How to Kill Civilians in the Name of "Human Rights": Lessons from Sri Lanka

(By: Michael Radu, February 2009)
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of FPRI's Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. His most recent book is The War on Terrorism: 21st-Century Perspectives (ed., with Stephen Gale and Harvey Sicherman, Transaction, 2008); his Europe's Ghost: Tolerance, Jihadism and Their Consequences is forthcoming from Encounter Press.

Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean country the size of West Virginia, has a diverse population-81 percent is Sinhalese, most of them Buddhist; some 11 percent are Tamils, who are generally Hindu, either immigrants from India or native. Eight percent of the population are Muslims. As is so often the case in the former British Empire, the native group most adept to Western education and adaptable to British interests-in this case the Tamils-were disproportionately represented among the educated at the time of independence (1948), and thus resented by the majority. Free elections repeatedly brought to power Sinhalese populists/socialists. Tamils were pushed aside and the majority language declared the only official one. The result was, and to some extent remains, Tamil resentment and demands for autonomy, at least in the northern (Jaffna) and Eastern (Trincomalee) areas where they predominate.

Key to understanding why the LTTE lasted for so long and why India was involved in Sri Lanka on and off at various times is the fact that some 60 million Tamils live in three southern Indian states, primarily Tamil Nadu, and many of those support the LTTE out of ethnic solidarity. Equally, if not more, important, there is a large (ca. 800,000) Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, mostly in Canada, the UK, Australia, the U.S., and Southeast Asia. This diaspora is radicalized and, like most diasporas living in safety, more radical than co-nationals in the country of origin. It still provides the funds, propaganda support, and public relations vital to the LTTE's survival.

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