security forces faced off against young Tamils, who began the fight for an independent homeland. Junius Richard Jayewardene was elected in 1977 and promoted Tamil to the status of a ‘national language’ in Tamil areas. He also granted Tamils greater local government control, but violence escalated.
When Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) secessionists massacred an army patrol in 1983, Sinhalese mobs went on a two-day rampage, killing several thousand Tamils and burning and looting property. This marked the point of no return. Many Tamils moved north into Tamil-dominated areas, and Sinhalese began to leave the Jaffna area. Tamil secessionists claimed the northern third of the country and the eastern coast. They were clearly in the majority in the north but proportionately equal to the Sinhalese and Muslims in the east. Violence escalated, with both sides guilty of ethnic cleansing.
By 1985, there were 50,000 internal refugees, 100,000 Tamil exiles in India, no tourism, slumping tea prices and dwindling aid (because of human rights abuses). Government gains in 1987 led to Tamil unrest in India, prompting concerns of an Indian invasion. The two governments agreed that the Sri Lankan Army would retreat and an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) would maintain order in the north and disarm the Tigers. The agreement led to Sinhalese and Muslim riots in the south over the government ‘sell-out’ and Indian ‘occupation’. Sri Lanka became a quagmire of inescapable violence.
A 1989 Sinhalese rebellion broke out in the south and the Marxist JVP orchestrated a series of strikes and political murders. The country was at a standstill. When the government’s talks with the JVP failed, it unleashed death squads that killed JVP suspects and dumped their bodies in rivers. A three-year reign of terror resulted in at least 30,000 deaths. The IPKF withdrew in 1990. The Tigers had agreed to a ceasefire but violence flared almost immediately when a breakaway Tamil group unilaterally declared an independent homeland.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991 and Premadasa suffered the same fate in 1993. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga became prime minister in 1994, and president in 1995, and for the second time her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike became prime minister.
In early 1995, the Tamils broke a truce and the government responded with a massive military operation that seemed to put Sri Lanka on the path to peace. But the Tigers regrouped and, by mid-1996, had launched damaging attacks on government troops stationed in northern Sri Lanka and terrorist strikes in Colombo.
The massacre in mid-October 2000 of 26 unarmed Tamil prisoners by a crowd of Sinhalese in the hill country town of Bandarawela resulted in violent demonstrations and retaliatory attacks.
Chandrika Kumaratunga won a second term in office in December 1999. Days before the vote, the president and People’s Alliance coalition leader was the target of a LTTE suicide bomb attack in which she lost the sight in one eye. In December 2001, Ranil Wickramasinghe, who lost the 1999 elections, became prime minister when the United National Party swept parliamentary elections. This could have led to deadlock between Parliament and the executive in dealing with high inflation, high unemployment, poor infrastructure and, of course, the 18-year-old civil war, but unexpectedly promising peace talks with the LTTE have facilitated cooperation in the political process.
Recent History
Peace talks brokered by a Norwegian delegation inspired a one-month