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Causes that led to Civil War in Sri Lanka
Civil War in Sri Lanka was a name of the conflict between races
that occur in Sri Lanka.
The civil war started since 23 July 1983. For the fought over 25
years, it was ended on 18 May
2009 after the surrender of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) on the previous day as
announced by the chief of the international relations, Selvarasa
Pathmanathan. The leader of
LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran was confirmed dead by Sri Lanka
military so that the whole
nation was recover by the power of state.
It is clear that the war is primarily caused by ethnic conflict
between two largest ethnic
groups, the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Hindu
Tamils. This war also the
dominance fought between regional rulers. The ethnic conflict
was emerged when there is an
antagonistic in the relationship in both of this ethnic since
before independence. There are many
root causes for the tension of ethnic conflict.
First is ethnic con flict and language. Sri Lanka first known as
Ceylon was get their
independence when the population was seeks for it from British
after 1948. Their prime minister,
Bandaranaike sparked controversy by proposed resolution to use
Sinhalese as official language
due to Sinhala Only campaign replacing English. So the problem
exists when many Tamils are
unemployment because they were not fluent in Sinhala. This meant
that government will faced
demonstration from Tamil.
Second is ethnic conflict and education. Tamils presence in
education makes Sinhalese
was not satisfied. Through this situation, a new standardization
policy was adopted to ensure
that the number of students qualifying for university entrance
was proportionate with the number
of students who take the entrance examination in the university
in Sinhalese language so that the
Tamil students must to score higher than Sinhalese students to
gain admission to universities.
Tamil were more likely to speak English because the reward
promised by British for them with a
larger share of government jobs. This was also the British
Colonial influence. Sinhalese was
thinking first to not let Tamil gain access in higher education
that wanted the English language
expunged from government and commerce.
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Third is ethnic conflict and employment. As we can see, both
language and education
policies have placed barriers on employment, especially in the
administrative and professional
ranks in which Tamils were at one point over -represented. 1
Last but not least, the ethnic conflict and the issue of land.
The clearest site of politics of land and ethnicity has been in the
sparsely populated areas of the dry zone in the North Central
Province and the Eastern Province. 2
Besides, riots also the causes of the war. Before the civil war
began, there were two
major riots the first one in 1958 and the other in 1977. Tamils
were the major victims. The
consequence there, riots destroy the trust between
communities.
The other reasons is that discrimination created by Sinhalese
for Tamil according to the
number of other policies and events is Denial of citizenship to
estate Tamils , Sinhala
colonization of Tamil areas , Banning of Tamil media and
literature importation and
destruction of the Jaffna Public Library . All of those
contributed to set fire on the events of the
Black July in 1983, and encouraged the Tamils to form militant
groups that would start the civil
war. 3
1 Appendix I, The root causes of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri
Lanka, pg.
5http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTSRILANKA/Resources/App1.pdf
2 Ibid, The dry zone areas of the North Ce ntral Province had
special socio-cultural significance for Sinhalese interm of their
popular imagination of the past 3 History of the civil war in Sri
Lanka since 1983, Kim Kyung Mook, Nov
2006,http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0809/kyungmook/kyungmook1.html
