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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.
Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi formerly known as the Dalit Panthers of India or the Dalit Panthers Iyyakkam is an Indian social movement and political party that seeks to combat caste based discrimination, active in the state of Tamil Nadu. The party also has a strong emphasis on Tamil nationalism. Its chairman is Thol. Thirumavalavan, a lawyer from Chennai and its general secretary is the writer Ravikumar.
Tamil nationalism is the ideology which asserts that the Tamil people constitute a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Tamil people. Tamil nationalism is primarily a secular nationalism, that focus on language and homeland. It expresses itself in the form of linguistic purism, nationalism and irredentism, Social equality and Tamil Renaissance.
India–Sri Lanka relations also referred to Indian-Sri Lankan relations or Indo-Sri Lanka relations, are the bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka. Only 4% of Sri Lankans have a negative view on India, the lowest of all the countries surveyed by the Ipsos GlobalScan. The two countries are also close on economic terms with India being the island's largest trading partner and an agreement to establish a proto single market also under discussion at an advanced stage. There are deep racial and cultural links between the two countries. India and Sri Lanka share a maritime border. India is the only neighbour of Sri Lanka, separated by the Palk Strait; both nations occupy a strategic position in South Asia and have sought to build a common security umbrella in the Indian Ocean. Both India and Sri Lanka are republics within the Commonwealth of Nations.
British Tamils Forum or BTF, is a largest organisation representing the Tamil Community in the United Kingdom. The BTF intends to be the voice of the Tamil Community in the UK by raising the issues on Tamils in UK and to bring awareness to the issues affecting Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka and around the world. The BTF's work is focused on addressing the root cause to the conflict through an international justice mechanism to bring truth and justice to all victims of war and to bring end to the entrenched culture of impunity in Sri Lanka.
Protests in Canada against the Sri Lankan Civil War, often referred to as the Tamil protests by the media, consisted of a series of demonstrations which took place in major Canadian cities with a significant Tamil diaspora population during the year 2009 protesting the alleged genocide of Sri Lankan Tamil people in the Northern Province and Eastern Province of the island nation Sri Lanka. It was part of a global outcry by the Tamil diaspora to end the Sri Lankan Civil War, investigate acts of war crimes by the Government of Sri Lanka, and restore civil rights for Tamils in Sri Lanka. The aim was also to create awareness and appeal to leaders, notably the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, the President of the United States, Barack Obama and the Consulate General of Sri Lanka in Canada, Bandula Jayasekara, to take action in ending the conflict. Several Tamil Canadian citizens and business-owners from different parts of Canada and the United States took part in major protests set up in Toronto and Ottawa, while smaller scale demonstrations took place in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.
Between 2008 and 2009, major protests against the Sri Lankan Civil War took place in several countries around the world, urging national and world leaders and organisations to take action on bringing a unanimous cease fire to the Sri Lankan Civil War, which had taken place for twenty-six years. Tamil diaspora populations around the world expressed concerns regarding the conduct of the civil war in the island nation of Sri Lanka. The civil war, which took place between the Sri Lankan Army and the separatist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is believed to have killed over 100,000 civilians. Protesters and critics of the Sri Lankan government that triggered a culturally based civil war to be a systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Sri Lankan Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.
The war was waged for over a quarter of a century, with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war, on 20 May 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, "A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
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.
The Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War was the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka intended to perform a peacekeeping role. The deployment followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord between India and Sri Lanka of 1987 which was intended to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between militant Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists, principally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Sri Lankan military.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
The 2013 Anti–Sri Lanka protests are a series of student protests and agitations initiated by the Students Federation for Freedom of Tamil Eelam in Tamil Nadu, India, against war crimes committed against Sri Lankan Tamil people by Sri Lankan army during the Eelam War IV. The protesters demanded that the Government of India vote in support of a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution censuring the Government of Sri Lanka for war crimes. Some radical groups even demanded the prosecution of the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse for his role in the alleged genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils. Apart from college students, doctors, film personalities and employees of IT companies also participated in the protests.
Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is a remembrance day observed by Sri Lankan Tamil people to remember those who died in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. It is held each year on 18 May, the date on which the civil war ended in 2009, and is named after Mullivaikkal, a village on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war.
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.
May 17 Movement is a prominent Tamil National Civil rights movement fighting for the justice for the Tamil Genocide in Tamil Eelam & the rights of Tamils in Tamil Nadu.
Contributions to popular culture involving direct reference to the Sri Lankan Tamil community in Indian cinema are listed below. All communities that speak Tamil and originally came from Sri Lanka are included. Tamils of Sri Lanka today are a trans-national minority and are found across the globe. While most films on the topic are made in Tamil cinema, there has also been Malayalam and Hindi content on the area.
References
- ↑ "Contacts". Tamils Against Genecide. April 29, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ↑ "Tamil group files lawsuit against Rajapaksa in US - Indian Express". The Indian Express . 29 January 2011. Retrieved 29 November 2012.
- ↑ "TGTE Launches Signature Campaign for Sri Lanka Genocide Investigation". Transitional Government of Tamil Eelam. April 24, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
