The Sri Lankan government on this day in 2009 formally declared an end to the 26-year civil war after the army took control of the entire island and killed the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Velupillai Prabhakaran. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered a victory address to Parliament, declaring that his country had been “liberated” from terrorism.
Recounting how the rebels, once controlled a wide swathe of the North and much of the East, Rajapaksa said that for the first time in 30 years, the country was unified under its elected government.
The Sri Lanka army claimed the LTTE leader had been shot dead by Sri Lankan forces, although there are differing accounts of how he met his end. Reports of Prabhakaran’s death prompted celebrations in the capital, Colombo.
A military spokesman said 250 rebels had been killed in the final battle, after 72,000 civilians fled the small war zone over the weekend. According to UN figures, an estimated 7,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed between January 20 and May 7, when a military offensive pushed the rebels into a tiny enclave in the North-East.
Immediately following the end of war, on May 20, 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, “A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths.
The European Union nations called for an independent war crimes investigation into the killing of civilians in Sri Lanka, however the government has repeatedly refused an independent, international investigation to ascertain the full impact of the war with some reports claiming that government forces were raping and torturing Tamils involved in collating deaths and disappearances.
-ENCL
Photo Caption – Civilians being displaced from parts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu Districts as a result of the Sri Lanka Army’s military offensive in January 2009 – Flickr
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