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Vol. 73/No. 3      January 26, 2009

 
Sri Lankan military presses
offensive against Tamil rebels
 
BY ALASDAIR MACDONALD  
SYDNEY, Australia—Sri Lankan government troops captured a strategic point known as Elephant Pass on Sri Lanka’s northern coast from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) January 9, according to press reports. Situated on the A9 highway, which links the Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the country, it had been under Tamil control since 2000. A week earlier government forces took Kilinochchi, capital of the northern area previously controlled by the LTTE.

The Tamil Tigers are an armed opposition group that has been fighting for an independent state for the Tamil minority in the South Asian country since 1983. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The latest offensive by government troops comes after a year of renewed fighting since the breakdown of a 2002 cease-fire agreement. The Sri Lankan government has received the backing of the governments of both India and Pakistan, which includes providing military supplies and the training of military officers.

Sri Lanka, located just off India’s southern coast, was dominated by Portuguese, then Dutch, and finally British colonialism from the 1500s to its independence in 1948. The British colonialists, using divide and rule tactics, imported many Tamils from southern India to work on the large tea and rubber plantations in slave-like conditions, while at the same time recruiting some of them into the colonial administration.

The government today is dominated by the Sinhalese, who make up 74 percent of the population. Tamils make up 18 percent of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people. They have faced institutionalized oppression for more than four decades, including denial of language rights and discrimination in housing and education.

According to Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan military spokesman, the LTTE had begun withdrawing its forces to the last major town under its control, Mullaittivu. He warned of retaliation, citing the detonation of a roadside bomb in the eastern city of Trincomalee, which killed three air force soldiers and four civilians.

Associated Press also reported that the editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickramatunga, a critic of the Sinhalese-dominated government, was killed in Colombo by unidentified gunmen on motorcycles January 8. This came just two days after more than a dozen men armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the studios of the country’s largest private broadcaster, MTV. The station had been accused by the state-run media of not being “patriotic” enough in reporting military successes against the Tamil Tigers.  
 
 
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