Word: sinhala
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...There are already signs of development - new roads, new bridges - but I've also heard some concern that the roads, for example, instead of connecting Tamil-majority areas to one another, are connecting the Tamil-majority east to the [Sinhala-majority] south, making it easier for people from the south to do businesss there, to move there. Is there some kind of effort to change the demography of the Tamil-majority areas? No, but it's happening in Colombo. The eastern-province Muslims have come here. The Tamils have come here. You ask them, Why are you coming here...
...Prabhakaran said. Jaffna was then considered the heart of Tamil culture and literature in Sri Lanka, and also the center of the growing Tamil nationalist movement, which called for greater autonomy for Tamil-majority areas to protest what they considered discrimination against Tamils by Sri Lanka's Sinhala-speaking majority. The most radical groups wanted complete independence and struck out at symbols of the Sri Lankan state, including fellow Tamils whom they considered collaborators...
...guerillas - are fighting to secede from the the island country of Sri Lanka. Tamils originally immigrated to Sri Lanka from southern India and make up 10 to 15% of the population, compared to the majority Sinhalese, who constitute about 75%. In 1972, the Sinhalese-controlled Sri Lankan government declared Sinhala and Buddhism the official language and religion. The Tamils, who practice Hinduism and have their own language, took this action as an affront, and Vellupillai Prabhakaran founded the Tigers soon after. The group is formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). (See pictures of Sri Lanka...
...roots of discord go back to colonial times. The British favored the Tamils in the civil service in what Neil DeVotta, author of Blowback, a book about the origins of the conflict, says was "classic divide and rule." After independence in 1948, the Sinhalese took revenge. They made Sinhala the official language, discriminated against Tamils in areas like education and farming, and made Sinhala chauvinism a winning electoral strategy, most recently last November for President Rajapakse. Eventually, the L.T.T.E. took up the cause for the Tamils and began fighting for their own state in the northeast. Today the Tigers...
...Lanka's Buddhist majority has fought back periodic invasions from Hindu India. Sri Lanka's Tamils are Hindus too, and the Sinhalese tend to regard them as India's natural allies. The current round of Tamil-Sinhalese conflict goes back to 1956, when the Sinhalese-dominated government made Sinhala the sole official language and restricted job and educational opportunities for minorities, effectively reducing the Tamils to second-class citizens...