Riots & Violence (1983
AD - 1994 AD)
There had been a series of anti
Tamil outbursts in 1958, 1977 and 1981 but the riot happened in
1983 was the worst. It was sparked by the massacre of an army
patrol by Tamil Tiger secessionists in the northern Jaffna region,
the heartland of Tamils. For several days afterwards, Sinhalese
mobs and gangs indulged in an orgy of killing, burning and looting
against Tamils and their property in town over the island
especially in Colombo. The Tamil deaths were estimated between 400
and 2,000. Ten of thousands of Tamils fled to safer,
Tamil-majority areas while many others left the country, Sinhalese
started to out of Jaffna and other Tamil areas.
The violence between both sides
was escalated by reprisals to each other. There were several
massacres which the worst was in May 1985 in which 150 people
(mostly Sinhalese) were gunned down by terrorists. The violence
extremely affected on Sri Lanka's economy as many businesses were
destroyed, tourism slumped badly and tea prices plunged. The
government lost a big amount of money into defense and the
violation of human rights resulted in the Western aid-giving
countries intimidated of withdrawing their support. In 1987 after
the government forced Tamils back to Jaffna of the north, the Indian
Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) intervened to defuse the ethnic
conflict by disarming the Tamil Tiger and to keep the peace
in the north and the east. However, the concern of Sinhalese and
Muslims in the south about Indian occupation activated riots, by
late 1988 the center and the south of the country were terrorized
and the economy was crippled.
At the end of 1988, Jayewardene
retired and the next UNP leader, Ranasinghe Premadasa, was
won a year-following election and became a president. One of his
winning campaigns was the removal of the IPKF who seemingly had
almost eliminated the LTTE. However, as soon as the Indian
peacekeepers completed their withdrawal in March 1990the war
between LTTE and Sri Lankan began all over again - starting three
years of terror.
Premadasa was assassinated
by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1993. A year later, Chandrika
Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, daughter of Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
who was then a leader of SLFP, formed the People's Alliance
(PA), a coalition that included the SLFP and small parties.
She also won a presidential election in 1994, the leader of her
opposite party had assassinated by a suicide bomber just two weeks
before the election, making her a first female president
appointing to her mother prime minister. |
