Word: lankans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...When 64 Tamils landed at London's Heathrow Airport in February 1987, British authorities attempted to deport 58 of them. The official explanation was that the asylum seekers "failed to prove they had a justifiable fear of persecution," although several of them bore torture marks inflicted in Sri Lankan prisons. Panicked, the refugees stripped off their clothes on $ Heathrow's tarmac and refused to budge. A court injunction eventually forced authorities to grant the Tamils access to legal representation. Most of them remain in Britain awaiting a final disposition of their cases, but some were sent home; five of those...
...invaders left at least 30 dead, most of them civilians, and nearly 100 injured. According to Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel, several eyewitnesses identified as the leader of the band a once prominent Maldivian businessman named Abdulla Lutefi, who currently operates a farm near the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo. Several years ago, Lutefi was arrested for entering Maldives with a firearm, apparently in an attempt to overthrow Ibrahim Nasir, Gayoom's predecessor as President. Both Sri Lankan and Maldivian authorities suspect that Lutefi may have hired the Tamil mercenaries, many of whom have become increasingly inactive since India sent army...
...massacre bore all the hallmarks of the guerrilla group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and came almost exactly one year after Indian troops launched their offensive to disarm the Tigers. Indian soldiers had arrived in Sri Lanka in July 1987 to help implement an Indo-Sri Lankan agreement that gives the minority Tamils a greater measure of autonomy. But militants on opposite sides of the bloody Sri Lankan conflict united in rejecting the agreement...
President Jayewardene had his hands full in the south, meanwhile, as radicals among the Sinhalese majority continued their own agitation against the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement. Even schoolchildren took part in last week's protests, resulting in three student deaths before the government closed down all schools indefinitely. On Monday the J.V.P. called for a "day of resistance" against the provincial election. More in fear than in sympathy -- the J.V.P. has in the past year murdered some 450 supporters of the accord -- most of the Sinhalese population cooperated. The strike marked the second time in a month that Sinhalese rebels...
...fighting by the island's Tamil separatists, the assumption was that the operation would be relatively quick and painless. After all, India's soldiers outnumbered the roughly 2,000 members of the ragtag Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam more than 3 to 1, and had the backing of Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene. But the offensive dragged on, offering little hope that the guerrillas will give up their four-year battle for an independent Tamil homeland...