Reconciliation is not happening in Sri Lanka, and the problem isn't a question of time

Sivakami Rajamanoharan, 12 March 2012
The Tamil call for independent statehood stemmed from a very basic need for security against genocide. For many, including the next generation of Tamil youth activists, the events of 2009 consolidated this need.

About the author

Dr Sivakami Rajamanoharan is an activist within the Tamil Youth Organisation UK, campaigning for the rights of Eelam Tamils.

Three years since the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ended, the Tamil speaking areas remain gripped by repression, ethnic tension and widespread suffering, rather than emergent reconciliation and peace - and the problem is not a question of time.

The war itself ended in a cataclysm of violence in which, according to a UN expert panel’s report ^↑ , over 40,000 Tamil civilians were massacred, largely by government shelling of safe zones and hospitals ^↑ . The period after the war’s end in May 2009 saw the internment of hundreds of thousands of shell-shocked civilian survivors in squalid camps ^↑ (run by Sri Lanka’s ethnically pure Sinhala military), from which reports of deprivation, abductions, torture and rape were persistently emerging. Although after intense international pressure the camps were eventually closed, large numbers of Tamils are still prevented from resettling. Full Story>>>