Sri Lanka: Government and rebels clash (pub. March 27, 2007)

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At least 17 people were killed and dozens more were injured near the city of Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka, some 240km north-east of Colombo (the capital), on March 21, 2007, after clashes between government troops and rebels from the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sri Lankan military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said on March 21 that four troops had been killed in LTTE mortar and artillery attacks against five army camps, whilst eight rebels reportedly died during counter attacks, including aerial strikes against targets in rebel-held jungle territory. It was thought that three troops had suffered serious injuries in the mortar attacks, whereas 14 other troops and 11 civilians had suffered minor shrapnel injuries.

Immediate Context

The clashes were part of a protracted conflict between government troops and LTTE rebels, in which the separatists were fighting for an independent state (Tamil Eelam) in the north and east of Sri Lanka, where most of the country’s ethnic Tamil minority lived. Although the government and LTTE leaders had signed an agreement in February 2002 on an indefinite ceasefire, which was monitored by the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), subsequent violations of the amnesty had effectively marked a resumption of the civil war which had plagued Sri Lanka intermittently since the 1980s (see below). Nominal progress was made during a series of peace talks held in 2002-03 but the LTTE announced in April 2003 that it was withdrawing from bilateral negotiations with the government, citing a failure by the authorities to resettle thousands of Tamil refugees and after LTTE leaders were excluded from an aid meeting in the USA, where the group was deemed a terrorist organisation .

Sri Lanka was one of 12 countries around the rim of the Indian Ocean which suffered devastation and substantial loss of lives in December 2004, when an earthquake unleashed a series of massive tsunamis or "tidal waves". Initial hopes that the natural disaster would ease tensions between the government and the separatists were disappointed, however, and habitual rivalries soon re-emerged as LTTE leaders accused the government of restricting the flow of disaster relief aid into rebel-controlled areas.

In November 2006 Velupillai Prabhakaran (also rendered Pirapaharan), the LTTE leader, said that the government had embraced a policy of military aggression in order to occupy Tamil land, effectively rendering the 2002 ceasefire agreement defunct.

Reaction and Outlook

The recent upsurge in fighting had left an estimated 155,000 people displaced in eastern Sri Lanka. On March 21 Brigadier Samarasinghe admitted that over 130,000 refugees had not yet returned to their homes, whilst Keheliya Rambukwella, a government spokesman, denied speculation in some media reports that the government had forcibly resettled displaced citizens. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on March 21 issued an appeal for new funds to boost its operations in eastern Sri Lanka to ensure basic supplies for internally displaced persons "in need of immediate aid". Tony Banbury, a WFP official, warned that the aid agency would "run out of food supplies by the end of April" unless new funds were forthcoming. A report published by the Reuters news agency on March 20 said that analysts expected the intensity of the conflict to escalate.

Historical Context

Ceylon (the name by which Sri Lanka was known until 1972--see below) was controlled by Portugal in the 16th century and by the Netherlands in the 17th century, before being ceded to the UK in 1802, under the Treaty of Amiens. The UK authorities controlled Ceylon as a Crown Colony until the island achieved independence in February 1948, just months after the "Ceylon Independence Bill" was presented to the lower house of the UK bicameral legislature.

By the mid-1950s a wave of Sinhalese nationalism had swept the island and the ruling United National Party (UNP) introduced a bill (The Official Language Act ) to the Sinhala-dominated legislature to replace English, the country’s official language, with Sinhalese. The question of the country’s official language increased already simmering tensions between the island’s majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities, leading in June 1956 to violent clashes and rioting, during which Sinhalese mobs assaulted Tamils and attacked their business interests. Sinhala finally replaced English as the country’s official language in January 1961, prompting the pro-Tamil Federal party and other Tamil activists to mount protests and campaigns of civil disobedience against the pro-Sinhalese government. Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka when it was proclaimed a republic in May 1972, thereby ending its longstanding links with the UK.

The Federal party aligned with other pro-Tamil parties in 1976 to launch the Tamil Liberation Front (TLF), which was created to promote the establishment of an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka. By 1978 LTTE militants were actively attacking government and civilian targets, leading to the eruption in 1983 of a civil war which was eventually characterised by rebel suicide bomb attacks, regular counter attacks by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA), and a series of alleged human rights violations by both sides . An estimated 65,000 people had lost their lives since the conflict began, and despite the notional adherence by both sides to the February 2002 ceasefire more than 3,000 people were thought to have been killed in 2006, when the conflict had effectively resumed.

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