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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has suffered 25 years of brutal conflict due to a secession movement in the north and an insurrection in the south. This violence has caused enormous suffering and killed over 60,000 people. Recent attempts to implement peace accords are precarious at best, and violence continues to undermine the drive for peace in Sri Lanka.

Introduction

It is not difficult to imagine Sri Lanka. It is a tropical country - green rice fields interspaced with cancerous urban growth, the monsoon giving life to a parched earth twice a year, an agrarian way of life in the villages jostling with globalisation and Western market-driven neo-liberalism in the cities.

It is an island, a small one at that. Surrounded by the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka is a mere 65,610km2 – dwarfed by India to our immediate north. A vital sea-trading post, Sri Lanka’s natural harbours made it attractive to sea-farers at the height of the colonisation of the East by Western powers. The Dutch, the Portuguese and the British in turn colonised Sri Lanka, with British rule lasting the longest. Our language, music, infrastructure, politics, imagination and life are all coloured by this history of colonisation. Our cities are littered with buildings from the British, Portuguese and Dutch - some derelict, others such as the old Parliament building in Fort, Colombo (now housing a Ministry) standing as living monuments to our history as a colonised people.

Our economy is small, with primary goods (rubber, coconut and tea), garments and service industries such as Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs or “call-centres”) the main exports. With no significant natural resources of any kind, save for an abundance of rivers, Sri Lanka imports everything from oil to paper – a primary reason for high inflation rates on essential consumer goods, such as fuel, gas and news print. The rivers make hydro-electric power our primary source of electricity, though in recent times, energy demands have far outstripped production, leading to thermal power generation at huge cost to the country. Plans for coal power generation are continually shelved, like progress in general in Sri Lanka, on account of narrow political agendas that strangle development.

The people - communities caught in the cross-fire of partisan agendas of those in power - continue to suffer. Suffering and anxiety are the cruel flipside to this hospitable and friendly country. They are everywhere: 25 years of violent secessionist conflict in the North and the East of Sri Lanka and a Marxist insurrection in the South have traumatized the majority of the population. Suicide bombings are woven into the fabric of life even in Colombo. 65,000 deaths on account of the conflict, over 40,000 deaths on account of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004, thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and thousands of those who disappeared (largely on account of extra-judicial killings by the State) are wounds that refuse to heal in a country that is often described as a tourist heaven. Our pristine beaches and picturesque countryside often hide the ill-effects of the myopia of successive governments since our independence from the British in 1948.

Peace, after over 25 years of brutal conflict, remains elusive.

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Geography and Demography

Sri Lanka is composed of half-a-dozen ethnic groups with diverse historical backgrounds, distinct languages and religion, and separate areas of settlement. A very high literacy (over 95% and one of the highest in South Asia) complements a relatively well-developed state education and healthcare system.

The Sinhalese are the dominant community. They account for about 74 % of the country's total population of around 20 million. They speak Sinhalese and a majority of them practise Theravada Buddhism. The Sri Lankan Tamils constitute about 12.6 % of the population and are seen as the early migrants from Southern India. They speak Tamil and the majority of them are Hindus. The predominantly bi-lingual (Tamil and Sinhalese-speaking) Muslims are the third ethnic group (7.4 %) who are internally divided into three groups according to their historical backgrounds: the Sri Lankan Moors' ancestors came from the wave of migration by Arab traders; the Malays are the descendants of East Asian traders; and the Indian Moors are migrants from India. The Indian Tamils are the other ethnic group (5.5 %) who came to Sri Lanka in the late 19th century as indentured labour, to work in the British colonial government-managed tea plantations. Other ethnic groups (the Burghers and the Eurasians, descendents of inter-marriage with the Portuguese and the Dutch) are insignificant in number (many of them having left Sri Lanka after the Sinhala Only Language Act in 1956) and do not count as significant actors in the present ethnic conflict and politics of the island.

Of the 9 provinces in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese are in the majority in all but two – the North and the East. In the East, the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims each constitute 1/3 of the social make-up, while in the North, Tamils are in the clear majority. The Tamils have a long history of settlement in the North and East - the basis of their claims for a "traditional homeland".

This claim, rejected by the state, is the raison d’etre of the conflict.

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A history of violence

Any concise history is caricature. The difficulty of capturing concisely the complex social and political relations in Sri Lanka makes what follows, at best, a rough guide to some defining moments in Sri Lanka’s history.

1948 is a year as good as any to begin – when we achieved independence from the British. British colonialism is often cited by many scholars to be the root cause of the conflict. This however is simplistic, as it neglects the responsibility of our own governments for decisions that sowed the seeds of conflict in Sri Lanka. As they did throughout their empire, the British ruled Ceylon by creating an English-speaking elite from amongst the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Their favouritism engendered an opposition which took racial and religious overtones. The majority of those who had been left out of the elite spoke Sinhalese and were Buddhists, and they began to promote a racist notion of Sinhalese superiority as an ‘Aryan race’. After independence it was this Sinhalese-speaking group that gained control of the new state of Sri Lanka, and began to exclude Tamils from higher education, jobs and land mainly by making Sinhala the only official language. Not surprisingly, Tamils resented this discrimination. As the anthropologist Stanley Tambiah has argued, the island's violence is a late-twentieth-century response to colonial and postcolonial policies that relied on a hardened and artificial notion of ethnic boundaries.

The beginnings of terrorism in Sri Lanka are inextricably entwined with the activities of the state. In the 30 years from the mid-1940s, successive governments took measures to reduce the number of Tamils in the professions and the public sector. These measures interacted in diverse and complex ways with a potent Sinhala Buddhist exclusivity which gradually became the animating ideology of the Sri Lankan state. Particularly amongst the arriviste, lower-caste Sinhalese, the spread of anti-Tamil chauvinism was soon perceived as a promising means of increasing economic opportunity. As time passed, the electoral promise of pandering to this chauvinism tempted even the most cosmopolitan of Sinhalese politicians.

Arguably, the most adverse legislation for Tamils came from the language policy of S.W.R.D Bandaranaike’s government. The introduction of the 1956 ‘Sinhala Only’ Act, which replaced English with Sinhala as the language of official government business, clearly disadvantaged large numbers of Tamils. Its effect was compounded by widespread protests in Tamil areas in which school principals would not allow the teaching of Sinhala while school children refused to study the language. The policy marked the rise of Sinhala–Buddhist nationalism and the ideological precursors to the likes of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), Sihala Urumaya (SU) and Patriotic National Movement (PNM) – extremist political parties who espouse core principles such as a military solution to an ethnic question – that are inimical to reconciliation and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka.

The final straw for Tamils, however, was the introduction in the early 1970s of communal quotas for university entrance. This led to the exclusion of merit-worthy Tamil students and it was this that set the ethnic powder keg alight. With ‘standardisation’, it became clear that the Tamils had lost the education and employment opportunities which had conditioned their commitment to a unitary Ceylon in the first place. Large numbers of young Tamils came to the conclusion that their socio-economic aspirations could only be fulfilled within a separate Tamil state. The bloody terrorism that has ravaged Sri Lanka since 1983 is fuelled by the refusal of many Tamils to operate within a state system which denies them political power, employment and educational opportunities whilst engendering socio-economic disparity.

1983 was Sri Lanka’s annus horribilis – our darkest hour. The island-wide pogrom against Tamils, and state complicity in fuelling the actions of violent Sinhala mobs, resulted in the death of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians. Many escaped the violence, never to return. Countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and France opened their doors to the influx of Tamils fleeing persecution and death in Sri Lanka. Many Sinhala families, appalled by the violence, gave refuge to Tamil neighbours – but these were isolated acts of kindness in a tsunami of violence.

1983 was also the year in which the secessionist conflict escalated several notches. By this time, many militant Tamil groups held that the only way Tamils could be safe in Sri Lanka was by establishing a separate state in what they identified as their traditional homeland – the North and the East of Sri Lanka. And so the war began – for the next 25 years, it would eat into every sinew of life in Sri Lanka, result in the economic devastation of the country, the assassination of presidents, senior politicians, intellectuals, thinkers, academics and artists and countless thousands of ordinary citizens caught in the cross-currents of ethno-political violence.

The Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE) is today the dominant secessionist guerrilla fighting force in Sri Lanka. Proscribed by many countries as terrorists, the LTTE are ruthless, brutal and highly efficient at permanently eliminating all opposition to their avowed ideals and goal of a separate state of Eelam in the northeast of Sri Lanka. The LTTE was not the only secessionist guerrilla force in the history of the war for Eelam, but through systematic elimination of rivals, they now consider themselves the sole representatives of the Tamil-speaking peoples of the North and the East of Sri Lanka. Today, they run a parallel government in many areas of the North and the East which they control directly or by proxy. The group has extensive international linkages and has created a worldwide business empire. For example, the LTTE has extensive shipping interests that are used for the delivery of weapons to the LTTE in Sri Lanka. It has an effective publicity and propaganda program, which can rapidly mobilise political, economic and financial support from many from the Tamil diaspora (willingly or through threats and intimidation). The LTTE is, in sum, a formidable force – in some ways stronger than the Sri Lankan state itself.

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The People's Liberation Front (JVP) insurrection

There have been two JVP-led insurrections in Sri Lanka. Apart from the secessionist war in the North and the East, these two insurrections (the second in particular) contributed greatly to a landscape of violence and trauma in the South. The inescapable and visceral nature of the violence was evidence of the brutality of the state, the JVP, the police and armed forces and their utter disregard for human rights.

In 1971, the JVP inspired by a Marxist ideology, organised its first insurrection. The armed insurgence aimed at overthrowing the leftist government of the United Front under the leadership of the SLFP through a “one-day revolution”. In 1987, the armed rebellion of the JVP was inspired by a nationalist Buddhist ideology. After the rebellion was brutally crushed in 1989, resulting in the death of Rohana Wijeweera, the leader of the JVP at the time, the party entered the democratic political mainstream during the 1990s. In a series of elections held over the 90’s, the JVP soon became the ‘third force’ in Sri Lankan politics, a position that belies its significant power in making and breaking coalition governments and its continuing extremist nationalist ideology that stifles progress in the peace process.

JVP supporters are largely drawn from the ranks of frustrated university graduates and unemployed youth from neglected rural regions, mainly in the South, though there is a current trend towards a new suburban middle-class. Both rebellions of the JVP display its willingness for armed struggle against what it identifies as elitist networks of the leading families who dominate mainstream politics and business in Sri Lanka. Although often accused of regressive extremism, the JVP are not the only Sinhala nationalists. As Asanga Welikala and David Rampton point out, “Nationalism in Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, is far too diffuse and volatile for such an analysis.”

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A violent peace process

Despite two previous attempts at a ceasefire in 1989 and 1994, the war dragged on until the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) between the government and the LTTE in February 2002.

In 1999, the then president invited Norway to facilitate talks between the government and the LTTE. Norway’s role over time has become one of a mediator, having established its good offices as an important player in the peace process. In the process, however, Norway’s style of mediation raised the ire of political parties such as the JVP and even on occasion the very president who invited them to facilitate the process in the first place. While it is clear that without Norway, the government and the LTTE would not have been able to enter into a peace process and begin peace talks, it is fairly obvious that a more holistic, less secretive and more inclusive process that served to annul the voice of extremism by greater participation of the masses would have served the peace process and Norway’s image better.

After the ceasefire, the government embarked on a number of confidence-building measures intended to strengthen public support in the peace process and CFA. In and around Colombo and the rest of the south of the island they have removed many military checkpoints. Two key roads leading to the North (A9) and the East (A5) were opened after decades of closure on account of the war.

The North and the East of Sri Lanka, for so many a land more distant and more alien than many countries outside of Sri Lanka’s border, were open for travel. The resulting influx of people from the South to the war-torn regions opened their eyes to the true devastation of the war and to how markedly cocooned the rest of Sri Lanka was from the total destruction of property and infrastructure in the North and the East.

However, the peace process and the CFA, while achieving one intended aim of stopping all-out war, is yet to deliver any meaningful and sustainable peace to Sri Lanka. After the LTTE unilaterally pulled out of peace talks in 2003, the process all but collapsed. The wretched politics in the South, forever combative and zero-sum, overtook the emphasis off the peace talks and instead concentrated on general elections that resulted in a change of government and even further stasis.

This stasis led to the rise of opposition against the peace process, in the form of the JVP itself, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU – an extremist Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist political party formed by Buddhist monks, wholly opposed to Norwegian mediation and the peace process in general) and the Patriotic National Movement (PNM), to argue in support of a return to war and the simplicity associated with a clear enemy to fight. The lack of a tangible peace dividend, the increasing inflation, and the continued assassinations (including that of the Foreign Minister) and grave ceasefire violations by the LTTE contributed to a mood of despair and hopelessness in the population at large regarding the peace process.

In the meanwhile, in early 2004, Colonel V. Muralitharan, alias Karuna, broke away from the LTTE, thereby making the conflict dynamics in the North and the East even more complex. Now perceived widely to receive the patronage and protection of state armed forces, the Karuna faction has emerged as an important stakeholder in the peace process – largely on account of its usefulness in ascertaining and thus nullifying the LTTE’s subversive and terrorist strategies. At present, the Karuna faction remains powerful in the East, but it is unclear whether, in the possible resumption of war, their effectiveness in thwarting LTTE operations would extend to the Jaffna peninsula as well.

Incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa is at the zenith of his power, in a position to carry on with the peace process as he sees fit. Having briefly allied with the extremist Sinhala-Buddhist parochialism of the JVP and JHU during the run-up to the presidential elections in November 2005, he convincingly defeated them and the UNP in local elections in March 2006, leaving his government free to support the Norwegian-brokered CFA and peace process.

The backdrop to the local government elections was the first round of negotiations between the newly elected government and the LTTE in February 2006. Called Ceasefire Talks instead of Peace Talks, held in Geneva, the meeting centred on the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement signed in February 2002. In a surprise and controversial agreement at the end of the talk, the government agreed to disarm all paramilitary groups in the North and the East of Sri Lanka before the second round of talks slated for late April 2006. However, coupled with differences on issues of safe passage through Colombo for the peace talks, an increase in violence, continuing assassinations of political figures and the blowing up of a naval vessel by suspected LTTE terrorists, the government’s failure to implement this agreement poses a serious threat to the continuation of the peace process.

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Full circle

Coming full circle, the second round of peace talks to be held in Geneva in late April have not been put on hold on account of the severely deteriorating ground situation in the East of the country. The implementation of the government agreement from the first round of peace talks in February 2006, also in Switzerland, remains suspect. Even though the president’s hand is stronger than ever, the pressure upon him to ensure the continuity of the peace talks is a challenge that all Sri Lankans hope he manages to overcome, for the sake of peace.

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2007 Update

The year 2006 registered a qualitative shift in the security situation on the ground from that which had prevailed since the 2002 Cease fire Agreement (CFA). An intensification of hostilities leading to a grave humanitarian crisis and serious violations of human rights made Sri Lanka one of the most dangerous places in the world for civilians caught up in a situation of armed conflict.

The intensification of hostilities sparked by armed provocation included the laying and detonation of claymore mines, suicide bombs and an aerial bombing campaign. The sharp increases in human rights violations ranged from killings, disappearances, abductions and extortion to forced child conscription. The humanitarian crisis included the use of civilians as human shields and as targets, severe restrictions on the access to civilians by humanitarian agencies as well as in the supply and distribution of food and medicine, spiraling costs of these essential items as well as internal displacement of over 200,000 persons since April 2006.

Accordingly, a post ceasefire period that had been termed one of No War / No Peace descended into one of low intensity conflict and further, into open war in the East, in particular. Whilst the CFA was not abrogated by either the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) or the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE), the political and military balance of power on which it was founded was decisively altered and the agreement itself therefore rendered redundant. One of the signatories, the leader of the LTTE Vellupillai Prabhakaran declared in his annual Heroes Day Speech of November 2006, that the CFA was effectively “defunct”.

The situation in Sri Lanka into 2007 is very likely to be one of protracted conflict, oscillating levels of political stability and growing authoritarianism. The GOSL will persist in the project of regime consolidation with initiatives to revitalize the peace process being of a secondary and instrumental importance.

The first quarter of 2007 saw a heightened escalation in hostilities in the North and East, over 150,000 displaced on account of the violence, the rise in abductions and disappearances of children and adults, damning allegations of the military forces of the State colluding with the LTTE break-away Karuna faction to abduct children in the East, a prevailing sense of unease across the country and a distinct erosion in media freedom, and an unprecedented aerial attack by the LTTE on the island main air-force base in Katunayake. Adjacent to the international airport, the news of the attack was more devastating for the country’s economic prospects than the damage resulting from the attack itself. The violence in the North and East, with the government riding high on a string of military successes against the LTTE, shows no signs of abating in the near future, with consequently, no hope of a return to a process of negotiations other than through war.

Whilst 2006 was a miserable year for civilians caught up in armed conflict, there is little prospect of 2007 offering them a decisive and irreversible alleviation of their situation. Political actors on the other hand could find, yet again, that there is no permanent balance of power in their favour outside of a genuine commitment to and demonstrable capability for, conflict transformation through a political settlement.

by Sanjana Hattotuwa

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Latest Update from CrisisWatch (September 2007)

Mid-month report by Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission noted shift in military operations from east to north, where violence increased near Jaffna peninsula. Heavy casualties reported in clashes between army and LTTE in north west end August, after weeks of steady fighting in Mannar. 3 suspected LTTE bombs defused near Buddhist pageant in central city Kandy 26 August. At tribute to 17 French aid workers shot 1 year ago in uninvestigated attack, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes called country worst in world for humanitarian workers; government condemned claims.

Published at the beginning of each calendar month, CrisisWatch is produced by the International Crisis Group.

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Resources and Links

Online Resources

Accord Sri Lanka
Publication on peacebuilding in Sri Lanka
Amnesty International
Reports and documents on humanitarian issues in Sri Lanka
Berghof Centre for Conflict Studies and Transformation
Details of BFCS projects and documents relating to the Sri Lankan conflict.
CARE
Country profile and projects run by CARE in Sri Lanka
Centre for Policy Alternatives
News, reports, and publications relating to governance and conflict resolution in Sri Lanka, including some documents in Sinhala and Tamil
Centre of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance
News and reports from the last 7 days
Derechos Sri Lanka
Links to organisations, reports, and articles relating to human rights issues in Sri Lanka
Groundviews
Citizen journalism from Sri Lanka
Human Rights Watch
Articles and publications relating to human rights in Sri Lanka
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
Comprehensive overview of the Sri Lankan conflict, including the latest figures on IDP's
International Alert
Background information and projects run by IA in Sri Lanka
International Crisis Group
Comprehensive resources on the Sri Lankan conflict
Links to organisations, reports, and articles relating to human rights issues in Sri Lanka
A guide to the languages and ethicities of Sri Lanka
Political Resources
Links to political parties and organisations in Sri Lanka
Regional Centre for Strategic Studies
An independent, non-profit NGO for collaborative research, networking and interaction on strategic and international issues pertaining to South Asia
ReliefWeb
Leading online gateway to resources about Sri Lanka
South Asia Analysis Group
Political analysis reports, and papers on international and political affairs in Sri Lanka
SwissPeace
Information on conflict causes, issues and dynamics
TamilNet
Latest news and articles on Tamil current affairs, in English and German
UNHCR
News, backround information, analysis, and policy documents relating to Sri Lanka's internally displaced population
University of Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research
Detailed overview and commentary on Sri Lankan conflict.
USAID
Country profile, updates, and projects relating to Sri Lankan development
Voices of Reconcilliation
Enhancing Sri Lankan community cohesion through digital media.