The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military.
Black July was an anti-Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on 23 July 1983, which caused the death of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers, by the Tamil militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Although initially orchestrated by members of the ruling UNP, the pogrom soon escalated into mass violence with significant public participation.
The burning of the Jaffna Public Library took place on the night of June 1, 1981, when an organized mob of Sinhalese individuals went on a rampage, burning the library. It was one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century. At the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 books and manuscripts.
The 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka followed the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalistic Tamil United Liberation Front won a plurality of minority Sri Lankan Tamil votes in which it stood for secession. An official government estimate put the death toll at 125, whereas other sources estimate that around 300 Tamils were killed by Sinhalese mobs. Human rights groups, such as the UTHR-J, accused the newly elected UNP-led government of orchestrating the violence. While the large majority of victims were Tamils, Sinhalese civilians in the Northern Province and Eastern Province were also attacked by Tamil mobs following the initial violence against Tamil civilians.
The Kent and Dollar Farm massacres were the first massacres of Sinhalese civilians carried out by the LTTE during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The massacres took place on 30 November 1984, in two tiny farming villages in the Mullaitivu district in north-eastern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government labeled this as an attack on civilians by the LTTE.
The Anuradhapura massacre occurred in Sri Lanka in 1985 and was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This was the largest massacre of Sinhalese civilians by the LTTE to date; it was also the first major operation carried out by the LTTE outside a Tamil majority area. Initially, EROS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but it later retracted the statement, and joined the PLOTE in denouncing the incident. The groups later accused the LTTE for the attack. Since then, no Tamil militant group has admitted to committing the massacre. However, state intelligence discovered that the operation was ordered by the LTTE's leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. He assigned the massacre to the LTTE Mannar commander Victor and it was executed by Victor's subordinate Anthony Kaththiar. The LTTE claimed the attack was in revenge of the 1985 Valvettiturai massacre, where the Sri Lanka Army killed 70 Tamil civilians in Prabhakaran's hometown.
The Kalmunai massacre refers to a series of mass killings that occurred in June 1990 in Kalmunai, a municipality within the Ampara District of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province. The massacre of Tamil civilians was allegedly carried out by the Sri Lankan Army in retaliation for an earlier massacre of Sri Lankan police officers. The University Teachers for Human Rights, a human rights organization, put the number of dead in the second massacre at 250, while a local Member of Parliament claimed that at least 160 people were killed.
Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.
The Kattankudy Mosque Massacre was the killing of over 147 Muslim men and boys on 3 August, 1990. Around 30 armed Tamil militants raided two mosques in Kattankudy where over 300 people were prostrating in Isha prayers. The Sri Lankan government, survivors, and observers accuse the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of committing the crime. The LTTE denied involvement and never retracted the denial.
The Jaffna hospital massacre occurred on October 21 and 22, 1987, during the Sri Lankan Civil War, when troops of the Indian Peace Keeping Force entered the premises of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, an island nation in South Asia, and killed between 60 and 70 patients and staff. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the government of Sri Lanka, and independent observers such as the University Teachers for Human Rights and others have called it a massacre of civilians.
The Chunnakam market massacre was a massacre of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military in Chunnakam, a suburb of Jaffna in the Northern Province, Sri Lanka in 1984. This was the second such massacre carried out in the town, during the same year after 20 Tamil youth were massacred by the Sri Lankan military at the local Police station just two months earlier.
The 1985 Trincomalee massacres refers to a series of mass murder of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese home guards in Trincomalee District, Sri Lanka. In a succession of events that spanned over two months, hundreds of Tamil civilians were massacred and thousands were driven out by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese mobs in order to colonize the area. Almost every Tamil settlement in the district was destroyed during this well-orchestrated campaign to drive out the local Tamil population. Several Tamil women were also raped. In September 1985, the entire Tamil population of Trincomalee town was displaced to forests and refugee camps in an attack that wiped out the town, including the destruction of 12 temples and a mosque. Since August 16, over 50,000 Tamils who were forced to flee the town ended up in refugee camps in the Jaffna and Batticaloa districts.
The 1987 Eastern Province massacres were a series of massacres of the Sinhalese population in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka by Tamil mobs and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Though they began spontaneously, they became more organized, with the LTTE leading the violence. Over 200 Sinhalese were killed by mob and militant violence, and over 20,000 fled the Eastern Province. The violence has been described as having had the appearance of a pogrom.
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.
The 1981 anti-Tamil pogrom occurred in Sri Lanka during the months of June, July and August 1981. Organised Sinhala mobs looted and burnt Tamil shops and houses in Jaffna, Ratnapura, Balangoda, Kahawatte, Colombo and in the border villages in the Batticaloa and Amparai districts. Further looting, arson and killings then spread to the rural interior:
"In the hill country, crowds armed with clubs, iron rods, bicycle chains, swords and knives roamed the estates burning, pillaging, looting and killing. Police and army units stood watching, often encouraging the rioters. In the eastern border villages, entire villages were burnt down. People ran into the forests to save their lives. They then took refuge in government schools and Hindu temples. Over 25,000 Tamil plantation workers were rendered homeless in the hills and over 10,000 villagers were made refugees in the east.”
The 1985 Vavuniya massacre refers to the mass murder of over 200 Tamil civilians in the Vavuniya District of northern Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Army between 16 and 18 August 1985 during the first phase of the Sri Lankan civil war. The massacre led to the collapse of the second phase of the peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil delegation held at Thimphu. It was described as among the "worst anti-Tamil pogroms".
