After anti-Tamil pogroms in 1956, 1958 and 1977 and police brutality against Tamils protesting against these acts, guerilla groups like Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were created to safeguard the interest and rights of Tamils in their own land. The burning of Jaffna library in 1981 and Black July in 1983 finally led to over 25 years of war between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers. Persistent use of violence, including assassinations, led the LTTE to be declared as a terrorist organization by India, Malaysia, the European Union, Canada, and the USA. The civil war came to an end in 2009 with the military defeat of LTTE and the death of its leader, Prabhakaran. The Sri Lankan civil war led to death of over 100,000 people according to the United Nations. The Sri Lankan Government are alleged to have committed war crimes against the civilian Sri Lankan Tamil people during the final months of the Eelam War IV phase in 2009. A PPT verdict declared it as a genocide committed against ethnic Tamils by the Sri Lanka, government. Following the conclusion of the Civil War, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) dropped their demand for an independent Tamil Eelam in favour of regional autonomy in a remerged North Eastern Province. The idea of Federalism in Sri Lanka is opposed by the Sri Lankan Government, which prefers a unitary state.