Background
What’s Going on in Sri Lanka: A Brief Snapshot
Sri Lanka is a small island nation about 19 miles off the southern coast of India.
It was a British colony known as “Ceylon” from 1815 until 1948, at which time Britain granted independence to the country.
Sri Lanka is composed of several main cultural groups:
1) The Sinhalese are the majority group, comprising almost 82% of the population. They speak Sinhala, which belongs to the Indo-European language family. Most of them are Buddhist.
2) The Tamils are the largest minority group (around 10%). They speak Tamil, a which belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. Most are Hindu, but many are also Christian or Muslim. They are also native to South India. About half of the Tamils in Sri Lanka came from India relatively recently, brought in as laborers by British colonists. They are known as “Up-Country” or “Indian Tamils,” and are distinguished from “Sri Lankan Tamils” whose descendents have been on the island since ancient times.
3) Sri Lankan Moors comprise almost 8% of the population. They are descended from Arabs who settled in Sri Lanka hundreds of years ago, and are not to be confused with the Andalusian Moors of the Iberian peninsula, although there are some Sri Lankans who claim descent from them. Sri Lankan Moors are traditionally Islamic, and generally refer to themselves simply as “Muslims” rather than Moors. Their language is a dialect of Tamil fused with Arabic. There are also separate Muslim populations descended from Southeast Asians (called the Malays) and those who came from South India in the last 120 years or so.
The war in Sri Lanka is between two main entities, whose disagreements stem from these cultural differences and a history of violence between the groups.
The Tamil Tigers are a militant separatist organization whose goal is an independent state for Sri Lankan Tamils (Indian Tamils are generally excluded from this goal), in response to government oppression and fear of loss of their culture. Their full name is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (“Eelam” is the ancient Tamil name for the country, and “Tamil Eelam” is the proposed name of the separatist state), or LTTE for short.
The Sri Lankan Government is a democratic republic led by a president, and largely composed of Sinhalese. Ostensibly their goal is to keep the citizenry safe from violence by the Tigers, maintain peace, and all the other things a government is supposed to do for its people. The country’s army and police force are under the aegis of the government.
The interplay between these two groups has devastated the country, stultified its economy, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and cost its citizens immeasurable suffering.
History of the Violence
Coming Soon – This Page is Under Construction
