The Sri Lankan Civil War: a "trivial" genocide
by:Kyra bachman
What are Human Rights?
Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that every person is entitled to and that we would all naturally claim to be our own. Whatever circumstance we come from; nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, we are all entitled to these rights without discrimination.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a twenty-six year conflict between the ethnic minority Tamils and the majority Sinhalese on the island nation south of Sri Lanka. The two ethnic groups were further separated by religion, culture, and language creating significant disunity and unrest. The Buddhist Sinhalese spoke Sinhalese, whereas the largely Hindu Tamils spoke Tamil, mutually unintelligible languages. The Sinhalese, who controlled the government, viewed the Tamils as unwelcome Indian invaders encroaching on their social norms and customs. The Tamils in turn sought to gain freedom from perceived oppressive social policies enforced by the Sinhalese led government. Major conflicts began in 1956 when Sinhalese prime minister Bandaranaike declared Sinhalese, spoken by 70% of Sri Lankans as the country's main language. Additionally, laws prohibiting or limiting Tamil involvement in society were enacted, escalating tensions between the two ethnic groups. Tamils objected to a requirement for civil service workers to speak Sinhalese in addition to preferential university admission for Sinhalese. The ‘Tamil Tigers’ emerged from this fractious environment and increasingly sought to create a separate state within Sri Lanka. Unable to change government policies in the ensuing two decades after discriminatory Sinhalese policies began, the Tamil Tigers organized as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and commenced guerrilla style terrorist attacks in 1983. The government condoned unequal treatment of two ethnic groups ultimately gave rise to a bloody civil war between the Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils.
There were an abundance of human rights violations in this war: The most prominent violation was the loss of life. An estimated 100,000 people were killed during the conflict (#3), including tens of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians. Torture (#5) also was used by both sides in the conflict such as physically cruel dismembering of soldiers and rape of civilians. The LTTE as well as the Sinhalese repeatedly and strategically mortared certain areas to block civilians from fleeing war torn areas, creating many non-combatant casualties and violating human rights code #13 of the right to move. Lastly, the LTTE frequently used child soldiers (#23).
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