Background Information on the Conflict in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has been wracked for decades by a civil war between the government and the opposition Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought an independent state for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island. The conflict has left over 80,000 dead and displaced possibly a million civilians. Since independence in 1948, successive governments dominated by the island's Sinhalese majority took steps to redress a perceived imbalance in favor of the Tamil minority, who became increasingly marginalized. Low-level insurgency by several armed Tamil groups escalated in 1983 into full-scale civil war. After fighting among Tamil militant groups, the LTTE emerged as the dominant separatist group. Decades of fighting between the government and the LTTE produced no conclusive result, with neither side being strong enough to defeat the other and with attempts at peace talks repeatedly failing. The most recent ceasefire agreement was signed in 2002, with the LTTE effectively controlling much of the northeast of the country. The ceasefire fell apart in 2006.
During 2006 - 2009, the Sri Lankan military waged a series of offensives, forcing the LTTE into a progressively smaller area before eventually overrunning their territory in the northeast and killing their senior leaders, thus ending the war. In the final months of the conflict, the LTTE had forced thousands of civilians to stay in the war zone as human shields and prevented them from leaving. Repeated shelling and bombing of the area killed more than 7,000 civilians and injured at least another 13,000. Since the end of the fighting, the Sri Lankan government has refused access into the war zone to journalists and aid agencies; the fate of those civilians still in the war zone in its final days is unclear.
Over 280,000 civilians who had earlier fled the war zone have been placed by the government in overcrowded internment camps controlled by the military. The government has not allowed civilians to leave the camps without first undergoing a screening process to separate LTTE fighters from civilians. The process does not protect the rights of those being screened. There are reports of men disappearing after being screened by the security forces. At least 136,000 civilians remain in the camps to this day.
