Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon before 1972, is an island country in South Asia, located about 31 kilometers off the southern coast of India. It is home to around twenty million people.

Because of its location in the path of major sea routes, Sri Lanka is a strategic naval link between West Asia and South East Asia. It has been a center of Buddhist religion and culture from ancient times. The Sinhalese community forms the majority of the population; Tamils, who are concentrated in the north and east of the island, form the largest ethnic minority.

Famous for the production and export of tea, coffee, coconuts and rubber, The natural beauty of Sri Lanka's tropical forests, beaches and landscape, as well as its rich cultural heritage, make it a world famous tourist destination.

After over two thousand years of rule by local kingdoms, parts of Sri Lanka were colonized by Portugal and the Netherlands beginning in the 16th century, before control of the entire country was ceded to the British Empire in 1815. During World War II, Sri Lanka served as an important base for Allied forces in the fight against the Japanese Empire. A nationalist political movement arose in the country in the early 20th century with the aim of obtaining political independence, which was eventually granted by the British after peaceful negotiations in 1948.

In 1956, the Official Language Act was enacted. The law mandated Sinhala, the language of Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese community, which is spoken by over 70% of Sri Lanka's population, as the sole official language of Sri Lanka. Supporters of the law saw it as an attempt by a community that had just gained independence to distance themselves from their colonial masters. The immediate consequence of this act was to force large numbers of Tamil who worked in the civil service, and who could not meet this language requirement, to resign. An attempt to make Buddhism the national religion, to the exclusion of Hindu and Islam, was also made. Affirmative action in favor of Sinhalese was also instituted, ostensibly to reverse colonial discrimination against Sinhalese in favor of Tamil. Many Tamil, in response to this deliberate marginalization, came to believe that they deserved a separate nation-state for themselves.

From 1983 to 2009, there was an on-and-off civil war against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist militant organization who fought to create an independent state named Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island. Both the Sri Lankan government and LTTE have been accused of various human rights violations.

On May 19, 2009, the President of Sri Lanka officially claimed an end to the insurgency and the defeat of the LTTE, following the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran and much of the LTTE's other senior leadership.