of the Sri Lanka Army, its third highest ranking officer....
on June 26 by an LTTE suicide bomber. These events led the SLMM
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was established on 22 February 2002 under the terms of a ceasefire agreement signed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as a body that would monitor the ceasefire and enquire into reported violations of the ceasefire agreement...
to question whether a ceasefire could still be said to exist. However most analysts continued to believe that the return to full-scale war was unlikely and the "low-intensity conflict" would continue.
Mavil Aru water dispute
A new crisis leading to the first large-scale fighting since signing of the ceasefire occurred when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Oya (Mavil AruMavil Aru
Mavil Aru is a waterway in Sri Lanka that supplies water to some regions of eastern Sri Lanka.The closure by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a separatist militant organization, of the sluice-gates of Mavil Aru on July 26, 2006, was a crucial turning point in the Sri Lankan Civil War...
) reservoir
Reservoir
A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to...
on July 21 and cut the water supply
Water supply
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavours or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes...
to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. After initial negotiations and efforts by the SLMM to open the gates failed, the Air Force attacked LTTE positions on July 26, and ground troops began an operation to open the gate.
The sluice gates were eventually reopened on August 8, with conflicting reports as to who actually opened them. Initially, the SLMM claimed that they managed to persuade the LTTE to lift the waterway blockade conditionally. However a government spokesman said that "utilities could not be used as bargaining tools" by the rebels and government forces launched fresh attacks on LTTE positions around the reservoir. These attacks prompted condemnation from SLMM Chief of Staff, who stated "(The government) have the information that the LTTE has made this offer." "It is quite obvious they are not interested in water. They are interested in something else." The LTTE then claimed they opened the sluice gates "on humanitarian grounds" although this was disputed by military correspondents, who stated the water began flowing immediately after the security forces carried out a precise bombing of the Mavil Aru anicut. Eventually, following heavy fighting with the rebels, government troops gained full control of the Mavil Aru reservoir on August 15.
LTTE offensives in Muttur and Jaffna
As fierce fighting was ongoing in the vicinity of (Mavil Oya) Mavil Aru, the violence spread to Gokanna (Trincomalee), where the LTTE launched an attack on a crucial Sri Lanka Navy base, and to the strategic government controlled coastal town of Muttur in early August, resulting in the deaths of at least 30 civilians and displacing 25,000 residents of the area. The clashes erupted on August 2, 2006 when the LTTE launched a heavy artillery attack on Muttur and then moved in, gaining control of some parts of the town. The military retaliated, and reestablished full control over the town by August 5, killing over 150 LTTE cadres in heavy fighting.Soon afterwards, 17 persons working for the International French charity Action Against Hunger
Action Against Hunger
Action Against Hunger is an international humanitarian organization with a focus on ending world hunger. Action Against Hunger specializes in responding to emergency situations of war, conflict, and natural disaster...
(ACF) in Mooduthara (Muthur), were found executed
2006 Trincomalee massacre of NGO workers
The 2006 Trincomalee massacre of NGO workers, also known as the Muttur massacre, took place on August 4 or 5, 2006, when 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger were shot at close range in the city of Muttur, Sri Lanka, close to Trincomalee...
. They were found lying face down on the floor of their office, with bullet wounds, still wearing their clearly marked T-shirts indicating they were international humanitarian workers. The murders prompted widespread international condemnation. The SLMM claimed that the government was behind the attack, but the government denied the allegation calling it "pathetic and biased", and stated that the SLMM had "no right to make such a statement because they are not professionals in autopsy or post-mortem." An official investigation launched by the government with the aid of international forensic experts is currently ongoing.
Meanwhile, in the north of the country, some of the bloodiest fighting since 2001 took place after the LTTE launched massive attacks on Sri Lanka Army defence lines in the Jaffna peninsula on August 11. The LTTE used a force of 400 to 500 fighters in the attacks which consisted of land and amphibious assaults, and also fired a barrage of artillery at government positions, including the key military airbase at Paluyaala (Palaly). Initially, the Tigers broke through army defense lines around Muhamalai (Mahakanda), and advanced further north, but they were halted after 10 hours of fierce fighting. Isolated battles continued over the next few days, but the LTTE was forced to give up its offensive due to heavy casualties. The LTTE is estimated to have lost over 250 cadres in the operation, while 90 Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors were also killed.
Chencholai air strike
As ground battles were ongoing in the North and the East of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Air Force carried out an air strike against a facility in the rebel held Mullaitivu area, killing a number of Tamil girls. Although the LTTE claimed 61 girls were killed, the SLMM stated they were able to count just 19 bodies. The government stated that it was an LTTE training facility and that the children were LTTE child soldiers, although the LTTE claimed the victims were schoolgirls attending a course on first aid at an orphanage.Attack on the Pakistani High Commissioner
On the same day, a convoy carrying the PakistanPakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i High Commissioner
High Commissioner
High Commissioner is the title of various high-ranking, special executive positions held by a commission of appointment.The English term is also used to render various equivalent titles in other languages.-Bilateral diplomacy:...
to Sri Lanka Bashir Wali Mohamed was attacked by a claymore antipersonnel mine
M18A1 Claymore Antipersonnel Mine
The M18A1 Claymore is a directional anti-personnel mine used by the U.S. military. It was named after the large Scottish sword by its inventor, Norman A. MacLeod...
concealed within an auto rickshaw
Auto rickshaw
An auto rickshaw or three-wheeler is a usually three-wheeled cabin cycle for private use and as a vehicle for hire. It is a motorized version of the traditional pulled rickshaw or cycle rickshaw...
. The High Commissioner escaped unhurt, but seven people were killed and a further seventeen injured in the blast. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Sri Lankan government blamed the LTTE. The Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i High Commissioner
High Commissioner
High Commissioner is the title of various high-ranking, special executive positions held by a commission of appointment.The English term is also used to render various equivalent titles in other languages.-Bilateral diplomacy:...
, Bashir Wali Mohamed, claimed that India was strongly believed to have carried it out, in order to intimidate Pakistan, which is one of the main suppliers of military equipment to the Sri Lankan government. Pakistan had promised one shipload of the wherewithal every 10 days in coming months, it was Pakistan’s assurance of solid support which prompted Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse to publicly state that Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the LTTE, would be liberated by the end of December.
Fall of Sampur
Since the resumption of violence, concerns were mounting among the military establishment that the strategically crucial Sri Lanka Navy base in Trincomalee was under grave threat from LTTE gun positions located in and around Sampur, which lies across the Koddiyar Bay from Trincomalee. Artillery fired from LTTE bases in the area could potentially cripple the naval base, bringing it to a complete standstill and therefore cutting the only military supply chain to Jaffna. All movements of naval vessels were also under the constant surveillance of the LTTE. These fears were backed up by a United States military advisory team which visited the island in 2005.Following the clashes in Mavil Aru (Mavil Oya) and Muttur (Mooduthara), the LTTE had intensified attacks targeting the naval base in Trincomalee (Gokanna), and in a speech on August 21, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse made clear the government intentions were to neutralize the LTTE threat from Sampur. On August 28, the Sri Lankan military launched an assault to retake the LTTE camps in Sampur and the adjoining Kaddaiparichchan (Gaeta-bara-hena)and Thoppur (Thupapura) areas. This led the LTTE to declare that if the offensive continued, the ceasefire would be officially over.
After steady progress, Sri Lankan security forces led by Brigade Commander Sarath Wijesinghe re-captured Sampur (Somapura) from the LTTE on September 4, and began to establish military bases there, as the LTTE admitted defeat and stated their cadres "withdrew" from the strategically important town. It marked the first significant territorial change of hands since the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 2002. The Sri Lankan Military estimated that 33 personnel were killed in the offensive, along with over 200 LTTE cadres.
LTTE retaliation and further peace talks
The LTTE struck back in October. First, they killed nearly 130 soldiers in a fierce battle at Muhamalai (Mahakanda), the crossing-point between government and LTTE controlled area in the north of the country. Just days later, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber struck a naval convoy in Habaraba, in the center of the country killing about 100 sailors who were returning home on leave. It was the deadliest suicide attack in the history of the conflict.Two days later, LTTE Sea Tiger cadres launched an attack against the Dakshina naval base in the southern port city of Galle
Galle
Galle is a city situated on the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka, 119 km from Colombo. Galle is the capital city of Southern Province of Sri Lanka and it lies in Galle District....
. It was the farthest south any major LTTE attack had taken place, and involved 15 LTTE cadres who arrived in five suicide boats. The attack was repulsed by the government, and the damage to the naval base was minimum. All 15 LTTE suicide cadres are believed to have died in the attack, along with one Sri Lanka Navy sailor.
Despite these incidents, both parties agreed to unconditionally attend peace talks in Geneva on October 28–29. However the peace talks broke down due to disagreements over the reopening of the key A9 highway, which is the link between Jaffna and government controlled areas in the south. While the LTTE wanted the highway, which was closed following fierce battles in August, to be reopened, the government refused, stating the LTTE would use it to collect tax from people passing through and would use it to launch further offensives against government troops.
Following the dawn of the new year, suspected LTTE cadres carried out two bus bombings in the south of the country, killing 21 civilians. News reports stated that the attacks bore all the hallmarks of an LTTE attack. The Sri Lankan government condemned the attacks and blamed the LTTE for carrying them out, although the LTTE denied any involvement. Iqbal Athas, an analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly commented that the LTTE's targeting of civilians was a cause for concern, and that further attacks against civilians could not be ruled out. Other analysts too expressed fears that LTTE attacks, which had largely been confined to military and political targets during the ceasefire period, may now increasingly target civilians as in earlier stages of a conflict.
Government offensive in the East
In December 2006, the Commander of the Army and other senior government officials expressed their plans to initially drive the LTTE out of the Eastern ProvinceEastern Province, Sri Lanka
The Eastern Province is one of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but they didn't have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Between 1988 and 2006 the province was...
of Sri Lanka, and then use the full strength of the military to defeat the LTTE in the North of the country. Among the reasons cited by the military for the offensives in the East were the need to "free the civilians in the area from the LTTE", who the military stated was firing artillery towards civilian settlements and were using 35,000 people as human shields. These claims were later backed by the civilians who told reporters that they were held by force by the Tamil Tigers. On November 7, 2006, in the midst of conflicting claims over 45 Tamil civilians were killed in what is known as the Vaharai bombing
Vaharai Bombing
The Vaharai bombing is a disputed event in the Sri Lankan civil war. It occurred on November 7, 2006 when, according to survivors of the incident interviewed by Reuters, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fired artillery at Sri Lankan military personnel from near a school where minority Sri...
.
Subsequently, the Army began an offensive against the LTTE on December 8, 2006, in the Batticoloa district with the objective of taking Vakarai
Vakarai
The Vakarai is an internationally distributed Lithuanian-American newspaper. The Vakarai is published in Chicago with its headquarters in suburban Downers Grove. It is the largest Lithuanian-American newspaper and is read not only in the United States, but in Canada and Europe as well...
, the principle stronghold of the LTTE in the East, but temporarily aborted it after a week of fighting due to the large number of civilians in the area and the difficulty in conducting combat operations due to the ongoing Monsoon
Monsoon
Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...
rain. Over the next few weeks, an estimated 20,000 civilians fled from Vaakare to Government controlled areas fearing the imminent assault. The Army launched a new offensive in mid January, and Vaakarr fell to the advancing troops on January 19, 2007. While the offensive in the East was ongoing, the LTTE and others accused the government of murdering 15 civilians in the Padahuthurai bombing
Padahuthurai bombing
The Padahuthurai bombing or Illuppaikadavai bombing happened on January 2, 2007 when the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed what they claimed to be rebel LTTE naval base in Illuppaikadavai in Northern Sri Lanka...
on January 2, 2007, when the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed what they claimed to be rebel LTTE naval base in Illuppaikadavai in Northern Sri Lanka.
The Army launched assaults from three different directions, and the LTTE and Defence Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella announced that "The people of Vaakare have been liberated from the clutches of the terrorists". The loss of Vaakare (Vakarai) has been predicted to cut off supply routes of the northern Tigers to their cadres in the East, thus weakening the Tigers' already diminishing grip on the East.
As the military offensive was ongoing, the LTTE continued to carry out attacks against civilians in government held territory. On April 1, 2007, the Sri Lankan military accused the LTTE of killing six Sinhalese tsunami aid workers in the Eastern district of Batticaloa. The next day, suspected LTTE cadres set off a bomb aboard a civilian bus in Ampara which killed seventeen people, including three children.
Troops mostly operating in small groups of Special Forces and Commando units began a new operation in February to clear the last remaining LTTE cadres from the Eastern Province. As part of the operation, troops captured the key LTTE base in Gokatugolla (Kokkadicholai) on March 28, and the strategic A5 highway on April 12, bringing the entire highway under government control for the first time in 15 years. This meant the LTTE's presence in the East was reduced to a 140 square kilometer pocket of jungle land in the Thoppigala area north-west of Madakalapuva (Batticaloa). The offensive had left nine soldiers dead along with 184 Tiger cadres, with no civilian casualties, according to military estimates.
Government offensive in the North. Targeting LTTE leadership
Sporadic fighting in the North had been going on for months, but the intensity of the clashes increased after September 2007. During clashes in the Forward Defence Lines, separating their forces, both sides exchanged heavy artillery fire, after which military incursions followed.By December 22, 2007, the LTTE defences at Uyilankulama and Thampanai were lost to advancing troops of the Sri Lanka Army.
On December 29, 2007, the Army overran the LTTE stronghold at Parappakandal, in Mannar District
Mannar District
Mannar district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Mannar, Sri Lanka...
.
In an interview with the Sunday Observer the Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said that the Army had occupied the LTTE's Forward Defence Lines and surrounded the Wanni LTTE bases from all directions. He also said that there were around 3,000 Tigers remaining and that the military intended to annihilate them within the first six months of the next year.
A day later there were less optimistic statements by Army, Air Force and Navy Commanders. The Army was to face an estimated 5,000 Tiger cadres in the Wanni. The Commander of the Army intended to shift the current battles in the Forward Defence Lines to a decisive phase in August 2008. In the Commanders' view, it was quite possible to defeat the LTTE in 2008.
The military of Sri Lanka claimed that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
, was seriously injured during air strikes carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force on a bunker complex in Jayanthinagar on November 26, 2007. Earlier, on November 2, 2007, S. P. Thamilselvan
S. P. Thamilselvan
Suppayya Paramu Thamilselvan, commonly known as S. P. Tamilselvan, , was the leader of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an organisation fighting for a separate state for the ethnic Tamil minority in northern Sri Lanka from majority Sinhalese govt...
, who was the head of the rebels' political wing, was killed during another government air raid. The Sri Lanka Air Force openly vowed to destroy the entire leadership of the LTTE. On January 5, 2008, Colonel Charles, Head of LTTE Military Intelligence, was killed in a claymore mine ambush by a suspected Sri Lanka Army Deep Penetration Unit, according to a pro-LTTE website.
Abrogation of ceasefire agreement
Defense secretary Gotabhaya RajapaksaGotabhaya Rajapaksa
Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, RWP, RSP, psc, GR is a retired officer of the Sri Lanka Army and the current Defence Secretary of Sri Lanka. After serving through the early parts of the country's civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels, he retired from the Army in 1992...
urged the government to abandon the ceasefire agreement on December 29, 2007, and on January 2, 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially did so. Between February 2002 to May 2007, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was established on 22 February 2002 under the terms of a ceasefire agreement signed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as a body that would monitor the ceasefire and enquire into reported violations of the ceasefire agreement...
had documented 3,830 ceasefire violations by the LTTE, with respect to 351 by the security forces. From May 2007, the SLMM ceased making determinations on ceasefire violations. Thus the government stated there was no need for a ceasefire anymore. Donor countries such as the United States, Canada, and Norway, as well as India, The LTTE formally responded that since the government had unilaterally withdrawn from the ceasefire agreement without any justification and that they were prepared to continue to honour the agreement, the international community ought to immediately remove the bans it had placed on the LTTE.
The government then attempted to open a third front along the Muhamalai Forward Defence Line
Muhamalai Forward Defence Line
The Muhamalai Forward Defence Line was the Army Defence Line separating the Sri Lankan Army and LTTE militia in North Central Kilinochchi from South Central Jaffna. The distance between the first line of defences ranges from 200 to 600 meters...
. After an initial setback on April 23, the Sri Lankan Army advanced rapidly, capturing the town of Adampan on May 9, Vidattaltivu
Vidattaltivu
Vidattaltivu or Vidaththaltheevu is a coastal town in the Mannar District of northwest Sri Lanka. Vidattaltivu is the biggest town situated on Sri Lanka's North-Western coast and was the major base of the Sea Tigers until recently...
on July 16, and Iluppaikkadavai on July 20.
On July 21, 2008, the LTTE announced that it would be declaring a unilateral ceasefire from July 28 to August 4, to coincide with the 15th summit of the heads of state of SAARC to be held in Colombo. However, the government of Sri Lanka dismissed the LTTE's offer as needless and treacherous.
Significant military gains by the government
On August 2, 2008, Vellankulam town, the LTTE's last stronghold in Mannar DistrictMannar District
Mannar district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Mannar, Sri Lanka...
, fell to the advancing SLA troops, completing the eight-month effort to recapture the district. The Army followed this up by taking control of Mallavi
Mallavi
Mallavi is a town in the Mullaitivu District, Sri Lanka. It is located about from Mankulam & from Thunukkai. It has a population of about 5,000 and a crude education and heathcare system....
on September 2, following weeks of heavy military confrontation. The LTTE countered with a surprise attack on the Vavuniya
Vavuniya
Vavuniya is a town in northern Sri Lanka. This town is situated in the Northern Province. Vavuniya was often referred to as the gateway to Vanni....
air base on September 9, in which both sides claimed victory.
From Mannar, the Army had entered Kilinochchi District
Kilinochchi District
Kilinochchi district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Kilinochchi town...
, the last stronghold of the LTTE, at the end of July, with the intention of taking Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi
Kilinochchi is a city in the Kilinochchi District, part of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some south-east of Jaffna...
before the end of the year. On October 3, 2008, a UN aid convoy managed to unload all its cargo in Kilinochchi District and described Kilinochchi town as having been nearly abandoned, but the LTTE were able to kill retired Major General Janaka Perera
Janaka Perera
Major General Janaka Perera, RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, VSP, rcds, psc, CR was a Sri Lankan General and politician. He served as the Chief of Staff of the Sri Lanka Army and is considered one of the most distinguished generals in Sri Lankan history. After retiring from the army he served as a Sri Lankan...
along with 26 other victims in a suicide blast on October 6.
On October 17, 2008, SLA troops cut off the Mannar-Poonaryn (A-32) road north of Nachchikuda, the main remaining Sea Tiger stronghold on the northwestern coast of the island, thus effectively encircling it. They began their assault on October 28 and captured it the next day.
After that the Army Task Force 1 continued their advance towards Pooneryn and captured Kiranchchi, Palavi, Veravil, Valaipadu and Devil's Point. On November 15, 2008, troops of the Army Task Force 1 entered the strategically important Tamil Tiger stronghold of Pooneryn
Pooneryn
Pooneryn is a strategically important village in the northern province of Sri Lanka situated just below the Jaffna Peninsula. Built in the Pooneryn area of north portion of the island first by the Portuguese to protect its possessions in Jaffna, it was expanded by the Dutch till in 1770 it was...
. Simultaneously, the newly created Army Task Force 3 was introduced into the area of Mankulam with the objective of engaging the LTTE cadres in a new battlefront towards the east of the Jaffna–Kandy (A-9) road. SLA troops captured Mankulam
Mankulam
Mankulam is a village in Idukki district in the Indian state of Kerala. The village is geographically located 32 KM from Adimaly, Idukki, Kerala...
and the surrounding area on November 17, 2008.
Meanwhile, the situation of more than 200,000 civilians who had been displaced in the latest round of fighting was turning into a humanitarian disaster; however, due to a number of reasons including doubts regarding the sincerity of the LTTE's negotiations, neither Western governments nor India intervened to broker a new ceasefire.
Fall of Kilinochchi and subsequent events
The Sri Lankan Army began the attack on Kilinochchi on November 23, 2008. Troops were attacking rebels' defences from three directions. However, the LTTE offered a stiff resistance, and the prolonged attack resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.Not until January 1, 2009, were SLA troops able to capture Paranthan
Paranthan
Paranthan is a town in Kilinochchi District, Sri Lanka. It is located about 5 km from district capital Kilinochchi.-Creation :The city of Paranthan was established in 1936 as part of a colonization project that sought to ease overpopulation and unemployment in Jaffna..-See...
, located to the north of Kilinochchi along the A-9 route. This isolated the southern periphery of the Elephant Pass LTTE foothold and also exposed the LTTE's main fortification at Kilinochchi. This made the capture of Kilinochchi, which the rebels had used for over a decade as their de facto administrative capital, far simpler, and they were able to accomplish this on January 2. The loss of Killinochchi caused a substantial dent in the LTTE's image as a capable, ruthless terrorist group, and observers forecasted the LTTE was likely to collapse before long under unbearable military pressure on multiple fronts.
The Tigers quickly abandoned their positions on the Jaffna peninsula to make a last stand in the jungles of Mullaitivu
Mullaitivu
Mullaitivu is a small town on the north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka. It is the capital of Mullaitivu District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. A largely fishing settlement, the town in the early 20th century grew as an anchoring harbour of the small sailing vessels transporting goods between...
, their last main base. The entire Jaffna peninsula was captured by the Sri Lanka Army by January 14, 2009. However, they were unable to hold out for long, and on January 25, SLA troops captured Mullaitivu. The last Sea Tiger base in Chalai was next to fall on February 5, reducing the territory under rebel control to less than some 200 km2.
This stage of the war was marked by increased brutality against civilians and rapidly mounting civilian casualties. On February 19, 2009, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
issued a report accusing the Sri Lankan army of "slaughtering" the civilians during indiscriminate artillery attacks (including repeated shelling of hospitals) and calling on the Sri Lankan government to end its policy of "detaining displaced persons" in military-controlled internment camps. Human Rights Watch also urged the Tamil Tigers to permit trapped civilians to leave the war zone and to "stop shooting at those who try to flee". The UN was also concerned over the condition of internally displaced persons and estimated that some 200,000 people were being squeezed into a narrow 14 square kilometre patch of land on the coast in Vanni, which the government had declared the 'no-fire zone'.
On February 20, 2009, two LTTE planes on a suicide mission
2009 suicide air raid on Colombo
The 2009 suicide air raid on Colombo was an unsuccessful kamikaze style suicide attack launched by the air wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on February 20, 2009, targeting military locations in and around Colombo, Sri Lanka...
attacked the Sri Lankan capital Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
, killing 2 and wounding 45, but both planes were shot down by the Sri Lankan Air Force
Sri Lankan Air Force
The Sri Lanka Air Force is the air arm and the youngest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. It was founded in 1951 as the Royal Ceylon Air Force with the assistance of the Royal Air Force . The SLAF played a major role throughout the Sri Lankan Civil War...
before they could damage the intended targets which were the Army Headquarters and the main Air Force base.
By late March, the Tamil Tigers controlled only one square kilometre outside the no-fire zone. down from about 15,000 km2 a mere three years previous. Political pressure was placed on Mahinda Rajapaksa to find a political solution to the conflict and he called for a meeting with parliamentarians allied with the Tigers, but they refused until the government resolved the humanitarian crisis faced by civilians trapped in the fighting.
Fighting in the 'no-fire zone'
SLA troops were able to push the Tamil Tigers into the no-fire zone set up for civilians. The LTTE then built a 3 kilometres (2 mi) long bundBunding
Bunding, also called a bund wall, is the area within a structure designed to prevent inundation or breaches of various types.-Liquid containment:...
in the no-fire zone, trapping over 30,000 civilians, but the SLA was able to destroy this.
On April 21, Sri Lankan troops launched an assault, targeting LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran. At the same time, a mass Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' was underway. The next day, two senior LTTE members (LTTE media co-ordinator Velayuthan Thayanithi, alias Daya Master, and a top interpreter Kumar Pancharathnam, alias George) surrendered to the advancing Sri Lankan army. This came as "a rude shock" and a major setback for the rebel leadership. When asked why they had surrendered, both men stressed that rebels were shooting at the civilians and preventing them from escaping from the 'no-fire zone' to safety in government-controlled areas. They also alleged that the LTTE were still abducting and conscripting children as young as 14 years old, and would fire at anyone who tried to resist.
By April 25, the area under the LTTE was reduced to 10 km2. While the Tamil exodus from the 'no-fire zone' continued, the UN estimated that around 6,500 civilians may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded between January 2009 and April 2009. The BBC reported that the land recaptured by the army from the rebels was totally depopulated and utterly devastated.
As fighting continued, a group of independent United Nations experts called on the Human Rights Council to urgently set up an international inquiry to address the “critical” situation in Sri Lanka amid fighting between the Army and Tamil rebels. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA
Ocha
Ocha is a genus of moth in the family Lasiocampidae....
), over 196,000 people fled the conflict zone, a shrinking pocket of land on the north-east coastline, where clashes continued between government troops and the LTTE, while at least 50,000 people were still trapped there. A UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, said more than 100 children died during the "large-scale killing of civilians" and described the situation in northern Sri Lanka as a "bloodbath". UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before going on to be Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he...
said he was appalled at the killing of hundreds of Sri Lankan civilians caught in the middle of hostilities between the army and separatist Tamil rebels over the weekend. He voiced deep concern over the continued use of heavy weapons in the conflict zone, but also stressed that the “reckless disrespect shown by the LTTE for the safety of civilians has led to thousands of people remaining trapped in the area”.
On May 16, 2009, Sri Lankan troops broke through LTTE defences and captured the last section of coastline held by Tamil Tiger rebels. The army reported it was set to "clear" remaining rebel-held land within days. Later the military claimed, allegedly citing intercepted LTTE communication, that rebels were preparing for a mass suicide
Mass suicide
- Examples :Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious or cultic settings. Defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured. Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide unconnected to cults or war that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of frustrated people...
after being effectively cut-off of escape routes. Some rebels have been reported to be blowing themselves up.
As many as 20,000 civilians may have been killed in the no-fire zone, both as a result of the Tigers as well as shelling by the Sri Lankan military, with up to 1,000 killed each day in the final two weeks of the war. However, the UN says it has no confirmed estimates of civilian casualties, with one UN officially calling it a "dangerous extrapolation", and the Sri Lankan government disputed the number. A number of deaths were reported by five doctors who worked in the no-fire zone, but they recanted their initial reports, stating that the casualty figures they released were exaggerated and were handed to them by the LTTE. They further stated that between January 2009 and the end of the war in May 2009 some 600–700 civilians were killed and twice that number had been injured. This contradicts the figures issued by international aid agencies: the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
says that 6,500 were killed between late January and early April; and the Red Cross evacuated 14,000 sick and injured people between mid-February and mid-May.
May 16: Sri Lanka declares victory
Addressing the G11Group of Eleven
Group of Eleven is a forum, constituted by mostly developing countries aimed at easing their debt burden , narrowing the income gap with rich countries and lifting millions of people out of poverty.-Objective:...
summit in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, President
President of Sri Lanka
The President of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is the elected head of state and the head of government. The President is a dominant political figure in Sri Lanka. The office was created in 1978 but has grown so powerful there have been calls to restrict or even eliminate its power...
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Percy Mahendra "Mahinda" Rajapaksa ; ; born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6,...
stated "my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily". Sri Lankan Commander of the Army
Commander of the Army (Sri Lanka)
Commander of the Army is the title of the professional head of the Sri Lanka Army. The current Commander of the Army is Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya...
Sarath Fonseka
Sarath Fonseka
Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka, known as Sarath Fonseka is a former commander and General of the Sri Lanka Army and a former candidate for President of Sri Lanka. As Commander of the Army, he played an instrumental role in ending the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the...
also declared victory over LTTE. Sri Lankan troops raced to clear the last LTTE pockets of resistance. As the last LTTE strongpoints crumbled, Sri Lankan troops killed 70 rebels attempting to escape by boat. The whereabouts of LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and other major rebel leaders were not certain.
May 17: Tigers admit defeat
The LTTE finally admitted defeat on May 17, 2009, with the rebels' chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, stating on the website that "This battle has reached its bitter end ... We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer".May 18: First claim of Prabhakaran's death
The Sri Lankan armed forces claimed that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai PrabhakaranVelupillai Prabhakaran
Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...
, was killed in the morning of May 18, 2009 while he was trying to flee the conflict zone in an ambulance. The announcement on state television came shortly after the military said it had surrounded Prabhakaran in a tiny patch of jungle in the north-east. The Daily Telegraph wrote that, according to Sri Lankan TV, Prabhakaran was "... killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack as he tried to escape the war zone in an Ambulance with his closest aides. Colonel Soosai
Colonel Soosai
Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan , also known by his nom de guerre, Colonel Soosai, was the head of the Sea Tigers, the naval wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.- Personal life :...
, the leader of his "Sea Tigers
Sea Tigers
The Sea Tigers was the naval wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War. It was founded in 1984. The Sea Tigers had a number of small but effective suicide bomber vessels. During its existence it had gained a reputation as a capable adversary for the Sri Lankan Navy...
" navy, and Pottu Amman
Pottu Amman
Shanmugalingam Sivashankar Shanmugalingam Sivashankar Shanmugalingam Sivashankar (Tamil: சன்முகலிங்கம் சிவசங்கரன், also known as Pottu Amman (Tamil: பொட்டு அம்மான் is a Sri Lankan Tamil militant...
, his intelligence chief were also killed in the attack."
The head of the Sri Lankan army, General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Sarath Fonseka
Sarath Fonseka
Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka, known as Sarath Fonseka is a former commander and General of the Sri Lanka Army and a former candidate for President of Sri Lanka. As Commander of the Army, he played an instrumental role in ending the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the...
, said the military had defeated the rebels and "liberated the entire country". Military spokesman Brigadier
Brigadier
Brigadier is a senior military rank, the meaning of which is somewhat different in different military services. The brigadier rank is generally superior to the rank of colonel, and subordinate to major general....
Udaya Nanayakkara
Udaya Nanayakkara
Major General V. Udaya B. Nanayakkara, USP, Hdmc, SLE is a Sri Lankan general and a military engineer, who is the current Chief Field Engineer of the Sri Lanka Army, formerBrigade Commander 55-2 "Muhamale" Brigade and 21-4 "Paryanakulam " Brigade...
stated 250 Tamil Tigers, who were hiding and fighting from within the no fire zone, were killed overnight.
May 19: President addresses the Parliament and Prabhakaran is dead
At 9:00 a.m. on 19 May 2009 PresidentPresident of Sri Lanka
The President of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is the elected head of state and the head of government. The President is a dominant political figure in Sri Lanka. The office was created in 1978 but has grown so powerful there have been calls to restrict or even eliminate its power...
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Percy Mahendra "Mahinda" Rajapaksa ; ; born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6,...
delivered a victory address to the Parliament
Parliament of Sri Lanka
The Parliament of Sri Lanka is the 225-member unicameral legislature of Sri Lanka. The members of Parliament are elected by proportional representation for six-year terms, with universal suffrage. Parliament reserves the power to make all laws...
and declared that Sri Lanka is liberated from terrorism. Around 9:30 a.m. troops attached to Task Force VIII of Sri Lanka Army, reported to its commander, Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
G.V. Ravipriya that a body similar to Velupillai Prabhakaran has been found among the mangroves in Nandikadal lagoon. It was identified by the officer. At 12:15 p.m. Army Commander Sarath Fonseka
Sarath Fonseka
Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka, known as Sarath Fonseka is a former commander and General of the Sri Lanka Army and a former candidate for President of Sri Lanka. As Commander of the Army, he played an instrumental role in ending the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the...
officially announced Prabhakaran's death, through the State television ITN
Independent Television Network
Independent Television Network Limited is a Sri Lankan state governed television and radio broadcaster located in Wickramasinhapura, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka. ITN, a Shrama Abhimani Award winner...
. At around 1:00 p.m. his body was shown in Swarnavahini
Swarnavahini
Swarnavahini, which means "Golden Channel" in Sinhala is a leading Sri Lankan news and entertainment television channel. Its main theme is "Sri Lankeeya Abhimanaya" which means "Sri Lankan Pride." It was launched on the 16th of March 1997, alongside its sister channel ETV, which mainly broadcasts...
for the first time. Prabakaran's identity was confirmed by Karuna Amman, his former confidant, and through DNA testing against his son's genetic material who had been killed earlier by the Sri Lanka Military. However, LTTE Chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan on the same day claimed that "Our beloved leader is alive and safe." But on 24 May 2009, he admitted the death of Prabhakaran, retracting the previos statement.
Sri Lanka
United National PartyUnited National Party
The United National Party, often referred to as the UNP ), , is a political party in Sri Lanka. It currently is the main opposition party in Sri Lanka and is headed by Ranil Wickremesinghe...
leader Ranil Wickremasinghe
Ranil Wickremasinghe
Ranil Shriyan Wickremesinghe , MP, is a Sri Lankan politician and current Leader of the Opposition in the Sri Lankan parliament. He was Prime Minister of Sri Lanka twice, from May 7, 1993 to August 19, 1994 and from December 9, 2001 to April 6, 2004...
, through a telephone call, congratulated President Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Percy Mahendra "Mahinda" Rajapaksa ; ; born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6,...
and the state's security forces on 18 May 2009 for their victory over the LTTE. In a press release issued that day, Roman Catholic Archbishop
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Colombo
The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Colombo is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Sri Lanka. It was erected as the Diocese of Ceylon from Diocese of Cochin by Pope Gregory XVI on December 3, 1834, and renamed as the Diocese of Colombo on February 17,...
Oswald Gomis
Oswald Gomis
Oswald Thomas Colman Gomis is the former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Colombo and he is the current Chancellor of the University of Colombo. Msgr. Gomis' previous post was as the Bishop of Anuradhapura having been appointed in 1996. He was also the Auxiliary Bishop of Colombo from 1968 to 1996...
said:
With the announced end of the war, Sri Lanka's stock exchange
Colombo Stock Exchange
The Colombo Stock Exchange is the main stock exchange in Sri Lanka. It is one of the most modern exchanges in South Asia, providing a fully automated trading platform...
registered its sixth highest percentage gain ever.
International organisations
United Nations – At a press conference in GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
on 19 May 2009, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before going on to be Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he...
said, "I am relieved by the conclusion of the military operation, but I am deeply troubled by the loss of so many civilian lives. The task now facing the people of Sri Lanka is immense and requires all hands. It is most important that every effort be undertaken to begin a process of healing and national reconciliation. I listened very carefully to what President Rajapaksa said in his address to Parliament today. The legitimate concerns and aspirations of the Tamil people and other minorities must be fully addressed." The Secretary General went on to announce his upcoming visit to the wartorn region.
European Union – The European CouncilEuropean Council
The European Council is an institution of the European Union. It comprises the heads of state or government of the EU member states, along with the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council, currently Herman Van Rompuy...
met in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
on 18 May 2009, during which it adopted a statement calling on "the Government of Sri Lanka urgently to proceed towards a comprehensive political process" and "the President of Sri Lanka to outline a clear process leading to a fully inclusive political solution, based on consent, equality and the rule of law". The Council stated that such moves are the only way toward long-term security, post-conflict reconstruction and prosperity in Sri Lanka. The statement concluded: "The EU continues to call for appropriate action by the United Nations Human Rights Council." The Times reported that EU member nations sold arms to the Sri Lankan government in spite of fears of human rights abuses.
Other countries
– Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence CannonLawrence Cannon
Lawrence Cannon, PC is a Canadian politician from Quebec and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former Quebec lieutenant. On October 30, 2008 he was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs...
stated "Canadians are very concerned about the aftermath of the military action in Sri Lanka and the appalling effect it has had on civilians. This terrible, decades-long war has inflicted untold devastation and heartbreak on Sri Lankans. The Government of Canada wishes to express its concerns about civilian casualties, and to convey its condolences to the people of Sri Lanka and those around the world who have lost friends and family members in this horrific conflict.
Canada urges the Government of Sri Lanka to begin to find a long-term political solution that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Sri Lanka. Canada is prepared to assist Sri Lankan efforts to find political reconciliation and a lasting peace."
– The Indian Ministry of External Affairs
Ministry of External Affairs (India)
The Ministry of External Affairs is the foreign ministry of India. It is the Indian government agency responsible for the foreign relations of India. The Minister of External Affairs holds cabinet rank as a member of the Council of Ministers. The current minister is S M Krishna...
issued a statement on 18 May 2009 saying "In a telephone conversation with External Affairs Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee
Pranab Mukherjee
Pranab Kumar Mukherjee is the current Finance Minister of India and leader of the current Lok Sabha.Mukherjee is a senior member of the Cabinet Committees on Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Parliamentary Affairs, Political Affairs, Prices, Security, Unique Identification Authority of India,...
earlier today, the President of Sri Lanka confirmed that armed resistance by the LTTE has come to an end and that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead.
India will work with the people and Government of Sri Lanka to provide relief to those affected by the tragic conflict, and to rapidly rehabilitate all those who have been displaced, bringing their lives to normalcy as soon as possible.
It is our view that as the conventional conflict in Sri Lanka comes to an end, this is the moment when the root causes of conflict in Sri Lanka can be addressed. This would include political steps towards the effective devolution of power within the Sri Lankan Constitution so that Sri Lankans of all communities, including the Tamils, can feel at home and lead lives of dignity of their own free will."
– Foreign Minister
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Iran)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is an Iranian government ministry. The Minister for Foreign Affairs is the Cabinet member in charge....
of the Islamic Republic of Iran Manouchehr Mottaki
Manouchehr Mottaki
Manouchehr Mottaki is an Iranian politician and diplomat. He was the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Whilst technically appointed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is considered to be closer to more pragmatic conservative factions and during the 2005 presidential election, he was the campaign...
telephoned Foreign Minister
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is an appointment in the Cabinet of Sri Lanka. The post was created in 1978 when the former Ministry of External Affairs and Defence was separated into two ministries...
Rohitha Bogollagama
Rohitha Bogollagama
Chandrasekera Rohitha Bandara Bogollagama is a former Sri Lankan politician and was the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 28 January 2007 until he was defeated in the General Elections held on 08th of April 2010, losing his seat in parliament...
on 19 May 2009 to extend his warm congratulations to the President, the Foreign Minister and the Government of Sri Lanka on the success achieved by Sri Lanka in defeating LTTE terrorism.
"Iran has maintained close relations with Sri Lanka and has always condemned terrorism and, consistently upheld the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka". He states that he was speaking on behalf of the President of Iran who has conveyed his best wishes to Sri Lanka and will personally speak to the President of Sri Lanka
President of Sri Lanka
The President of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is the elected head of state and the head of government. The President is a dominant political figure in Sri Lanka. The office was created in 1978 but has grown so powerful there have been calls to restrict or even eliminate its power...
at a mutually convenient time. Iran has also offered assistance through the Red Crescent, for the emergency relief operations for the IDPs in the North.
– The Japanese premier's office released a statement of Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Japan
The is the head of government of Japan. He is appointed by the Emperor of Japan after being designated by the Diet from among its members, and must enjoy the confidence of the House of Representatives to remain in office...
Taro Aso
Taro Aso
was the 92nd Prime Minister of Japan serving from September 2008 to September 2009, and was defeated in the August 2009 election.He has served in the House of Representatives since 1979. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2007, and was Secretary-General of the LDP briefly in 2007 and...
's telephone conversation with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse. The statement said the Prime Minister "welcomed the end of the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam", and that "it is now important to help internally displaced people and their resettlement as well as to start showing improvement in the political process towards peace-building".
It also outlined that poverty was one of the factors that create fertile ground for terrorism and said he would like to see Sri Lanka build infrastructure, adding that Japan would support Sri Lanka's efforts as much as possible.
– Both President
President of the Maldives
The President of the Maldives is the Head of State and Head of Government and first citizen of the Republic of Maldives and the Supreme Commander of the Maldivian armed forces.The current President of the Republic of Maldives is Mohamed Nasheed....
Mohamed Nasheed
Mohamed Nasheed
Mohamed Nasheed is a Maldivian politician. He is the current President of the Maldives. He is the founder of the Maldivian Democratic Party and was its presidential candidate in the October 2008 presidential election, defeating long-time President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in a second round of voting...
and Vice-president
Vice President of Maldives
Vice President of the Maldives is the holder of a public office created by the Constitution of the Maldives.Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan is the first elected Vice President of the Republic of the Maldives, having been inaugurated on the 11th of November, 2008....
Mohammed Waheed Hassan
Mohammed Waheed Hassan
Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan is one of the leading political figures in The Republic of the Maldives and the current Vice President of Maldives, having been sworn into office on November 11, 2008 as the first ever elected Vice President...
congratulated the government and people of Sri Lanka for their tremendous success in effecting an end to the decades-old conflict in their country.
The President reaffirmed continued their support and solidarity with the government and people of Sri Lanka, as Sri Lanka celebrates as a unified nation. “I take this opportunity to express on behalf of the Government and the people of Maldives our sincerest best wishes to Your Excellency and the people of Sri Lanka”.
”This momentous occasion in Sri Lanka’s history will pave the way towards realising greater equality and justice for all Sri Lankans.”
– Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement "our thoughts go to all who have lost relatives and loved ones in the war. We must cooperate to aid the victims. People in the refugee camps must quickly be allowed to return home."
Store also said the situation in the refugee camps for internally displaced people must be improved, in line with demands made by the United Nations.
– Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, Nawabzada Malik Amad Khan
Nawabzada Malik Amad Khan
Nawabzada Malik Amad Khan, or simply Malik Amad Khan is the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and member of Majlis-e-Shoora since 2008. He is one of the youngest members of the Cabinet of Pakistan.-Early years:...
telephoned Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, Hussein A. Bhaila congratulating Sri Lanka's "great victory over terrorism".
The Pakistani State Minister stated that Pakistan has always been a steadfast friend of Sri Lanka and strongly supported the country's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and re-affirmed his government's continued cooperation with Sri Lanka in countering terrorism. He requested the Deputy Minister to convey his good wishes and felicitations to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama.
– A Department of Foreign Affairs press release, dated 22 May 2009: "welcomes the return of law and order in northern Sri Lanka and supports the Government of Sri Lanka’s search for a comprehensive, fair, and lasting political solution to the problems faced by its Tamil minority.
The Philippines hopes that a lasting political solution will be crafted in order that the Tamil minority share in the fruits of peace in their country."
– "The government of Russia has extended warmest congratulations to the president and the government of Sri Lanka on the success achieved by the island nation in defeating LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) terrorism," the Department of Government Information said in a statement.
Officials from Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said Russia has said that it supports the fight of the Sri Lankan government against terrorism and separatism.
Russia hoped that the end to the bloody armed conflict that lasted in Sri Lanka for more than a quarter century will be a guarantee of the establishment of an enduring peace, security and stability in the country.
– The South African government released a statement through Deputy International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ehrahim Ebrahim regarding the end of military operations in Sri Lanka.
“The South African government expresses grave regret at the manner in which the military offensive was conducted and urges the United Nations Human Rights Commission to urgently investigate possible violations of international human rights law and contraventions of the Geneva Convention.”, said Ebrahim. The statement also called for immediate humanitarian aid and international media access to the areas affected.
“The South African government has noted the conciliatory tone in the speech of President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 19 May 2009 and express our hope that the end of the military campaign will result in a peaceful dialogue with all minorities to address their long standing grievances. We will continue to support any efforts aimed at bringing about peace and reconciliation between the parties”
– The Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Singapore)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a ministry of the Government of Singapore responsible for conducting and managing diplomatic relations between Singapore and other countries. It is headed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the office currently held by K...
issued the following statement 29 May 2009 after Minister for Foreign Affairs
Minister for Foreign Affairs (Singapore)
The Minister for Foreign Affairs is head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the Cabinet of Singapore....
George Yeo
George Yeo
George Yeo Yong-Boon is a former politician from Singapore. A member of the governing People's Action Party , he served in the Cabinet from 1991 to 2011 as the Minister for Information and the Arts , Minister for Health , Minister for Trade and Industry and Minister for Foreign Affairs...
met Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is an appointment in the Cabinet of Sri Lanka. The post was created in 1978 when the former Ministry of External Affairs and Defence was separated into two ministries...
Rohitha Bogollagama
Rohitha Bogollagama
Chandrasekera Rohitha Bandara Bogollagama is a former Sri Lankan politician and was the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 28 January 2007 until he was defeated in the General Elections held on 08th of April 2010, losing his seat in parliament...
at the Shangri-La Dialogue
Shangri-La Dialogue
The IISS Asia Security Summit: The Shangri-La Dialogue is a "Track One" inter-governmental security forum held annually by an independent think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies which is attended by defense ministers, permanent heads of ministries and military chiefs of 28...
held in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
: "Singapore is relieved to see an end to the long-standing conflict in Sri Lanka. The conflict had taken a great toll on the country. Not only have tens of thousands of lives been lost, but hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians have also been displaced from their homes. The final cessation of military operations by the Sri Lankan Government provides a short window of opportunity to close a sad chapter of history and quickly begin a process of genuine national healing and reconciliation. A long term agreement taking into full consideration the interests of all communities within Sri Lanka must be forged and implemented to ensure a lasting peace."
George Yeo congratulated Rohitha Bogollagama and the Sri Lankan government over the victory of LTTE terrorists.
– In a press statement dated 19 May 2009, Switzerland's government welcomed the end of the armed conflict. However, Switzerland "regrets that international humanitarian law has been violated and appeals to all parties to comply with and to ensure respect for international regulations and obligations in all circumstances."
"Switzerland calls on all parties to refrain from incitement to hatred and to work towards reconciliation by means of unilateral or jointly agreed measures. All parties and groupings as well as members of the diaspora should work openly and in conjunction with international institutions to initiate a reconciliation process and a sustainable solution in the framework of a political dialogue."
– The president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Percy Mahendra "Mahinda" Rajapaksa ; ; born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6,...
, telephoned the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül
Abdullah Gül
Dr. Abdullah Gül, GCB is the 11th and current President of the Republic of Turkey, serving in that office since 28 August 2007. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002-03, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003-07....
. The conversation was released by the Turkish Presidency Media Center. The Sri Lankan president informed Gül about the recent achievements in the fight against terrorism. President Gül stated that he was pleased with the recent events and Turkey was ready to provide humanitarian aid, in the telephone conversation.
– Foreign Secretary
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a senior member of Her Majesty's Government heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and regarded as one of the Great Offices of State...
David Miliband
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband...
made the following written statement to the House of Commons on 19 May 2009: "On 19 May, the Sri Lankan President formally announced that on 18 May military forces had retaken all the territory once held by the LTTE and that they had captured or killed the senior leadership of that organisation. Many Sri Lankans of all communities, Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim, will be relieved that the long and brutal conflict may at last be over. Sri Lanka has before it an historic opportunity to resolve the underlying causes of the conflict and ensure a lasting peace. We must continue to work with Sri Lanka’s Government and all its communities to ensure that this opportunity is taken and that it leads to a sustainable end to the conflict. The continuing focus of this Government’s activity over the coming days and weeks, will be to work with international partners in encouraging the Sri Lankan Government to devote as much energy to winning the peace as it did to winning the war."
Lord Malloch Brown, the Minister of State Foreign and Commonwealth office in UK said, in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
, "Indeed, in our initial contacts with the president, we congratulated him on finishing of a brutal 26-year war, which was instigated by the Tamil Tigers-a terrorist group" replying to Lord Naseby who raised the matter in the House of Lords. Agreeing with Lord Naseby, Lord Malloch Brown said, "the political solution to this must come from inside Sri Lanka from a process set up and led by President Rajapaksa."
Speaking further, Brown said, "But we also made it extremely clear to him that, whether or not that victory would be seen as the opening of a new and happier chapter in Sri Lanka depended on whether he could now go that next step and show the statesmanship to find a political as well as humanitarian solution to this community's issues."
He further said, "On 17 May, the Prime Minister announced an additional œ5 million in humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka, taking the total to œ12.5 million since September 2008." Speaking before him Lord Naseby said, "My Lords, have Her Majesty's Government congratulated the Sri Lankan Government on defeating the Tamil Tigers and bringing peace to the country? On the international front, is it Her Majesty's Government's policy primarily to tackle the resettlement of the 250,000 Tamils and the 100,000 Muslims who were ethnically cleansed from Jaffna, or is it to continue to lecture that there should be a constitutional settlement, which really rests with the Parliament of Sri Lanka?"
– At a press conference in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, on 18 May 2009, United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
spokesman Ian Kelly said: "The Department of State welcomes the fact that the fighting has ended, and we are relieved that the immense loss of life and killing of innocent civilians appears to be over. This is an opportunity for Sri Lanka to turn the page on its past and build a Sri Lanka rooted in democracy, tolerance, and respect for human rights. Now is the time for the government to engage the Tamils, Sinhalese, and other Sri Lankans to create a political arrangement that promotes and protects the rights of all Sri Lankans.
It is also vital for the government to provide for the needs of the 280,000 civilians now living in relief camps. Providing food, water, shelter, basic health care, and sanitation, as well as expediting their return to their homes should be a top priority for the government."
The Sri Lankan defence ministry said that US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Robert O. Blake, Jr.
Robert O. Blake, Jr.
Robert Orris Blake, Jr., is a career diplomat and current Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs and former United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. He is the son of Robert O. Blake, retired U.S...
, called Foreign Minister
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is an appointment in the Cabinet of Sri Lanka. The post was created in 1978 when the former Ministry of External Affairs and Defence was separated into two ministries...
Rohitha Bogollagama
Rohitha Bogollagama
Chandrasekera Rohitha Bandara Bogollagama is a former Sri Lankan politician and was the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 28 January 2007 until he was defeated in the General Elections held on 08th of April 2010, losing his seat in parliament...
on 18 May 2009 regarding humanitarian aid to displaced persons and reconciliation with the Tamil people.
– On 21 May 2009, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Le Dung released the following statement in response to journalist inquiries:
"Vietnam welcomes the recent victory of the Government and people of Sri Lanka. This victory will create favorable conditions for Sri Lanka to concentrate on the cause of national construction and development, contributing to peace, stability and development in the region."
Combat after May 18th 2009
- 19 May 2009 – 3 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army at Kachikudichchiaru, AmparaAmparaAmpara is a remote city on the East Coast of Sri Lanka, about 360 km from the capital city of Colombo. It belongs to the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. It was a part of the domain of Kavantissa and was then known as "Ambaragama", which over the years changed to Ambara to Ampara...
. - 20 May 2009 - 5 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army near Periyapillumalai area.
- 21 May 2009 - 10 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army in the Kadawana jungle area.
- 27 May 2009 - 11 LTTE cadre killed by the Sri Lankan Army at Kalavanchchikudi in the Batticaloa area. Five T-56 assault rifles, twenty claymore mines (15 kg each), two hand grenades, three anti-personnel mines and medical items were reported recovered by military sources.
- 5 June 2009 - Special Task Force (STF) personnel while conducting search and clear operation in Darampalawa area in AmparaAmparaAmpara is a remote city on the East Coast of Sri Lanka, about 360 km from the capital city of Colombo. It belongs to the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. It was a part of the domain of Kavantissa and was then known as "Ambaragama", which over the years changed to Ambara to Ampara...
confronted with a group of LTTE cadre and recovered two bodies along with numerous military items. - 5 August 2009 - Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the new leader of LTTE was arrested by a Sri Lankan military intelligence unit, with the collaboration of local authorities, in the Tune Hotel, Downtown Kuala LumpurKuala LumpurKuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
, Malaysia and brought into Sri Lanaka.
Cost of war
Casualties
The Sri Lankan civil war was very costly, killing an estimated 80,000–100,000 people. The deaths include 27,639 Tamil fighters, more than 23,327 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen, 1,155 Indian soldiers, and tens of thousands of civilians. Secretary of Defence Ministry Gotabhaya RajapaksaGotabhaya Rajapaksa
Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, RWP, RSP, psc, GR is a retired officer of the Sri Lanka Army and the current Defence Secretary of Sri Lanka. After serving through the early parts of the country's civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels, he retired from the Army in 1992...
said on an interview with state television that 23,790 Sri Lankan military personnel were killed since 1981 (it was not specified if police or other non-armed forces personnel were included in this particular figure). From the August 2006 recapture of the Mavil Aru reservoir until the formal declaration of the cessation of hostilities (on May 18), 6261 Sri Lankan soldiers were killed and 29,551 were wounded.
The Sri Lankan military estimates that up to 22,000 LTTE militants were killed in the last three years of the conflict.
The final five months of the civil war saw the heaviest civilian casualties. The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies as well civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January 2009, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April 2009. There are no official casualty figures after this period but estimates of the death toll for the final four months of the civil war (mid-January to mid-May) range from 15,000 to 20,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties were not recorded. A former UN official has claimed that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the civil war.
Economic cost
The total economic cost of the 26 year war is estimated at US$ 200 billion. This is approximately 5 times the GDP of Sri Lanka in 2009. Sri Lanka had spent US$ 5.5 billion only on Eelam War IV, which saw the end of LTTE. Government had spent Rs. 295 billion to develop the Northern ProvinceNorthern Province, Sri Lanka
The Northern Province is one of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but did not have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Between 1988 and 2006 the province was...
under the "Uthuru Wasanthaya" program after the end of war.
A political solution
After the complete military defeat of the LTTE, President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that the government is committed to a political solution, and for this purpose action would be taken based on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Pro-LTTE political party Tamil National AllianceTamil National Alliance
The Tamil National Alliance 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...
(TNA), also the largest political group representing Sri Lankan Tamil community, dropped its demand for a separate state
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
, in favour of a federal
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
solution. There are ongoing bilateral talks between President Rajapaksa's UPFA
United People's Freedom Alliance
The United People's Freedom Alliance is a political alliance in Sri Lanka. The current leader of the United People's Freedom Alliance is Mahinda Rajapaksa and Susil Premajayantha is the general secretary of UPFA.The alliance was formed by:...
government and the TNA, on a viable political solution and devolution of power.
However, in an interview to Headlines Today
Headlines Today
Headlines Today is a popular 24-hour English language television network that carries news, current affairs and business programming in India, the channel is sponsored by TV Today Network Ltd. which is a part of the well-known India Today Group...
, television channel from India Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka & brother of President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Percy Mahendra "Mahinda" Rajapaksa ; ; born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6,...
trashed "the political solution talk", asserting, among other things, that it was "simply irrelevant" because "we have ended this terrorism" in Sri Lanka.
Humanitarian Impact
Towards the end of the war, as Sri Lankan government forces advanced deeper into Tamil Tiger controlled areas, international concern grew for the fate of the 350,000 civilians trapped. On 21 January 2009, the Sri Lankan military declared a 32 square kilometers (12.4 mi) Safe Zone located northwest of Puthukkudiviruppu, between the A35 Highway and the Chalai Lagoon. Sri Lankan Air ForceSri Lankan Air Force
The Sri Lanka Air Force is the air arm and the youngest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. It was founded in 1951 as the Royal Ceylon Air Force with the assistance of the Royal Air Force . The SLAF played a major role throughout the Sri Lankan Civil War...
aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to relocate to the safe zone and wait until the army could move them into safer locations. The Sri Lankan military promised not to fire into the area. However, only small numbers of civilians actually crossed into the Safe Zone, and the Sri Lankan government, the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, and Human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
organizations accused the LTTE of preventing civilians from leaving. The fighting eventually caused civilians to flee the safe zone to a narrow strip of land between Nanthi Kadal
Nanthi Kadal
Nanthi Kadal is a lagoon in Mullaitivu District, north-east Sri Lanka. The English translation of Nanthi Kadal is "the sea of conches".The lagoon is fed by a number of small rivers, including Per Aru....
and the Indian Ocean. The Sri Lankan military declared a new 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi) Safe Zone northwest of Mullativu on February 12. Over the next three months, the Sri Lankan military repeatedly attacked the Safe Zone with aircraft and artillery to destroy the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers trapped there. The Sri Lankan government claimed that it was trying to hit Tamil Tiger positions, and claimed that these raids started on February 15 and ended on April 19, the day before the Army breached Tamil Tiger defenses, and civilians started to pour out. However, these attacks caused heavy damage. Thousands of civilians were killed or injured, and the Tamil Tigers reportedly held many as human shields. The final stages of the war created 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were transferred to camps in Vavuniya District
Vavuniya District
Vavuniya district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Vavuniya town...
and detained there against their will. This, together with the conditions inside the camps, has attracted much criticism from inside and outside Sri Lanka. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire, and internees attempting to escape were shot. The government has stated that it will release civilians from the camps once it completes a screening process to weed out Tamil Tigers hiding among civilians in the camps, as well as demining operations. On 7 May 2009 the Sri Lankan government announced plans to resettle 80% of the IDPs by the end of 2009. After the end of the civil war President Rajapaksa gave assurances to foreign diplomats that the bulk of the IDPs would be resettled in accordance with the 180 day plan. By 28 April 2011, 96% (372,000) of the IDPs had been released or returned to their places of origin, with 18,000 still living in the camps. The people awaiting resettlement are almost entirely (98%) from areas in Mullaitivu District
Mullaitivu District
Mullaitivu district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Mullaitivu town...
, which is heavily contaminated with landmines. In June 2011, government claimed that all former female LTTE combatants were released.
Detainees
The continuous defeats of the LTTE had made its cadres abandon the outfit in large numbers. With the end of the hostilities, 11,664 LTTE members, including over 500 child soldiers surrendered to the Sri Lankan military. Among them were 1,601 females. Government took action to rehabilitate these carders under a "National Action Plan for the Re-integration of Ex-combatants". They were divided into 3 categores; hardcore, non-combatants, and those who were forcefully recruited (including child soldiers). 24 rehabilitation centres were set up in Jaffna, Batticaloa and Vavuniya. Among the apprehended carders, there had been about 700 hardcore members. Some of these cardres were integrated into State Intelligence Services to tackle the internal and external networks of LTTE. By June 2006, government had released more than 7,000 cardres, and 4,301 remained.Land mines
The end of the war left past conflict zones of 2046sqkms heavily contaminated with approximately 1.6 million land mines. By November 2011, deminers employed by Sri Lankan army and 8 foreign funded agencies had cleared 1,912sqms leaving about 133sqkms yet to be cleared.Since the end of the war, more than 5,000 Tamil youths have been gathering at selected police stations in Eastern Province for interviews to join the police force as the government has called for interviews. The Sri Lankan government had planned to recruit 2,000 new police officers to the department, especially for the services in the northern region of the country.
Protests
Tamil diasporaTamil diaspora
The Tamil diaspora is a demographic group of Tamil people of Indian or Sri Lankan origin who have settled in other parts of the world. Significant Tamil diaspora populations can be found in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Middle East, Réunion, South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Fiji, Guyana,...
communities around the world protested the civilian casualties in Northern Province, Sri Lanka
Northern Province, Sri Lanka
The Northern Province is one of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but did not have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Between 1988 and 2006 the province was...
and the war in general. Active protests occurred in the major and/or capital cities of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The collective objective of the protests was to persuade world national leaders to stop the civil war and bring a permanent ceasefire with an internationally coordinated diplomatic strategy.
War crimes
There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Tamil Tigers during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers.A United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
expert panel investigating violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. The panel has called on the UN Secretary General to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law. The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any investigation. In a significant announcement in August 2011, the Sri Lankan Government has acknowledged the civilian casualties occurred in the final phase of the war.
During a counter-insurgency
Counter-insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
seminar conducted by Sri Lanka Army in June 2011, Lawrence Smith - an attaché of the American embassy in Sri Lanka from 2008 revealed "...from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE -- Nadesan
Balasingham Nadesan
Balasingham Nadesan was the LTTEs Political Chief from late 2007 until his death in 2009. He used to be the head of Police of the LTTE and was formerly based in Tamil Nadu.-Personal life:...
, KP -- people who weren't and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE. So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real..." However the US State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
characterized the statement as "personal opinion".
See also
- List of Sri Lankan Civil War battles
- List of attacks attributed to the LTTE
- List of attacks attributed to the Sri Lankan military
- Notable assassinations of the Sri Lankan Civil War
- List of civil wars
- Tamil EelamTamil EelamTamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...
- Self-determinationSelf-determinationSelf-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
- Post–World War II air-to-air combat losses
External links
Official websitesGovernment reports
Maps
- Ministry of Defence, Battle Progress Map
- Final Conflict Zone Maps
- Interactive Defence Map of Sri Lanka
Independent reports, documentaries and texts
- Pawns of Peace Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997-2009 by NORADNorwegian Agency for Development CooperationThe Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation is a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its task is to ensure effective foreign aid, with quality assurance and evaluation. NORAD both finances NGOs, and does its own research and projects. The current director general is...
- World Socialist Web Site Sri Lanka Coverage – Many reports and socialist analysis
- Peace and Conflict Timeline (PACT) – an interactive timeline of the Sri Lankan conflict
- Texts of key agreements in past peace processes and an analysis of the process by Conciliation Resources
- Independent military analysis of the current state of Sri lanka conflict
- War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni, Human Rights Watch
- http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sri-lankas-killing-fields/4od
Analysis
- Sri Lanka: what role for the EU?, Opinion by Amaia Sánchez Cacicedo, May 2009, European Union Institute for Security StudiesEuropean Union Institute for Security StudiesThe European Union Institute for Security Studies is a Paris-based EU agency of the Common Foreign and Security Policy . Its goals are to find a common security culture for the EU, to help develop and project the CFSP, and to enrich Europe’s strategic debate.The EUISS is an autonomous agency with...