Killing fields in serendib
Sasanka Perera says the conflicts of the last two decades will leave a long legacy of political violence.
Over the last two decades, Sri Lanka's traditions of civil society and democracy have been seriously subverted. Its claim to being an island paradise has been overtaken by the numbing reality of being a case study in conflict creation and state power abuse. The serendipitous haven is clearly no more, except in propaganda leaflets of the tourism industry.
There are two main manifestations of political violence in Sri Lanka. The first is the situation in the northern and eastern parts of the country, where Tamil youth groups have taken up arms against the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan state to fight perceived discriminatory practices against the Tamil community. The violence here is primarily the work of the state security forces and their proxies, the former Tamil guerrilla groups such as the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (plote), the Eelam People's Demo cratic Party (EPDP) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF).