Tamil Parties Make Strong Showing in Sri Lanka

by Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times, July 24, 2011

An alliance of parties linked to the Tamil Tiger rebels won majorities in districts in the north, like Jaffna, and in the east.

NEW DELHI — Voters in northern and eastern Sri Lanka gave an alliance of parties closely linked to the defeated Tamil Tiger insurgency majorities in 18 of 26 local council elections, according to results released Sunday.

The elections allowed residents in many areas the first chance in years to vote  after bearing the brunt of two decades of ethnic conflict, and the results underscored just how deeply divided the country remains two years after the fighting ended.

The Tamil National Alliance, a collection of political parties that long served as the political wing of the Tamil Tigers, won control of nearly two-thirds of the local councils in the north and east, according to election commission figures. The party led by Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, swept the council elections elsewhere in the country.

The local elections were billed as an essential step toward healing Sri Lanka’s wounds from years of civil war. Sri Lanka’s government has pledged to rebuild the north and east, which were devastated in the war, and promised greater autonomy to regional and local governments.

Tamil insurgents rose up in part because they felt that the central government, controlled by the Sinhalese majority, discriminated against minorities. The Tamil language was suppressed for decades, and thousands of Tamils were killed in ethnic violence, culminating in a series of bloody pogroms in 1983.

The war ended in May 2009, but reconciliation remains a long way off, according to a report released last week by the International Crisis Group that assessed Sri Lanka’s progress.

“The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has refused to acknowledge, let alone address, the Tamil minority’s legitimate grievances against the state,” the report said. “The government has increasingly cut minorities and opponents out of decisions on their economic and political futures rather than work toward reconciliation.”

Government officials said that the largely peaceful elections were a victory in themselves.

“The people had used ballots instead of bullets,” Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena told a local radio station on Sunday, according to Reuters. “That’s a great victory for us.”

Sri Lanka’s government has come under harsh scrutiny for its handling of the war against the Tamil Tigers, a ruthless insurgency that pioneered tactics like using children as soldiers and women as suicide bombers.

In the last weeks of the war, hundreds of thousands of civilians were stuck between the rebels and government forces, and the United Nations later found credible evidence that during that period the government indiscriminately shelled unarmed people, hospitals and aid workers.

The United Nations concluded that tens of thousands of people had died in the final weeks of the conflict. It also accused the Tamil Tigers of forcing children to fight and using civilians as human shields.

A documentary released by Britain’s Channel 4 featured graphic video of what were said to be army atrocities against civilians, including summary executions. The documentary, which was broadcast in June, prompted new calls for an international war crimes investigation.