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The nature of the war

It is a war of national liberation of the Sri
Lankan Tamils (12.5% of the population) in the defense of their
right of self-determination.

Self-determination
Self-determination is the collective
right of a people to freely determine their own political status and to pursue economic, social and cultural development. It is a fundamental right enshrined in the UN Constitution (1948) and in all human rights conventions since.

To exert the right of self-determination, there
must be

1) a history of independence or self-rule in
identifiable territory,

2) a distinct culture,

3) a will and a capability to regain
self-government.

All of these the Sri Lankan Tamils have.

1. A history of self-rule in a defined territory

When the Westerners (Portuguese) arrived in 1505,
there were 3 Kingdoms ??? Jaffna Kingdom (Tamil) in the north, Kandyan Kingdom (hill-country Sinhalese) in the centre, Kotte Kingdom (low-country Sinhalese) in the south. These had existed for hundreds of years. They were gradually annexed by successive colonial powers and in 1833 unified into one country by the British.
This British colonial construct has failed, as has so many others, with disastrous results. What the Tamils are asking for is a reversal of this failed colonial construct.

2. A distinct culture

The Tamils have a distinct culture, which they
share with the Tamils of South India, going back thousands of years.

3. A will and capability to regain self-governance
The Tamils, subjected to discrimination and violence by the Sinhalese,voted overwhelmingly in the 1977 General Election, for the establishment of a separate Tamil State, Eelam, in the North and East. With a failure of the political process (see below), Tamil youths decided on an armed conflict to achieve this.

After a series of battles, the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), regained control of four large districts in the North (Vanni), which they have administered for more than a decade. Professor Kristian Stokke, University of Oslo, after a detailed study in this area, wrote Tamil Eelam - a De Facto State. Building the Tamil Eelam State: Emerging State Institutions
and Forms of Governance in LTTE-controlled Areas in Sri
Lanka.

Peter said...
Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language, so says Wikipedia.

An interesting map is also provided.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages

Now the question is who came to this little island first? Were they the people from about a kilometre away, or were they the people from hundreds of kilometres away?

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9079007316930841006&postID=6665451725598964590

To achieve self-determination there are
usually two steps:

1) Peaceful negotiations 2) If they fail, a
liberation struggle

1 Peaceful negotiations
From the dawn of Independence
(1948), there has been systematic discrimination against the Tamils.
The Tamils have protested in Gandhi-style non-violent protests for
years and tried to negotiate with a succession of
Sinhalese-dominated governments, with no success.

The first, in this litany of discrimination, was
the 1948-49 disenfranchisement and decitizenisation of a million Plantation ('Indian') Tamils brought from South India in the 1850s by the colonial British to work on their tea plantations. Their disenfranchisement reduced Tamil representation in parliament by 40%.

Discrimination against he Sri Lankan Tamils (who
had been there for as long as the Sinhalese, if not longer), followed.

In 1956 the Official Language of the country was
changed from English to Sinhalese only. The Tamils, who speak an entirely different language were seriously affected, especially in government service, the forte of the Tamils.

In 1972, in an incredible act of educational
discrimination, the bar was set higher for Tamil students to enter the University.

There was discrimination in employment. Between
1956 and 1977, of 186,000 recruited to the public sector, 95% were Sinhalese

There was discrimination in development, the
Tamil areas in the North and East being deliberately neglected.

There was also attempts to change the demography
of the Tamil areas, especially in the East, by relocating Sinhalese from the south, the electoral consequences being obvious.

As has been mentioned, the Tamils embarked on a
series of non-violent protests for two decades at this blatant discrimination.

The Governments response to these non-violent protests

1. To unleash violence by government-sponsored
Sinhalese hoodlums, backed by the Police and Armed Forces (95% and 99% Sinhalese).
2. To enter into Pacts with the Tamils that if
they called off their protests, some devolution of power will occur. Every one of these Pacts and Agreements were unilaterally abrogated by the Government, under pressure from Sinhalese political opportunists for political gain, and the Buddhist clergy. The Buddhist clergy see Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist country and any concessions, however minimal, to the Tamils, as a sell-out of the country to the Tamils.

Political failure. The Armed struggle

With the documented failure of the Tamil
political leaders to achieve anything by way of power sharing, and increasing violence unleashed on them by government-backed Sinhalese hoodlums and the Police, the Tamils in the North and East voted overwhelmingly (1977 General Elections) for the establishment of a separate Tamil State, Eelam. Eelam is not the creation of the Tamil
people but the inevitable result of Sinhalese ethno-religious chauvinism, discrimination and violence unleashed on the Tamil people.

In the mid 1970s, Tamil youths took up arms in a
liberation struggle to free the Tamil people from Sinhalese domination, discrimination, violence and the clear strategy to make them second-class citizens.

The Preamble to the UN Declaration of Human
Rights (1948) recognizes this possibility:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102358.html