| Sri Lanka, Is split inevitable? |
|
|
|
| World Affairs Talk | |
| Friday, 26 January 2007 | |
|
The ongoing conflict is marked by gross human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war on both sides and is creating a huge social catastrophe in the country. It is estimated that the war has left more than 65,000 people dead since 1983 and caused great harm to the people and economy of the country. Tamil guerrillas started an armed uprising in 1983 complaining discrimination on many accounts against the Sinhalese. They now want autonomy for the Tamil-dominated areas. The LTTE did not follow the Tamil people; it was the people who followed the LTTE’s urge, for love, fear, compulsion and also due to ignorance at the beginning and later were carried away by circumstances and supported the Tigers unconditionally. Government forces carried out massacres of Tamil civilians and engaged in indiscriminate airborne and artillery offensive into civilian areas, including medical facilities and places of worship and refugee camps. The LTTE then again carried out over 200 suicide bombings aimed at both civilian and military targets. Guerrillas used suicide bombers to assassinate former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and then Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. Further more, a failed assassination attempt by a suicide bomber in 1999 wounded Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and killed twenty-one others. In Government’s political thought, any compromise by the general people with the LTTE is denounced as betrayal. Fearfully, the LTTE has a significant overseas support structure for fundraising, weapon procurement, and propaganda activities. They established themselves in Canada, the United Kingdom and other Western countries where Tamil’s cause of armed struggle has wide support. In the 1980s and 1990s, successive governments canceled some policies detrimental to Tamil interest and also recognized ‘Tamil’ as an official language of the country. Much to the ill fate, Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Muslims then claimed that they face reverse discrimination. Tamils deny the latter claim, and see the changes that have been made as too little too late; so the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is a much more complex than a simple straightforward confrontation between a once well-entrenched minority - the Tamils and a now powerful but still insecure majority -the Sinhalese. LTTE is fully involved in smuggling arms shipments, opening of new security stations, courts, and a law college. In other words, they have been building the apparatus of their state, Thamil Eelam gradually. Whatever the solution may be, it should be viable to the LTTE as long as it remains a protagonist of the conflict. Share & Bookmark             |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
