Investment in Tamil areas was minimised. Recruitment of Tamils into the security forces was restricted. The Sri Lankan security forces are almost exclusively Sinhalese. The security forces have been responsible for and continue to carry out human rights abuses and atrocities against Tamil civilians on a genocidal scale. Sinhala colonisation of traditional Tamil areas was started in the fifties, and was intensified in the eighties with the security forces wiping out Tamil villages and replacing them with Sinhala settlements.
Colonisation continues unabated.
Anti-Tamil rioting, with the active participation of the Sri Lankan security forces, has claimed thousands of Tamil lives. Thousands more suffered torture and rape. As the Tamil people sense of helplessness deepened, Tamil politicians advocated a separate Tamil state . In 1977, the Tamil United Liberation Front resolved in its Vaddukoddai Resolution to campaign for political independence on the basis of the Tamil nation's right to self- determination. At the general elections of 1977, the TULF demanded a clear mandate from the Tamil people to launch a national campaign to establish the sovereignty of the Tamil homeland.