privileged place for the Sinhalese as the protectors of Sri Lanka, as the sacred home of Buddhism. These factors resulted in devastating and enduring consequences for the nature of the state, governance and inter-ethnic relations in Sri Lanka.
29. By the 1970’s, young Sinhalese from the south, disillusioned by exclusion on class grounds, on the one hand, and young Tamils from the north, disillusioned by exclusion on ethnic grounds, on the other, reacted separately to the emerging State, turning to militancy and launching armed revolts against the State.[1] The State treated these movements primarily as a threat to national security, rather than addressing the underlying political issues, meeting challenges to state power with repression, including disappearances, unlawful killings and torture.[2]
30. In the wake of discriminatory state policies and anti-Tamil violence in the 1950s, the Tamil struggle for rights, which began as Gandhian-style non-violent protests, increasingly gave rise to Tamil militancy and armed revolt, with a central demand for a separate State. A number of Tamil politico-militant groups, including the LTTE, emerged in the 1970’s, as the discourse shifted from accommodation to separatism. Violent repression of Tamils by Sinhala nationalists increased in intensity, alongside increasing attacks by Tamil armed groups against the security forces. Elements in the Government encouraged, or in some cases sponsored, episodes of anti-Tamil violence in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. This violence culminated in the 1983 anti-Tamil attacks, which were the most extensive. Sinhalese mobs were transported in Government buses and used official voter registration lists to identify and target Tamils. Thousands of deaths resulted, together with large-scale displacement, destruction of Tamil property and migration of Tamils abroad. The Government asserted that the attacks occurred in response to the LTTE’s killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in the northern district of Jaffna. Thus, 1983 is commonly regarded as the start of the war between the Government and the LTTE, although violence by both sides predates that year.
2. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
31. As repression of Tamils intensified after the 1983 communal riots, the Tamil community became increasingly militarized and the number and ranks of militant groups swelled, taking advantage of the conducive environment for training and organizing in Tamil Nadu. The LTTE began as a Tamil liberation movement and eventually became the most disciplined and most nationalist of the Tamil militant groups, emerging as the dominant force espousing a separatist agenda in the mid-1980s. During this period, the LTTE adopted increasingly violent tactics, using violence to silence other Tamil groups, while asserting itself as the self-appointed, sole representative of the Tamil people. Its elusive leader,
- ↑ In the South, the leftist Janatha Vimuthki Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), comprised of mostly poor, educated Sinhalese youth from rural areas, launched its first armed uprising in 1971 and a second in 1987. In parallel, a number of militant Tamil youth movements emerged as a response to the State’s exclusionary politics and as a challenge to the power of traditional Tamil political leadership.
- ↑ Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal and Disappearance of Certain Persons (All Island), 2001; Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons in the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa Provinces, 1997; Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, 1997; and Interim Report of the Commission of Disappearances in Western Zone, (http://www.disappearances.org/news/mainfile.php/reports_srilanka); and Amnesty International, “Sri Lanka: ‘Disappearances and murder as techniques of counter-insurgency” in Disappearances and Political Killings (Amsterdam, 1994), p. 26.
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