Civil War

The Sri Lankan Civil War

The Sri Lankan Civil War is an ongoing conflict on the island-nation of Sri Lanka. Since 23 July 1983, there has been on-and-off civil war, predominantly between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), a separatist militant organization who fight for the creation of an independent state named Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island. It is estimated over 70,000 people have been officially listed as killed in the war since 1983. However, a recent study published in the esteemed British Medical Journal indicates that these figures are far from accurate. The independent study, performed by the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School, indicates that at least 215,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka's war up until 2002 .

The study further states the estimate may be as high as 338,000 killed, taking into account various factors that may have led to under-reporting, and only includes those killed directly due to violence in the conflict. The study is careful to point out that their survey's inability to "capture families with no survivors" is another source of downward bias, and that their estimates are thus conservative.As one of the world's deadliest ongoing armed conflicts, it has caused significant harm to the population, environment and severe damage to the economy of the country, leading to the ban of the LTTE, the conflict's chief antagonist, as a terrorist organization in 30 countries including the United States, Japan, Brazil, Australia, the countries of the European Union, and Canada.The possibility of a lasting peace were raised when a cease-fire was declared in December 2001, and a ceasefire agreement was signed with international mediation in 2002.

However hostilities renewed in late 2005 and the conflict has continued to escalate, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 people since November 2005. The government has launched a number of military offensives against the LTTE since July 2006, and driven the LTTE out of the entire Eastern province of the island, and on the fifth anniversary of the signing of the agreement the LTTE declared they would "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood". The government's forces also claimed recently to have destroyed all the large arms smuggling vessels that belonged to the LTTE.Just after the government's military commanders expressed their hope to win the war in the near future, on January 2, 2008 the government formally announced withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement. The Government further alleged that the LTTE violated the agreement over 10,000 times. As a result of fighting since April 2006, there are more than 200,000 internally displaced persons in the country. Deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians (including killings during aerial bombardment, shelling and claymore mine attacks) are taking place in violation of international humanitarian law. On December 7, 2007 the Human Rights Watch and the Amnesty International in a joint letter asked the UN Human Rights Council to take urgent action in order to end abuses in Sri Lanka, both by the government and the LTTE