Remembering the Sri Lanka Civil War: The history, the pain, and the failures of the United Nations
By: The Foreign Journal
Tags: Human Rights, Sri Lanka, World, War, United Nations

By Nikita Triandafillidis

A girl in the northern provinces of Sri Lanka. Photo credit: The Washington Post

On June 9, 2020, the citizens of Sri Lanka protested outside the U.S embassy in Colombo, condemning the racism and police brutality that spread throughout the USA. These protests reminded the people of Sri Lanka about their own civil strife against discrimination, trying to heal after a long period of civil war that tore the nation apart. The memories of this war, which just ended almost 11 years ago still, haunt the island of Sri Lanka, and ethnic unity is still quite a difficult thing to achieve.

Haunted memories

On May 18, 2009, one of the longest and bloodiest civil wars of the 21st century came to an end. The country of Sri Lanka suffered for more than 25 years in what has been called a grave failure by the UN and the international community. Almost 150.000 people lost their lives, many of them civilians, while, the economic cost of this war is estimated at 200 billion dollars, five times the GDP of Sri Lanka.

In the meantime, both sides are accused of various war crimes, while internal UN reports suggest a lack of action from its officials, abandoning and failing to protect the civilians. Sri Lanka’s civil war is an example that represents a lack of action, and intervention by the UN Security Council. A lack of action had consequences and the people of Sri Lanka still try to recover from the wounds of the war.

On July 23, 1983, there was a rebellion against the government of Sri Lanka by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as Tamil Tigers.

They fought for creating an independent state called Tamil Eelam in the north and east parts of the island where the Tamil minority originated.

After almost 26 years the civil war came to an end, with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, leaving behind thousands dead or misplaced in one of the modern tragedies in human history where lack of action and initiative helped killing thousands of civilians.

Origins of the ethnic division

The origins of the civil war can be traced way back when the country was under British colonial rule. Political tensions between the Sinhalese, the majority ethnic group, and the Tamil, the minority ethnic group of Sri Lanka, were the key reasons for the start of the civil war.

To unify the country, the Sinhalese majority, over the years, passed many controversial laws of discrimination against the Tamil minority.

Laws like the replacement of the English language by Sinhala as the official language of the country or the direct discrimination against the Tamil minority which did not allow them to obtain citizenship and thousands of them all of the sudden became stateless.

The Sri Lanka government at that time adopted a new form of colonization in the areas where the Tamil minority was present by replacing them with Sinhalese peasants, banning any media broadcasts in the Tamil-language, and promoting the main religion of Sri Lanka, Buddhism against any other minority religion.

Amid the various discrimination laws that the Sri Lanka government opposed to the Tamil minority, the Tamil New Tigers were created in 1972. Later, the organization changed its name to Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE.

Supported by the ongoing political conflict, many of the Tamil youth in the north and the east of the country formed military groups. In the beginning, the LTTE was targeting police and state servants as well as Tamil politicians who were sympathizers with the government.

Things escalated in 1983 when the LTEE ambushed a military patrol outside of the town of Thirunelveli, killing thirteen soldiers. As a retaliation, the government using nationalistic elements in their favor, organized pogroms in the capital city of Colombo, executing about 3.000 Tamils. This was the beginning of one of the longest civil wars in South Asia.

Women soldiers fighting for the LTTE. Photo credit: Profile Press/Rex Features

UN Involvement and Criticism

Various internal UN reports suggest a lack of efficiency and actual involvement in the Sri Lanka civil war.

According to Yekaterina Reyzis, associate editor for the Michigan Journal of International Law, there had to be a more effective response in Sri Lanka. The UN failed to monitor and report the violence on the ground and, it did not address the various red flags presented by the Sri Lanka government.

As a result, just in the last five months of the war, the Sri Lanka government executed more than 40.000 civilians. Both the Sri Lanka government and the Tamil Tigers are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The reports suggest that top UN and Security Council officials did not publicize the widespread killings and there was never a clear order to protect and evacuate the civilians trapped in the war zones. This controversial review was led, by Charles Petrie, a former UN official. In his review he stated:

“There was a continued reluctance among UN country team institutions to stand up for the rights of the people they were mandated to assist and that in Sri Lanka some senior staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility and agency and department heads at UN headquarters were not instructing them otherwise.”

The situation on the ground in Sri Lanka was chaotic, however many of the staff members of the UN team that were forced to evacuate from the war zone and abandon the civilians stated that this whole operation was a systematic failure.

Benjamin Dix, a former member of the UN team in the area disagrees with the pullout and mentions that lack of action from the UN Security Council cost the lives of thousands of civilians.

“I believe we should have gone further north, not evacuated south, and abandoned the civilian population with no protection or witnesses, as a humanitarian worker, questions were running through my mind: what is this all about? Isn’t this what we signed up to do?”

Edward Mortimer, also a former UN senior official, gave his verdict regarding the UN failure in Sri Lanka by mentioning that the UN was caught in between what he called a culture trade-off.

The UN staff chose not to speak and publish the reports against the government in what they called an effort to improve humanitarian access.

Also, the UN staff in Sri Lanka had insufficient political expertise and experience in armed conflicts and human rights. The government also played a crucial role in influencing these decisions by promoting a sense of intimidation towards the UN staff with increased control of visas and sanctions to the staff members and in the meantime covering their tracks regarding the accusations of human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

“I fear this report will show the UN has not lived up to the standards we expect of it and has not behaved as the moral conscience of the world” (Edward Mortimer).

Domestic intervention

Since 2012 the UN has passed many resolutions for investigating these allegations for war crimes in Sri Lanka but unfortunately, the government in Colombo was always opposed to those investigations.

In 2015 when a new government was elected things started to look more positive regarding the investigations. The elected president at that time, Pallewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Yapa Sirisena, co-sponsored a resolution regarding the investigations back in September 2015.

Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case because since 2017 the Sri Lanka government has delayed any actual investigations and shows no intention of actually implementing the resolution they co-sponsored.

The government has tried to implement a system of a purely domestic court procedure regarding the allegations of genocide. However, the UN stated that this will not resolve anything and there will be no chance of actually uncovering what happened during those years of war.

Besides that, the mistrust between state authorities and international institutions makes things worse for the people of Sri Lanka that seek justice for their loved ones.

Protests in London, 2009. Photo credit: Shutterstock/Daniel Gale

Voices of the minorities

The civil war in Sri Lanka and the atrocities committed by both sides, the government and the Tamil Tigers should be remembered as a failure by the UN and the Security Council, as their silence cost the lives of thousands of innocent people that were caught between the war zones.

No one talks about Sri Lanka and, no one is yet to take responsibility for everything that happened in the country and for the thousands that were executed or went missing.

There had to be an intervention by the UN and, the sad part is that there was an actual UN peacekeeping presence on the island, however, it was not enough. Deficiencies in resources and personnel, government corruption, lack of enforcement by the Security Council, and abandonment of civilians contributed to the failure of the UN on the island.

The fact that the UN has accepted responsibility and has called for reforms is a positive step towards the future and the prevention of further crimes against humanity.

We can only hope for more effective international mechanisms and monitoring to prevent any further bloodshed in the world. The Sri Lanka case must not be forgotten and international pressure must be applied to the government for them to be finally accountable for their crimes. The voices of the minorities must be heard because, in the end, they are too Sri Lankan.