The liberation tigers of tamil eelam and the lost quest for separatism in Sri Lanka

Asian Survey

Volumn 49, Issue 6, 2009, Pages 1021-1051

  DeVotta, Neil ^a  

^a WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Eelam; LTTE; Sinhalese buddhist nationalism; Sri Lanka; Terrorism

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL INFLUENCE; DEMOCRACY; ETHNICITY; ETHNOPOLITICS; GOVERNANCE APPROACH; INDEPENDENCE; MINORITY GROUP; NATIONALISM; POLITICAL CONFLICT; SOCIAL MOVEMENT; STATE BUILDING; TERRORISM;

SRI LANKA;

EID: 73449117914     PISSN: 00044687     EISSN: 1533838X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/as.2009.49.6.1021     Document Type: Article

References (121)

1. FBI, "Taming the Tamil Tigers," 〈http://www.fbi.gov/page2/ jan08/tamil-tigers011008. html〉, accessed January 12, 2008.
2. Neil DeVotta, Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)
3. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000).
4. Also see Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability (Columbus, Oh.: Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1972)
5. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), ch. 8.
6. Between 800,000 and a million Sri Lankan Tamils have left the island since the civil war began in 1983.
7. Most have settled in Canada (over 250,000), the United Kingdom (about 150,000), India (over 100,000), Germany (over 50,000), and France, Australia, and Switzerland (around 50,000 each).
8. Also called "hybrid regimes," soft authoritarianism combines electoral democracy with authoritarian governance. Such sham democracies typically suppress dissent, muzzle the media, control information flows, undermine the opposition, and manipulate state institutions to perpetuate the ruling party's reign.
9. Statistical Pocket Book of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics, 1996), pp. 15-16.
10. Department of Census and Statistics-Sri Lanka, Statistical Pocket Book 2008, at 〈http:// www.statistics.gov.lk/Pocket%202008(English)/index. html〉, accessed October 18, 2009.
11. Going by their accents, however, it appears that some Indian Tamils relocated to the Northern Province following these riots.
12. Statistical Pocket Book of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, p. 14.
13. Department of Census and Statistics-Sri Lanka, Statistical Pocket Book 2008.
14. Since the mid-1950s, the Buddhist clergy and Buddhist nationalists have vociferously opposed any compromise with Tamils on issues ranging from official status for the Tamil language to devolution of political power. Most also demanded a military, as opposed to a political, solution to the civil war and continue to baldly promote Sinhalese Buddhist domination over the island's minority communities.
15. See Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
16. H. L. Seneviratne, The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
17. Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology: Implications for Politics and Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka, Policy Studies 40 (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2007).
18. This is partly documented in DeVotta, Blowback.
19. In a discussion (May 2001) with a retired Sinhalese Buddhist army officer now domiciled in the United States, he insouciantly recalled how while stationed in the Northern Province in the 1970s
20. he expected loitering Tamil youths to stand up as a show of respect whenever his jeep passed them. "If they did not," he said, "I asked them to approach the vehicle and slapped them a couple of times." Nearly three decades later, he appeared oblivious to the possibility that such humiliating practices could have encouraged such youth to clamor for a separate state in which they could live with dignity and self-respect.
21. See Neil DeVotta, "Sri Lanka at Sixty: A Legacy of Ethnocentrism and Degeneration," Economic and Political Weekly 44:5 (January 31, 2009), pp. 46-53.
22. See Patricia Hyndman, Sri Lanka: Serendipity under Siege (Nottingham, U.K.: Spokesman, 1988).
23. For a concise account of the island's ethnic conflict, see Neil DeVotta, "Sri Lanka's Civil War," in The Handbook of Asian Security Studies, eds. Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell, and Joseph Liow (New York: Routledge, 2010), forthcoming.
24. See Neil DeVotta, "When Individuals, States, and Systems Collide: India's Foreign Policy toward Sri Lanka," in India's Foreign Policy: Retrospect and Prospect, ed.
25. Sumit Ganguly (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), forthcoming;
26. S. D. Muni, Pangs of Proximity: India and Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993)
27. Rajesh Kandian, India's Sri Lanka Fiasco: Peacekeepers at War (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1990)
28. Sumantra Bose, States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka, India, and the Tamil Eelam Movement (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994)
29. P. Sahadevan and Neil DeVotta, Politics of Conflict and Peace in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Manak Publications, 2006).
30. A 17 year old, Ponnudarai Sivakumaran, was the first Tamil to commit suicide using cyanide in June 1974 to avoid being captured by security forces, and it appears his death influenced the LTTE's cyanide culture. An LTTE cadre first used the substance in May 1984.
31. One estimate claims that, over the next eight years, one-third of all LTTE fighters died swallowing cyanide. By 2001, over 1,000 Tigers had consumed cyanide. In April 2009, many senior fighters also died consuming cyanide during one of the last major battles fought between the LTTE and the military. For the first estimate, see Peter Schalk, "Beyond Hindu Festivals: The Celebration of Great Heroes' Day by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Europe," in Tempel und Tamilen in Zweiter Heimat: Hindus aus Sri Lanka im Deutschsprachigen und Skandinavischem Raum [Temple and Tamils in a second homeland: Hindus from Sri Lanka in the German speaking and Scandinavian area], eds. Martin Baumann et al. (Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2003), p. 396, fn. 1.
32. Also see Anita Pratap, Island of Blood: Frontline Reports from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Other South Asian Flashpoints (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2002), p. 98.
33. In May 1987, the Sri Lankan military launched a major military offensive designed to wipe out the LTTE. The resultant destruction coupled with political pressure from Tamil Nadu caused Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to impose the Indo-Lanka Peace Agreement on Sri Lanka and the LTTE. Sri Lanka and India negotiated the agreement, but the LTTE leader was kept confined to a hotel room in New Delhi until he too accepted its conditions. As part of the agreement, the LTTE agreed to decommission its weapons; the Sri Lankan government agreed to recognize Tamil (and English), in addition to Sinhala, as official languages, merge the Northern and Eastern Provinces, and institute a provincial council system through which Tamils in the northeast were afforded autonomy. India promised to militarily assist Sri Lanka to ensure the island's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The IPKF was stationed a day after the agreement was signed as part of India's commitment to help Sri Lanka stabilize the northeast and promote peace.
34. Muni, Pangs of Proximity, p. 153.
35. This is best exemplified by some LTTE literature referring to Prabhakaran as "Sun God." With Prabhakaran in Sanskrit meaning "Maker of Light" and surya meaning sun, it appears the latter was used as an epithet to deify the LTTE leader as surya thevan (sun god).
36. For the best account hitherto on Prabhakaran, see M. R. Narayan Swamy, Inside an Illusive Mind: Prabhakaran: The First Profile of the World's Most Ruthless Guerrilla Leader (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2003).
37. Some useful firsthand information is also provided in Adele Balasingham, The Will to Freedom: The Inside View of Tamil Resistance (Mit- cham, U.K.: Fairmax, 2001).
38. For details on Prabhakaran's demise, see D. B. S. Jeyaraj, "The Last Days of Thiruvenkadam Veluppillai Prabhakaran," 〈http://dbsjeyaraj. com/dbsj/archives/615〉 accessed July 10, 2009.
39. For details on the B-C and D-C pacts, see DeVotta, Blowback, pp. 102-13 and 130-31
40. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947-1977 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
41. DeVotta, Blowback, p. 182.
42. See Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, The Tamil Tigers: Armed Struggle for Identity (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), p. 65.
43. Author interviews with Tamils in the Eastern Province in January and July 2006 also elicited such strident anti-LTTE sentiments.
44. This assertion is based on the author's conversations with numerous Tamils in Sri Lanka, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and especially Canada. Most among these Tamils continued to support eelam; they merely wished the LTTE eschewed thuggery and predatory practices.
45. Author interviews in January and July 2006 with Tamils in Batticaloa. Also, an LTTE lawyer suggested that certain people who lived in government-controlled areas preferred LTTE courts, especially when dealing with cases related to property. In some instances, the properties concerned were in LTTE areas, and litigants had no choice but to attend LTTE courts. Some living in government-controlled areas who had attended the LTTE courts claimed that they appreciated the expeditious dispensation of justice, although others complained that LTTE judges were partial to litigants living in LTTE areas.
46. See Nagalingam Ethirveerasingham, "The Civil Administration in Thamil Eelam," May 10, 1996, 〈http://www.tamilnation.org/tamileelam/ defacto/1996.htm〉, accessed April 11, 2008. Also see Kristian Stokke, "Building the Tamil Eelam State: Emerging State Institutions and Forms of Governance in LTTE-Controlled Areas in Sri Lanka," Third World Quarterly 27:6 (2006), pp. 1021-40.
47. I thank Dr. Joseph Vaz Chandrakanthan of Toronto, Canada, for sharing some of this information.
48. I thank Kiruthiha Kulendiren of Mississauga, Canada, for sharing some of this information.
49. This is true for both Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, where Christians and Hindus disregarded religious affiliations and instead cohered based on linguistic ties.
50. For details, see Michael Roberts, "Saivite Symbols, Sacrifice, and Tamil Tiger Rites,"Social Analysis 49:1 (Spring 2005), 67-93.
51. These well maintained cemeteries also served as an emotional space conducive to recruiting cadres.
52. The LTTE was arguably least autocratic when introducing its social dogmas among older people.
53. See Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, "Female Warriors, Martyrs, and Suicide Attackers: Women in the LTTE," International Review of Modern Sociology 34:1 (Spring 2008), pp. 1-25.
54. Karuna's misappropriation of finances apparently played a big role in the split.
55. For a concise analysis of Sri Lankan politics, see Neil DeVotta, "Politics and Governance in Post-Independence Sri Lanka," in Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, ed. Paul R. Brass (New York: Routledge, 2010), forthcoming.
56. B. Muralidhar Reddy, "Celebrating War," Frontline 24:1 (July 28-August 10, 2007),
57. 〈http://www.flonnet.com/fl2415/stories/20070810505905200.htm〉, accessed August 5, 2007.
58. For instance, the LTTE hoped that the peace process would cause the U.S. and other countries to reconsider their proscriptions of the group. It also wanted the Ranil Wickrema- singhe government to agree to an interim administration in the northeast. Not only did the extant proscriptions stay in place, but Wickremasinghe's government refused to install an interim administration. Wickremasinghe also kept referring to the international community's involvement as a "safety net," a point that was reinforced when 51 countries and 22 international organizations participated in the Tokyo Conference held in June 2003 (that the LTTE boycotted) and pledged to finance development and promote peace in Sri Lanka. The tough line the international community adopted against the LTTE around this time coupled with its determination to tie developmental aid in LTTE-controlled areas to peace and democratic governance further upset the organization.
59. Author interviews between 2006 and 2009 with a number of Tamil activists in the diaspora, and some reports suggest this may have been part of the bargain between the Raja- paksa forces and LTTE.
60. For details, see DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology.
61. Pillayan had joined the LTTE as a child soldier but broke away from the group with Colonel Karuna. He later challenged Karuna for leadership of the TMVP.
62. The claims about direct LTTE links to al-Qaida, when traced back, appear to originate with Sri Lankan authorities who were apparently engaged in a disinformation campaign. There is, however, no gainsaying that al-Qaida and other terrorist outfits learned much from the LTTE's modi operandi.
63. By the time the government abrogated the ceasefire unilaterally in January 2008, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), comprising Scandinavians, had stopped tallying ceasefire violations. According to the SLMM, as of April 2007 the LTTE violated the ceasefire 3,830 times, while the government violated it 351 times. See B. Muralidhar Reddy, "Ceasefire Agreement a Meaningless Paper," The Hindu, January 3, 2008, p. 12.
64. The fear that a victorious Rajiv Gandhi would redeploy Indian troops against the LTTE, anger over the Congress Party's alleged involvement in sacking the pro-LTTE DMK government in Tamil Nadu in January 1991, and the subsequent crackdown against the LTTE in that state all contributed to Prabhakaran's decision to have Gandhi assassinated.
65. See University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), LTTE Is No Excuse for Killing Vanni Civilians, Information Bulletin, no. 47 (April 17, 2009), 〈http://www.uthr.org/bulletins/ Bul47.htm〉, accessed April 24, 2009.
66. Vicky Nanjappa, "Rights Group Flays Sri Lanka on 'Disappearances'," March 6, 2008, at 〈http://im.rediff.com/news/2008/ mar/06ltte.htmr∠, accessed on July 15, 2008. "Disappeared" implies vanished and presumed to have been killed.
67. Munza Mushtaq, "Sri Lanka's White Van Victims Found in CID, TID," Lanka Academic, April 21, 2008, at 〈http://www. theacademic.org/stories/12086845140/story.shtml〉, accessed on April 21, 2008.
68. Somini Sengupta, "Kidnappings Return to Haunt Long Ethnic War in Sri Lanka," New York Times, November 7, 2006, pp. 1(A) and 9(A).
69. Also see Nora Boustany, "Moves by Sri Lanka Military Worry Human Rights Group," Washington Post, May 18, 2007, p. 19(A)
70. U. S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Sri Lanka: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2006, March 6, 2007, at 〈http://www.state.gov/g/drl/ rls/hrrpt/2006/78875.htmr∠, accessed on March 10, 2007.
71. Human Rights Watch, Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for "Disappearances" and Abductions in Sri Lanka, 〈http://hrw. org/reports/2008/srilanka0308/〉, accessed July 2, 2008.
72. See ibid.; U. S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Sri Lanka: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2007, March 11, 2008, at 〈http:// www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100620. htm〉, accessed March 12, 2008.
73. See University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Can the East Be Won Through Human Culling, Special Report, no. 26 (August 3, 2007), at 〈http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/ spreport26.htm〉, accessed on August 4, 2007.
74. See ibid., Slow Strangulation of Jaffna: Trashing General Larry Wijeratnes Legacy and Enthroning Barbarism, Special Report, no. 28 (December 4, 2007), 〈http://www.uthr.org/ SpecialReports/spreport28.htm〉, accessed December 6, 2007.
75. Bharatha Mallawarachi, "Sri Lankan Journalists Cite Intimidation," Lanka Academic, June 21, 2008, 〈http://www. theacademic.org/〉, accessed June 22, 2008.
76. Amnesty International USA, "Sri Lanka Human Rights," 〈http://www.amnestyusa. org/all-countries/sri-lanka/page.do?id= 1011241〉, accessed July 5, 2009.
77. Overall, Sri Lanka ranked 165 out of 173 countries in 2008. In 2009 it ranked 162 out of 175, and among states with elected governments was only ahead of Turkmenistan. See
78. Reporters Without Borders, "Press Freedom Index 2008," at 〈http://www.rsf.org/en-classement 794-2008.html〉 and "Press Freedom Index 2009," at 〈http://www.rsf.org/en-classement1003- 2009.html〉, accessed October 20, 2009.
79. For a detailed, chronological account of these massacres (and also LTTE atrocities against civilians), see U. S. Department of State, Report to Congress on Incidents during the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of State, 2009). It is consequently not surprising that aid agencies estimate that 25% of all injured Tamil civilians have had limbs amputated.
80. See Somini Sengupta, "War Wanes, but Civilians Face Crisis in Sri Lanka," New York Times, April 22, 2009, p. A7. Some Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists, obsessed with ethnic demographics, advocated a military solution to the conflict because war forced Tamils to flee the northeast and also leave the country. To their way of thinking, the fewer Tamils living in the northeast, the easier it would become to transplant Sinhalese and disregard demands for devolution. Only the passage of time will tell if such a mind-set also influenced the calibrated bombardment of Tamil civilians during the final phase of Sri Lanka's civil war.
81. See DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, pp. 45-50.
82. With the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime brutally cracking down against anyone criticizing the military, the mainstream media have eschewed reporting on military-related rapes and disappearances. One or two intrepid Tamil parliamentarians, persons in the Tamil diaspora, and some foreign journalists have discussed the alleged rape of Tamil women, although human rights groups and the U. S. State Department's 2008 Human Rights Report also documented the use of rape among Sri Lankan security and paramilitary forces. This no doubt influenced U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to tell the U. N. Security Council in October 2009 that Sri Lanka was among certain countries where rape was "used as a tactic of war." See Foreign Policy, "Sri Lanka Angry over Clinton's Rape Comment," October 8, 2009, at 〈http://hillary.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/08/sri-lanka-angry-over- clinton-rape-com- ment〉, accessed October 10, 2009. During the five months between May and September 2009 alone over 10,000 Tamils are said to have disappeared from government run camps. See U. S.
83. Department of State, Report to Congress on Incidents during the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka; Lanka News Web, "Over 10,000 People Have Disappeared from IDP Camps," September 3, 2009, at 〈http://www. lankanewsweb.com/news/EN-2009-09-02-006.html〉, accessed September 3, 2009; ibid., "Are We Witnessing the Local Version of George Orwell's '1984'?" September 22, 2009, at 〈http://www.lankanewsweb.com/news/EN- 2009-09-22-001.html〉, accessed September 23, 2009.
84. Even members of Parliament representing the opposition have been refused entry into the most notorious camps.
85. U. S. Department of State, Report to Congress on Incidents during the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka, pp. 11-14.
86. Ibid.; also see Indian Express, "LTTE Cadres Go on Shooting Spree, Kill 19 Tamil Civilians," February 11, 2009, at 〈http://www. indianexpress.com/news/ltte-cadres-go-on- shooting-spree-kill-19-ta/421888/ 〉, accessed February 26, 2009.
87. The government has disputed the figures but disallowed an independent investigation or access to the battle zone, while the U.N. has placed the number killed during this time at around 7,000. See Joe Leahy, "Tamil Rebels Concede Defeat in Sri Lanka," Financial Times, May 18, 2009, p. 2; The Economist, "After the Slaughter," May 30, 2009, pp. 44-45
88. Dean Nelson, "Up to 30,000 'Disabled' by Sri Lankan Shells," Daily Telegraph, May 24, 2009, 〈http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/asia/srilanka/5378047/Up-to-30000-disabled-by-Sri- Lankan-shells.html〉, accessed May 30, 2009
89. Times Online, "Slaughter in Sri Lanka," May 29, 2009, at 〈http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading-article/article6382706. ece〉, accessed May 30, 2009.
90. Some reports claim Prabhakaran and his youngest son were tortured and killed after surrendering to security forces. The current official position of bot h the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE is that Prabhakaran died fighting.
91. General Sarath Fonseka, the army commander who oversaw the war's end, said elsewhere that 26,000 army personnel were injured. The conflict's ferocity is evidenced when U.S. casualties in Iraq - 4,241 killed and 30,182 injured between March 2003 and June 2009 - are compared with Sri Lanka's military casualties during the last three years of war. For the relevant figures, see The Economist, "Too Many Heroes," June 6, 2009, p. 42
92. Daily News (Colombo, Sri Lanka), "Winning War with Less Casualties, a Great Victory," July 13, 2009
93. 〈http://www. dailynews.lk/2009/07/13/sec03.asp〉, accessed July 14, 2009; GlobalSecurity.org, "U. S. Casualties in Iraq," at
94. 〈http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq-casualties. htm〉, accessed July 10, 2009.
95. Ziad Obermeyer, Christopher J. L. Murray, and Emmanuela Gakidou, "Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: Analysis of Data from the World Health Survey Program," British Medical Journal 336 (June 2008), pp. 1482-86.
96. It is perhaps an exaggeration, but Sri Lankan officials estimate that the deposits in secret LTTE bank accounts could total between one billion and five billion dollars.
97. This infighting helped Sri Lanka's intelligence forces capture the LTTE's new leader, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, in August 2009 in Malaysia.
98. See, for instance, Shyamantha Asokan, "Young Tamils Swap Bombs for BlackBerrys," Financial Times, October 17-18, 2009, p. 19 (Life & Arts).
99. For details, see University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Can the East Be Won Through Human Culling; Lanka News Web, "Plan to Settle IDPs in the Midst of Army and Sinhalese Settlements," August 21, 2009, at
100. 〈http://www.lankanewsweb.com/news/EN-2009- 08-21-004.html〉, accessed August 21, 2009; ibid.,
101. "Lands of Tamils and Muslims in Saman- thruai Forcibly Taken," August 29, 2009, at
102. 〈http://www.lankanewsweb.com/news/EN-2009-08-29-003.html〉, accessed August 29, 2009
103. Island (Colombo, Sri Lanka), "Colombo Wants to Change Wanni Demography by Settling 30% Sinhalese in Killinochchi and Mullaitivu: TNA Tells Tamil Nadu MPs," October 12, 2009, at 〈http://www.island.lk/2009/10/ 12/news12.html〉, accessed on October 17, 2009.
104. Financial Times, "Dark Triumphalism Clouds Sri Lanka," August 11, 2009, p. 6.
105. For instance, the EU has condemned the abuses that accompanied the latter stages of the war and the overall deterioration in democratic values, and the EU now seems set to disqualify Sri Lanka from its Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) concession. Sri Lanka is the only Asian country among 16 states that benefits from GSP+, which allows it to export garments to the EU using low tariffs. The concession was granted in April 2005 in reaction to the December 2004 tsunami, but it is contingent on the government ratifying and implementing 27 treaties dealing with human rights, labor, and the environment. Currently, around 35% of Sri Lanka's high quality clothing exports go to the EU states, helping the apparel sector to generate the highest amount of foreign currency for the island. Thus, the loss of GSP+ could very well undermine the island's garment industry. It would certainly represent another huge cost stemming from how the war against the LTTE was waged.
106. Parliamentary elections must be held by April 2010. The government wants to win these elections with a two-thirds majority, as this would allow it to alter or replace the Constitution in a manner that benefits the president and his family. While presidential elections
107. need not be held until November 2011, many think President Rajapaksa may call an early election to capitalize on his popularity and assure himself a second term. As already noted, Tamils typically do not vote for SLFP candidates, and this is especially the case during presidential elections. Consequently, controlling the votes of over a quarter million Tamils (by ensuring they cannot vote or do not vote for the opposition) will immensely help the president and the SLFP toward realizing their electoral goals.
108. Thus, Jaffna, which had 15,000 military personnel stationed during the war, now has 35,000 soldiers. See, for instance, Tisaranee Gunasekara, "Shame," Island (Colombo, Sri Lanka), August 30, 2009, at 〈http://www.island.lk/2009/08/30/features1.html〉, accessed on
109. September 15, 2009.
110. HSZ refer to military camps and areas surrounding military camps, airstrips, and harbors that the security forces have set up in the northeast, often by appropriating Tamil-owned homes and fertile lands. Many Tamils consider the HSZ an extension of the state's colonization project, and the evidence tends to bear this out. For instance, while commercial activities were allowed within the two HSZs that were created in Muttur East and Sampur in the Trin- comalee District (after the military took over these LTTE-controlled areas in the Eastern Province), the nearly 20,000 families who consequently lost their properties were barred from entering the areas. The government now has plans to build a coal power plant in Sampur.
111. While those promoting such colonization have adopted new tactics, the overarching practice of ethnic flooding is rooted in long-standing Sinhalese Buddhist hegemonic designs supported by politicians, civil servants, and the Buddhist clergy. For instance, in the early 1960s Sirimavo Bandaranaike's Permanent Secretary for Defense and External Affairs N. Q. Dias advocated setting up military bases throughout the Northern Province to pacify and control Tamils. Some Buddhist monks also supported such a strategy. See Madihe Panna- seeha, Eelam According to the Political Tamils (Colombo: Swastika Press, 1979)
112. Neville Jayaweera, "Into the Turbulence of Jaffna," Island (Colombo, Sri Lanka), October 5, 2008, at 〈http://www.island. lk/2008/10/05/features2.html〉, accessed October 15, 2008
113. Patrick Peebles, "Colonization and Ethnic Conflict in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka," Journal of Asian Studies 49:1 (February 1990), pp. 30-55
114. DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, pp. 45-50
115. D. B. S. Jeyaraj, "The Buddha Statue and Tamil Solidarity in Trincomalee," Sunday Leader (Colombo, Sri Lanka), April 9, 2006, at 〈http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20060409/ issues.htm#The〉, accessed May 15, 2006
116. Lanka News Web, "Sensitive Colonization Issue in
117. Sri Lanka's Welioya (Manel Aru) Area," July 15, 2009, at 〈http://www.lankanewsweb.com/ news/EN-2009-07-15-008.html〉, accessed July 15, 2009; Island (Colombo, Sri Lanka), "Nip It in the Bud," August 28, 2009, at 〈http://www.island.lk/2009/08/28/editorial. html〉, accessed September 10, 2009.
118. See Neil DeVotta, "Terrorism and Democratic Regression in Sri Lanka," Economic and Political Weekly 43:14 (April 5, 2008), pp. 15-17
119. Tisaranee Gunasekara, "From the Sun God to the High King?" Sunday Leader (Colombo, Sri Lanka), July 12, 2009, at 〈http://www. thesundayleader.lk/20090712/spotlight.htm〉, accessed July 20, 2009.
120. At the time of writing, speculation is rife that General Sarath Fonseka, who as commander of the Army mapped war strategy to defeat the LTTE, may represent the opposition in the next presidential election. Although no military personnel in Sri Lanka have hitherto successfully campaigned and won high political office, Sarath Fonseka's popularity could
121. make him a formidable presidential candidate. Such a contest may very well lead to recriminations between the Rajapaksa and Fonseka camps and elicit the truth about how exactly war was waged against the LTTE and Tamil civilians.