Word: mahinda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Though many outside Sri Lanka have called for a political settlement, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has staked his leadership on a military defeat of the LTTE. Since taking office in 2005, he has redefined the conflict as a "war on terrorism" and cast himself as a son of the soil, a loyal defender of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. "The average Sinhalese person trusts him," says Saravanamuttu. "He's seen very much as a man of the people." The war has the overwhelming support of Sri Lanka's rural heartland in the south, and Rajapaksa is unlikely to seek a truce when...
...takeover of the city of Mullaittivu, an LTTE stronghold. An estimated 250,000 ethnic Tamils remain trapped in the war zone, with human-rights groups accusing both sides of putting civilians' lives at risk. Violence between the rebels and the Sri Lankan military has escalated since President Mahinda Rajapaksa took power in 2005; nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting since...
...LTTE is short on supplies and fighters, and has gone to ground in an ever ever-shrinking pocket of jungle in the northeast of the country as government forces advance. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Sunday called for the LTTE's surrender, but there is little chance that a rebel movement whose fighters over the years have chosen suicide over capture will go down quietly. (See pictures from inside Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger territory...
...decades of suppression of the country's largest minority. A cease-fire agreement signed in 2002 raised hopes that the bombings, assassinations and terrorism had finally come to an end. But the Tigers and the government failed to reach a meaningful political compromise and returned to war. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised a "military solution" to the Tamil question. He is almost there. After months of intense fighting in the LTTE-controlled areas of the Tamil-majority north, the army has captured Kilinochchi, the rebels' administrative capital, and it is moving toward their last strongholds in the jungles around Mullaitivu...
...Leader was no-holds-barred, occasionally salacious stories alleging corruption and self-dealing among the powerful. No matter who the ruling party was, all officials were his potential targets. And Wickrematunge believed he had become theirs. His paper's stories and editorials about the administration of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa have been particularly controversial. The newspaper is fighting a defamation lawsuit by Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President's brother, over a series of Leader articles alleging corruption. The Sri Lankan government has denied responsibility for the attack on Wickrematunge and has called for an investigation...