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President: Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005)
Prime Minister: D.M.Jayarathna (2010)Land area: 24,996 sq mi (64,740 sq km); Total area: 25,332 sq mi (65,610 sq km)
Population (2010 est.): 21,513,990 (growth rate: 0.9%); birth rate: 15.8/1000; infant mortality rate: 18.1/1000; life expectancy: 75.3; density per sq mi: 809
Capital and largest city (2003 est.): Colombo, 2,436,000 (metro. area), 656,100 (city proper).
Legislative and judicial capital: Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, 118,300
Other large cities: Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia 214,300; Moratuwa, 181,000; Kandy, 112,400
Monetary unit: Sri Lanka rupee
Geography
An island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast tip of India, Sri Lanka is about half the size of Alabama. Most of the land is flat and rolling; mountains in the south-central region rise to over 8,000 ft (2,438 m).
Government
Republic.
History
Indo-Aryan emigration from India in the 5th century B.C.
came to form the largest ethnic group on Sri Lanka today, the
Sinhalese. Tamils, the second-largest ethnic group on the island,
were originally from the Tamil region of India and emigrated
between the 3rd century B.C. and A.D.
1200. Until colonial powers controlled Ceylon (the country's name
until 1972), Sinhalese and Tamil rulers fought for dominance over
the island. The Tamils, primarily Hindus, claimed the northern
section of the island and the Sinhalese, who are predominantly
Buddhist, controlled the south. In 1505 the Portuguese took possession
of Ceylon until the Dutch India Company usurped control
(1658–1796). The British took over in 1796, and Ceylon became an
English Crown colony in 1802. The British developed coffee, tea,
and rubber plantations. On Feb. 4, 1948, after pressure from
Ceylonese nationalist leaders (which briefly unified the Tamil
and Sinhalese), Ceylon became a self-governing dominion of the
Commonwealth of Nations.
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike became prime
minister in 1956 and championed Sinhalese nationalism, making
Sinhala the country's only official language and including state
support of Buddhism, further marginalizing the Tamil minority. He
was assassinated in 1959 by a Buddhist monk. His widow, Sirimavo
Bandaranaike, became the world's first female prime minister in
1960. The name Ceylon was changed to Sri Lanka (“resplendent island”) on
May 22, 1972.
The Tamil minority's mounting
resentment toward the Sinhalese majority's monopoly on political
and economic power, exacerbated by cultural and religious
differences, erupted in bloody violence in 1983. Tamil rebel
groups, the strongest of which were the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, began a civil war to fight for separate
nation.
President Ranasinghe Premadasa was
assassinated at a May Day political rally in 1993, when a Tamil
rebel detonated explosives strapped to himself. Tamil extremists
have frequently resorted to terrorist attacks against civilians.
The next president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, vowed to restore peace
to the country. In Dec. 1999, she was herself wounded in a
terrorist attack. By early 2000, 18 years of war had claimed the lives
of more than 64,000, mostly civilians
Tamil Tigers Routed by Government Troops
The conflict between the Sri Lankan government and
the Tamil Tigers reached a pivotal point in the fall of 2008,
when the military launched an airstrike on Tamil headquarters in
early October in Kilinochi. In addition, ground troops were
closing in on the rebels. In January 2009, the Sri Lankan
government captured the northern town of Kilinochchi, which for ten
years had been the administrative headquarters of the Tamil Tigers.
Under the direction of defense
chief Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the brother of the president, the Sri
Lankan army continued to pursue the Tigers relentlessly in early 2009.
By April, the Tigers were cornered on a small stretch of coastline in
the north-east of the country. Civilian Tamils streamed out of the
area into refugee camps that struggled to provide food and medical
attention, while the Tiger fighting force was down to as few as 1,000
members.
In early May 2009, a UN spokesperson
called the situation on the beach a "bloodbath." International human
rights organizations claimed that the Sri Lankan army killed at least
500 Tamil civilians in the early days of May 2009 alone. That brings
the Tamil civilian death toll to at least 8,000 since the beginning of
the year, according to the UN. According to its own count, the Sri
Lankan army lost at least 3,800 soldiers over the course of the
18-month offensive.
On May 18, 2009 the conflict
effectively ended when Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil
Tigers, was killed in fighting in which government troops took the
last bit of rebel-held territory. Early elections were called in
October and held in January 2010. President Rajapaksa won the election
in a landslide, defeating former army chief Gen. Sarath Fonseka,
57.9% to 40.2%. Fonseka presided over final battle that crushed the
Tamil Tigers. He was arrested in March on charges of plotting to
overthrow the government. Also in March, Rajapaksa dissolved
Parliament, paving the way for elections.
In April's parliamentary elections,
Rajapaksa's governing coalition won another landslide victory. In
September, Parliament endorsed a proposal to rewrite Sri Lanka's
constitution to allow Rajapaksa to run for a third term.
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