The history of Sri Lanka is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there 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 Lankan Government.
Mahinda Rajapaksa is a Sri Lankan politician. He served as the President of Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2015; the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 2004 to 2005, 2018, and 2019 to 2022; the Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2004 and 2018 to 2019, and the Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2015 and 2019 to 2021. He has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Kurunegala since 2015.
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party is one of the major and most well known political parties in Sri Lanka. It was founded by S.W.R.D Bandaranaike in 1951 and, since then, has been one of the two largest parties in the Sri Lankan political arena. It first came to power in 1956 and since then has been the predominant party in government on a number of occasions. The party is generally considered as having a democratic socialist or progressive economic agenda and is often associated with nationalist Sinhalese parties. The party follows a Non-Aligned foreign policy but always had close ties to socialist nations. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party is a Second Main constituent party in the Sri Lanka People's Freedom Alliance.
Joseph Pararajasingham was a Sri Lankan Tamil civil servant, journalist, businessman and politician. He was Member of Parliament for Batticaloa District from 1990 to 2004 and a National List Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2005. A member of the Tamil National Alliance, he was shot dead on Christmas Day 2005 as he attended midnight mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, Batticaloa.
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.
Human rights in Sri Lanka provides for fundamental rights in the country. The Sri Lanka Constitution states that every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. And, that every person is equal before the law.
The Sri Lankan state has been accused of state terrorism against the Tamil minority as well as the Sinhalese majority, during the two Marxist–Leninist insurrections. The Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been charged with massacres, indiscriminate shelling and bombing, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, disappearance, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and economic blockade. According to Amnesty International state terror was institutionalized into Sri Lanka's laws, government and society.
The 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom and riots in Ceylon, also known as the 58 riots, refer to the first island-wide ethnic riots and pogrom to target the minority Tamils in the Dominion of Ceylon after it became an independent dominion from Britain in 1948. The riots lasted from 22 May until 29 May 1958 although sporadic disturbances happened even after the declaration of emergency on 27 May 1958. The estimates of the murders range, based on recovered body count, from 158 to 1,500. Although most of the victims were Tamils, Sinhalese and their property were also affected by retaliatory attacks by Tamil mobs throughout the Batticaloa and Jaffna districts. As the first full-scale race riot in the country in over forty years, the events of 1958 shattered the trust the communities had in one another and led to further polarisation.
Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a former Sri Lankan military officer and politician, who served as the eighth President of Sri Lanka from 18 November 2019 until his resignation on 14 July 2022. He previously served as Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development from 2005 to 2015 under the administration of his elder brother former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, during the final phase of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Lasantha Manilal Wickrematunge was a high-profile Sri Lankan journalist, politician, broadcaster and human rights activist who was assassinated in January 2009.
K. Muthukumar was an Indian journalist and activist based in the province of Tamil Nadu, who came into prominence when he set himself on fire protesting against the brutal atrocities against the Sri Lankan Tamil people at the peak of civil war in the country. His death instantly triggered widespread strikes, demonstrations and public unrest in the state, most notably the manifestation of popular defiance of the Government of India ban against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which the people demonstrated carrying flags of Tamil Eelam, placards and images of the LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran in the funeral procession of Muthukumar. Subsequently, 6 more Tamils committed self-immolation in various parts of the globe including India, Malaysia and Switzerland.
The history of Sri Lanka from 1948 to the present is marked by the independence of the country through to Dominion and becoming a Republic. The main factor has been conflict and civil war regarding the status of minority Tamils.
There were war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the Eelam War IV phase in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
Content from the United States diplomatic cables leak has depicted Sri Lanka and related subjects extensively. The leak, which began on 28 November 2010, occurred when the website of WikiLeaks—an international new media non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous news sources and news leaks—started to publish classified documents of detailed correspondence—diplomatic cables—between the United States Department of State and its diplomatic missions around the world. Since the initial release date, WikiLeaks is releasing further documents every day. 3,166 of the 251,287 diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks are from the US Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Buddhist scripture condemns violence in every form. Ahimsa, a term meaning 'not to injure', is a primary virtue in Buddhism. This article discusses Buddhist principles with regard to violence, and also provides certain, historical instances concerning the use of violence by Buddhists, including acts of aggression committed by Buddhists with political and socio-cultural motivations, as well as self-inflicted violence by ascetics or for religious purposes. Despite these historical instances, as far as the Buddha's teachings and scriptures are concerned, Buddhism forbids violence for resolving conflicts. Contemporary violence, or the promotion of violence, has been on the rise in some Buddhist communities, most notably the persecution of the Rohingya by the Myanmar government.
The Tamil genocide resolution of 2015 was passed by the Northern Provincial Council on 10 February 2015 seeking an UN inquiry to investigate the genocide of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka by successive Sri Lankan Governments, and direct appropriate measures at the International Criminal Court outlining the Tamil people had no faith in the domestic commission.
The following lists notable events that occurred during 2016 in Sri Lanka.
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.
