Origin and Evolution of Civil War

Prior to the colonial occupation ,Tamils control the northern part of Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in 1972), while the Sinhalese ruled the southern regions of the land. In 1505, the Portuguese took control of the country and began its history as a colonial settlement. Throughout its relationship with the west, Sri Lanka has been dominated by world powers that have their prevented self ruled. Finally, in 1948 Sri Lanka  gained independence thus, Sovereignty over its land. Prior to this momentous occasion, Tamil and Sinhalese forces combined to fight for their common freedom. However, this alliance did not last long.

The main roots for this conflict lied in the British colonial rule when the country was known as Ceylon. There was initially little tension amongst Sri Lankan to largest ethnic groups. The Sinhalese and the Tamils, when a Tamil was pointed as a represented as a representative of Sinhalese as well as Tamils in the national legislative council in order to pressed the colonial masters and form a new constitutional reforms. The British maintained communal representation is and effective method of discerning the views and needs of different communities. so, the replacement of communal representation by a territorial representation by election became a serious issues from 1908 onwards and was centralised to the reforms of legislative council in 1921 and 1924.

The Tamils stood loose from this, but hoped to maintain their position if the franchise were extended only to English educated people. a disproportionate no. of Tamils had become proficient in the English language because the christian missionaries had concentrated their activities in the Tamil heartland of the Jaffna peninsula and set up a large no of English secondary schools. Nonetheless the Sinhalese obtain numerical superiority in the council because territorial representation automatically gave the majority constituencies to the Sinhalese area..

Then in 1944, J.R Jayawardene moved in the state council that Sinhala should replace English as the official language. In 1948, another controversial law was passed by the Ceylon parliament of Indian Tamils, called the Ceylon citizenship act which took away the citizenship of Indian Tamils making 700000 Tamils stateless and over 300000 people were sent back to India. During 1970s the Policy of Standardization an act of institutional racism was initiated which were meant to correct the disproportionate higher number of Sri Lankan Tamils students entering universities. Banning of  the import of Tamils language media, state sponsored colonisation of traditional Tamil areas by Sinhalese peasants etc. were the other forms of official discrimination against the Tamil people.

The discriminations against continued by passing ' Sinhala Only Act' in 1956 under the leadership of Bandaranaike in which Sinhala became the official language of the country. As a result of this law, many Tamil speaking civil servants were forced to resign since they weren't fluent in Sinhala which lead to 1956 Gal Oya Riots and 1958 widespread riots. Lots of separate activities were going on demanding a separate Tamil state of Tamil Eelam led by Anton Balasingham, among the Tamil youths who had joined the organisation , Velupillai Prabhakaran was one of them who later became an active leader of LTTE.

After July 1977 riots, United National Party won the election and Tamil United Liberation Front [TULF] became the leading opposition part which act as an interface between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE. But soon after , TULF started losing its grip over militant groups. LTTE ordered civilians to boycott the government election of 1983 in which even TULF contested. The voters turnout became as low as 10 percent. Thereafter Tamil political parties had very little room to represent people's interests as insurgent rose above their position. And the civil unrest could no longer be contained and the war broke out.

Civil War Outbreak

Sri Lankan Civil War  was a conflict on the island of Sri Lanka where was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [also known as Tamil Tigers ], an independent militant organisation which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and east of island starting from 23rd July 1983 till May 2009 when the Sri Lankan military defeated Tamil Tigers.

For over 27 years, the war caused insignificant hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country with an estimated 80,000-100,000 people killed during its its course. The tactics employed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE] against the government forces resulted in their listing as a terrorist organisation in 32 countries including USA,Canada, India and the member nations of the European union.

After two decades of fighting an failures in peace talks a cease fire was declared in December 2001, until 2nd January 2008 when a limited hostilities renewed in the late 2005 and the conflict began to escalate until the govt. launched a number of major military offensive against the LTTE, alleging that it violated the agreement over 10,000 times.On 17th May 2009, the govt. to control of the entire area previously controlled by the LTTE and defeated them finally.

Among the politicised militant groups of Tamil youths in the north and east part of Sri Lanka, LTTE was the most prominent militant group. Their first major operation was assassination of t he mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah in 1975 by Prabhakaran. In May 1981, Burning of Jaffna Library by politicians of ruling party using police and paramilitary forces resulting in the destruction of 90,000 books including historic valued "palm leaves scrolls" which convinced Tamil people that the government could no longer protect them and many of them fled away to India. after that the LTTE assassinated any Tamil MPs who tried to negotiate with the government. In July 1983, the LTTE launched a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army killing an officer and 12 soldiers. This was answered Jayawardene organising massacres and pogrom in Colombo killing 400 and 3000 Tamils [ also known as Black July] which was the beginning of civil war.

During the war, the LTTE organised cruel massacres like ' the Kent and Dollar Farm massacre', ' the Anuradhapura massacres' within Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi Buddhist Shrine. As tit for tat to this, the government organised massacres in Kumudini Boat where more than 23 Tamils died. The bloody operations of LTTE goes on increasing, more than 378 suicide attacks were there taking thousands of lives. So the people started opposing against their vision of independant state.  

Written by 

Olivia (1215357) PCM and Ruth D'soza (1215345) PCM