Word: tamil
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...place, the entrance to the magnificent Forbidden City. Why do Westerners prefer to see the tanks on the street? Feng Wang Brussels Trade Pessimism for Peace "An island on the edge" [Feb. 20] reported that Sri Lanka is drifting back into civil war between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil Tigers after a four-year cease-fire. Your story recounted the amazement of former Johns Hopkins visiting scholar Dayan Jayatilleka as he witnessed soldiers' donating blood for Tamils in the days after the tsunami. He said, "It was a magical moment. Then it was gone." Despite such pessimism, Sri Lanka...
...military convoys. On Jan. 7, a speedboat laden with explosives was driven into a Sri Lankan navy pursuit craft anchored a few hours south of Mullaitivu, killing 13 sailors. The Sri Lankan army and its paramilitary allies behave little better, raping, abducting and executing civilians thought to support Tamil nationalism. Both sides accuse the other, explaining any killings carried out by their side of the divide as forgivable retaliation. The violence over the winter prompted the new international effort to prevent a lurch back into all-out war. But Erik Solheim, Norway's International Development Minister and the chief mediator...
...hardly new. The civil war killed 64,000 people from 1983 to 2001. Tamil rebels?who run their own shadow government, with courts, traffic cops and a national anthem behind their heavily defended borders?have long demanded that leaders in Colombo recognize their sovereignty. The rebels say that if this is granted, they are willing to discuss the establishment of a federal state. The government in Colombo still insists on a unified state. Even if some sort of compromise is reached in Geneva, President Mahinda Rajapakse, a Sinhalese nationalist elected last year, might be hard pressed to sell...
...Tamil side has its own die-hard brigades. In a late-November speech, rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran admitted he had intended to launch a new offensive last year before the tsunami made it impractical. Prabhakaran warned Rajapakse that he would attack within three months unless the government recognized Tamil self-determination. "The Tigers didn't even allow me to breathe," Rajapakse told TIME. "They attacked within days [of the election]. They are trying to force us into...
...Tigers deny responsibility for recent attacks on the army, blaming them on spontaneous Tamil uprisings. Tiger political chief S.P. Tamilchelvan says the Sri Lankan army and its paramilitary squads have provoked such unrest. The Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights, which receives some funding from the Tigers but is reputed for its independence, has recorded the death of more than 70 Tamil civilians since Rajapakse's election, killed by the army or plainclothes death squads. The killings include the execution-style shooting of five Tamil students, the assassination of a Tamil parliamentarian in church on Christmas Eve, and the murder...