But since Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, the Sinhalese majority has dominated the country. When Sri Lanka was ruled as Ceylon by the British, most Sri Lankans regarded the Tamil minority as collaborators with imperial rule and resented the Tamil’s perceived preferential treatment. Their religion (most are Hindu) and Tamil language set them apart from the four-fifths of Sri Lankans who are Sinhalese-members of a largely Buddhist, Sinhala-speaking ethnic group. Most Tamils live in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, and they comprise approximately 10 percent of the island’s population, according to a 2001 government census. The Tamils are an ethnic group that lives in southern India (mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu) and on Sri Lanka, an island of 21 million people off the southern tip of India. Both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military have been accused of engaging in abductions, extortion, conscription, and the use of child soldiers.
However, some experts warn it may be too early to write off the group, which has proved to be a ruthless guerilla outfit in the past. The group conceded defeat and in a statement said it had decided to lay down its arms. The military claimed it had defeated the rebels and killed the LTTE’s elusive leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared the twenty-six year long conflict had ended. They are blamed for a dozen high-level assassinations, over two hundred suicide attacks, and its war against the government has cost more than seventy thousand lives. The LTTE is notorious for having pioneered the suicide bomb jacket, as well as the use of women in suicide attacks. Since the 1980s, the LTTE have been agitating for a homeland for ethnic Tamils, who feel persecuted by Sri Lanka’s ethnic majority, the Sinhalese. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, are a separatist group in Sri Lanka.
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