Word: eelam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...after the signing ceremony, some 3,000 Indian troops landed on the Tamil-dominated Jaffna peninsula in the north of the island. Their task: to disarm the guerrillas and take up peacekeeping duties. Those efforts promised + to be tricky; the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the largest and most militant of five rebel groups, insisted that they would not consider disarming until New Delhi released their leader, Vellupillai Prabakaran. He had been under house arrest in New Delhi after calling the pact a "stab in the back, but early this week Prabakaran was released and returned to Jaffna after pledging...
...explosion capped the bloodiest week yet since the outbreak of civil war four years ago. The government of President Junius R. Jayewardene blamed two separatist groups for the violence: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam Revolutionary Organization. Sri Lanka's 2 million Tamils have long protested against political and economic discrimination by the country's 16 million Sinhalese. While moderate Tamil leaders have attempted to negotiate a settlement of the conflict, the Tigers and other militant groups have demanded an independent Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka's Northern and Eastern provinces...
...government issued a statement blaming the bombing on two Tamil separatist groups, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students...
Government officials blamed both attacks on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the most radical of the insurgent factions fighting to establish an independent state in the northern and eastern parts of the country. The two bombings suggest that the militant Tamil insurgents are willing to bring the fighting to the capital, a significant escalation of the bitter three-year civil war in which more than 3,000 people have been killed. "These attacks," said an official of the National Security Ministry on TV following the second bombing, "indicate the group is no longer interested in a peaceful settlement...
...then known as Ceylon, won independence from Great Britain, their 2 million people have been discriminated against by the island's 11.8 million predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese majority. The rebels argue that they can achieve full rights to education and employment only by establishing a separate homeland, which they call Eelam...