RE-INTEGRATION OF FORMER LTTE COMBATANTS INTO CIVILIAN SOCIETY IN SRI LANKA

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

BACKGROND TO THE SRI LANKAN CONFLICT

Sri Lanka has 2500 years of a recorded history. The ethnic consistency of the island nation is comprised of majority Sinhalese 72 %, Tamils 18% (12% Sri Lankan Tamils and 6% Indian Tamils), Muslims 7%, Malays 1% and others 2%. Sri Lanka is predominantly a Buddhist country. The mass affiliation to religion is consists of majority Buddhists 70%, Hindus 16%, Islamists 7%, Christians 6% and others 1%, respectively. Within the modern history, the country was under successive Portuguese, Dutch and British colonization from 1505 to 1948, until it gained the independence from the British in 1948. The newly independent nation retained the name Ceylon until the 1972 constitution, which renamed it as Sri Lanka. The post-independent Sri Lanka had been very peaceful except for few minor scale communal riots. But the situation changed dramatically after 1983 and Sri Lanka entered into the longest insurgency in South Asia, with an active conflict of 26 years of fighting.

Administratively, Sri Lanka has 25 Districts under 9 Provinces. Northern and Eastern provinces are predominantly the minority Tamil living provinces of Sri Lanka and the other seven provinces are dominates by the majority Sinhalese. The basic complaint of the minority Tamils was that they were not given due recognition by the majority Sinhalese heavy governments of Sri Lanka consecutively which they enjoyed under the British rule. The British administration was very successful in their tactic and shattered the multi - ethnic foundation of the long standing unitary Sri Lanka through its divided and rule concept. Not only that the British administration had re-ordered the ethnic composition of Sri Lanka. As a matter of meeting the scarcity of the labor force they decided to bring Southern Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka and as a result the Tamil representation in Sri Lankan demographic scene has risen to today's 18% (increased by another 6%).

Short sighted policies of politicians have been the basic factor behind the whole Sri Lankan issue which date backs to 1956 in which the Sinhala language was made as the only official language of Sri Lanka. Even though they have been rectified by the successive governments later by making the Tamil language too as one of the official languages the mistrust developed between duos were never rectified. Supported by the opportunistic politics the deprived and politicized Tamil youth being motivated by the radical militant leadership in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces started to form up and claimed a separate country for Tamils called “Tamil Eelam”. The most prominent of these groups was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The responsibility of creating the LTTE lies with Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India. She did this because Sri Lanka adopted a US biased policy from 1977 onwards after opening its economy under President J.R. Jayawardena where the India was an ally of Soviet Union then. Gradually, the LTTE was developed under the blessings of Indira ...