War Termination in Sri Lanka
This article has a central aim of explaining the catastrophic loss of civilian life in the last five months of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The article proposes that both the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the LTTE are culpable for civilian deaths; the LTTE in an effort to stave off defeat so it might be able to re-constitute itself at a later time, and the GoSL in a determination not to allow the LTTE as an organization to survive the conflict. The article also argues that a preliminary explanation for the origins of the Sri Lankan civil war can be found in the GoSL program of transferring members of the Sinhalese population into the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country, regions held by the Tamil population to be their homeland territory. Key words : Population; Tamil; Sinhalese insurgency; Civilian; Territory
"Never Again": The Case Study of Sri Lanka and the Collective Action Theory of Genocide
This thesis examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict and civil war within its post-independence period in order to determine if the atrocities committed against the Tamil minorities amounted to genocide. The research employed Hagan and Rymond-Richmond’s (2009) collective action theory of genocide. An integral part of this theoretical framework is state-led racial ideologies which this paper explored utilizing the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Specifically, using CDA this paper analyzed speeches articulated by Sri Lankan political elites who were complicit in the atrocities and responsible for inciting the violence against the Tamil minorities. The results from this research strongly suggests that Hagan and Rymond-Richmond’s theoretical model of genocide supports the case study of Sri Lanka.
AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATIONS IN BRITISH SRI LANKA
In political change, the commencement of the period roughly coincides with the far-reaching Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms of 1833 which, among other changes, brought the island under a unified system of administratio n and were the culmina­ tion of a process of consolidation of British power in Sri Lanka witnessed during the earlier decades. The Donoughmore Reforms of 1931 with which this period ends created a legislature elected on the basis of universal franchise and were thus a decisive step in the withdrawal of British power from Sri Lanka and in the evo­ lution of democratic self-government in the country. In economic development, this was the century characterised by the increasing importance of systematic and large-scale production of crops geared to export trade. Plantation agriculture which was confined to a few hundred acres of coffee at the commencement of the period soon became the dominant sector of the island's eco­ nomy. The coffee planting industry expanded in successive spurts and reigned supreme until its sudden collapse in the 1880s when it was replaced with other plan­ tation crops. By the end of our period, plantation agriculture covered an extent of over 2 million acres. Thereafter, in terms of its rates of expansion, government agrar«ah policy and the pattern of intersectoral resource allocation, the plantation economy of Sri Lanka entered a new phase — as Snodgrass (1966) calls it, "a phase of transition". Problems and Controversies