Sri Lanka

E

1

Assassination of Bandaranaike

On September 25, 1959, Prime Minister Bandaranaike was shot by a Buddhist monk and died the following day. In the general elections of March 19, 1960, the UNP won the greatest number of votes, and two days later Dudley Senanayake again became prime minister in a minority Cabinet, which quickly lost parliamentary confidence. New general elections held on July 20 resulted in the victory of the SLFP now led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike, widow of the late prime minister, and she was sworn in as prime minister.

E

2

Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict

On December 31, 1960, a bill was passed making Sinhalese the only official language of the country. Representatives of the Tamil-speaking minority led mass demonstrations against the measure in early 1961. To cope with the situation, a state of emergency was declared, the Tamil Federal Party (TFP) was forbidden to operate, and strikes were declared illegal. Sinhalese-Tamil relations continued to be strained until January 1966, when Tamil was made the official administrative language in the northern and eastern parts of the island.

F

The Republic

With the nation in a period of economic decline, Dudley Senanayake was returned to power in the 1965 legislative elections. His policy of non-alignment, economic development, and increased domestic production did not satisfy the voters, as high unemployment, food shortages, and labour unrest continued. In 1970 a leftist coalition headed by Sirimavo Bandaranaike won the elections; the new government began to move the country towards socialism. In March 1971 a brief but violent armed revolt took place, sparked by leaders of the Marxist-oriented People’s Liberation Front. By September, the Bandaranaike government had almost completely suppressed the rebellion. In that month the Senate was abolished and the House of Representatives was renamed the National Assembly.

On May 22, 1972, the country, officially changed its name from Ceylon to the Republic of Sri Lanka, when the assembly adopted a new constitution. Bandaranaike continued as prime minister, and William Gopallawa was appointed president.

In 1977 Bandaranaike’s government was decisively defeated at the polls. She was replaced as prime minister by Junius R. Jayewardene, leader of the UNP. In 1978 his government replaced the 1972 constitution with one providing for an executive president, an office which Jayewardene then assumed. Reversing the socialist trends of his predecessor, he achieved some initial economic gains. By 1980, however, inflation and falling wages led to a general strike, which the government thwarted only by calling out troops. Later in the year Bandaranaike was expelled from the National Assembly and barred from voting or standing for election for seven years. The Supreme Court had previously found her to have abused her power during her years as the country’s prime minister. Jayewardene won re-election for a second six-year presidential term in October 1982. Subsequently, in December, a government proposal to extend the life of parliament until 1989 was approved by popular referendum.

G

Civil War

In 1983 a civil war began between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a group seeking to create a separate nation for the Tamil minority in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. In June 1987, after an agreement with Jayewardene, Indian troops moved into northern Sri Lanka to enforce a peace agreement between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Warfare subsided, and Jayewardene retired from the presidency in 1988; Ranasinghe Premadasa was elected to succeed him that year, defeating Bandaranaike. Premadasa’s UNP retained its majority in the parliamentary elections of February 1989, and the last Indian troops departed in March.

The period of relative peace was shortlived. In 1991 and 1992 several major battles were fought between the army and the LTTE, and in early 1993 the parliament was rocked by two assassinations. On April 23 Lalith Athulathmudali, who had founded the opposition Democratic United National Front in 1991, was shot dead during a political rally. A week later, during the annual May Day parade, President Premadasa was assassinated by a suicide bomber who was allegedly a member of LTTE. Days later the parliament unanimously elected UNP member Dingiri Banda Wijetunge, who previously was the premier, to serve as the president until the next national election.

In November 1993 LTTE forces managed to seize a government military base in Pooneryn, about 32 km (20 mi) south-east of Jaffna. Several days later government forces drove the rebels back, and recovered the base. The fighting was some of the worst seen between the Sri Lankan government and rebel Tamil forces. In parliamentary elections held in August 1994, the United Socialist Alliance defeated the UNP, and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga became prime minister. Kumaratunga promptly opened talks with the LTTE to try to resolve the long-running civil war. She then won presidential elections in November to become Sri Lanka’s first woman president, after a campaign in which the UNP presidential candidate was assassinated, reportedly by the LTTE.

In December 1994 the LTTE accepted a ceasefire, but hostilities flared again after the collapse of talks in April 1995. A series of government offensives beginning in June 1995 culminated in December in the fall of Jaffna, the LTTE stronghold and effectively out of central government control since 1990. However, the LTTE retaliated with a series of bloody attacks, including a lorry bomb in Colombo in January 1996 which left more than 80 people dead. In April 1996 Kumaratunga’s government introduced a nationwide state of emergency.

H

Continuing Unrest

Early in 1997, President Kumaratunga and the opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe agreed to pursue a common approach towards ending the 14-year war with the separatist LTTE and the government launched a fresh offensive—Operation Jaya Sikuru (Sure Victory)—in May. With the LTTE suffering heavy losses, the government advanced north to the Jaffna Peninsula, the Tigers’ stronghold. Heavy fighting continued for some months. In July the state of emergency, which had been in place for over a year, was lifted in large areas of the country, but remained in force in the north-east, Colombo, and other towns thought vulnerable to LTTE attack. The third commission investigating the 1988-1990 “reign of terror” submitted the results of their inquiries to the government in September. The commission had found evidence to suggest that 16,742 of the nearly 19,000 people reported missing in Sri Lanka’s north-east and south during the period had been killed. In response, the government announced that it would be taking action against all those implicated. A draft constitution prepared by the government giving wider autonomy to Tamils was rejected by parliament at the end of the year. Sporadic bombings continued, with an attack in January 1998 on Sri Lanka’s most holy Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, by a suicide bomber, in which 11 people were killed. Although no group claimed responsibility for the bombing, the government retaliated by outlawing the LTTE. The country’s celebrations on the 50th anniversary of independence in February 1998, however, passed without major incident.

The opposition, in the aftermath of the government’s failed devolution strategy, put forward plans for a power-sharing arrangement with Tamil and Muslim minorities early in 1999, but this too collapsed, while fighting intensified in the north and east of the island. In March a United Nations body released figures showing Sri Lanka to have 12,000 missing persons, the second-highest number of disappeared people in the world after Iraq, which has 16,000. The Sri Lankan defence ministry estimated that 19,457 people have died in the past four years, while demonstrators against the civil war claimed that over 50,000 people have died in the war since it began in 1983. Exhumation began of a mass grave at Chemmani, near Jaffna, in June. The grave is thought to contain the bodies of approximately 600 civilians killed by Sri Lankan troops.

In an attempt to revive popular support for her leadership, President Kumaratunga announced in October that the general election would be held in December (11 months earlier than scheduled). Campaigning was marred by violence from the outset and in November an attempt was made on the life of opposition leader Wickramasinghe. Just three days before the election, Kumaratunga was wounded in an assassination attempt; the bomb attack killed 23 people. Kumaratunga was re-elected president, with 51 per cent of the vote.

Fighting continued between the LTTE and government troops throughout early 2000 in the Jaffna peninsula, despite Norwegian mediation efforts, with the LTTE capturing the strategically critical Elephant Pass, the gateway into the peninsula, in April and virtually trapping the Sri Lankan army in Jaffna city by May. Kumaratunga, refusing the offer of a ceasefire to evacuate the troops, declared a state of war on May 3, imposing widespread emergency measures, including press censorship and a ban on strikes. The continuing warfare has had a significant impact on the country’s economy, taxed by heavy defence expenditure and a serious decline in tourism, and the failure to attract foreign investment.

In the meantime, constitutional reforms proposed by the government, involving devolution of seven provinces but retaining a unified state, were rejected by opposition Tamil parties and dismissed by the LTTE, finally also losing the support of the main opposition party, the UNP. General elections held on October 10 failed to give the People’s Alliance (PA) coalition the overall majority that would have allowed a revival of the proposals, though it remained the biggest bloc. The PA increased its seats from 107 to 115 by forging alliances with the Tamil Eelam People’s Democratic Party and the National Unity Alliance. As in 1999, the elections were marred by violence and bombings, forcing imposition of overnight curfews, as well as allegations of fraud, though voter turnout (except in the war-torn Jaffna peninsula) was estimated to be over 75 per cent.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who had resigned from the post of prime minister in August due to ill health, died of a heart attack on polling day, aged 84. A figure of considerable influence in the region, as well as the world’s first woman prime minister, she was accorded a state funeral. Her replacement as prime minister, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, continued in this post after the election.

Further attempts at mediation by a Norwegian team produced initially encouraging results at the end of 2000, with an expression of willingness by the government to begin negotiations. Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the LTTE, called for talks at the end of November, significantly omitting mention of the prerequisites of a ceasefire and withdrawal of government troops formerly demanded by the LTTE. A month later, the LTTE unilaterally declared a ceasefire, and continued to extend the deadline well into 2001. These moves were, however, rejected by the government, which continued to seek military assistance, and was offered a US$20 million loan by Pakistan to purchase arms in February 2001.

In July there was an attack by the LTTE on Bandaranaike International Airport in which 18 people were killed. In the face of escalating tensions the planned referendum on devolving power to the regions was cancelled by the president. The Norwegian-brokered peace talks also faltered and facing a number of potential votes of no-confidence in the government President Kumaratunga dissolved parliament with a general election called for December 5.