This month marked the end of the 26 year long Sri Lankan Civil War between the Nationalist Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, after the public admission of defeat by the Tamil Tigers and the death of their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. A militant group based in the north of Sri Lanka and fighting for a separate Tamil state, the Tamil Tigers, founded in 1976, are considered by 32 nations to be a “terrorist organization” and have been accused of war crimes, civilian attacks, suicide bombings and assassinations of high profile political leaders, such as the Former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

At their height, the Tamil Tigers were an extremely advanced and efficient force, even possessing aircraft, and dominating much of the northern region of Sri Lanka as a de facto government. After attempted peace talks in 2002 failed, and again in 2006, tensions escalated to massive Sri Lankan effort to eliminate the Tigers.
Ethnic tensions between the largely Buddhist Tamil minority and Hindu Sinhalese Majority, amounting to governmental favoritism of the Sinhalese, appear to be the cradle of conflict. However, the antagonism between the two has even deeper historical roots than the effects of present religious difference. Emerging from former colonial control by the United Kingdom in 1947, as early as 1918 the Tamils began to attempt to retain their particular ways of life, develop a national consciousness as a distinct group that must protect its ways and express nationalist sentiment in reaction to religious western missionary attempts. This set the tone for the culture-contradiction  that only this month seems to have worked itself towards a costly of resolve.
A UK report by the Times states that approximately 20,000 civilian casualties were incurred in the course of the latest efforts of the Sri Lankan Military, though the Sri Lankan government denies this and claims that the death count only extends to 6,500. As the Tamil Tigers were pushed back to a small no-fire zone in the north containing 100,000 refugees, their ultimate defeat entailed gruesome fighting amidst displaced peoples, and as many as 1,000 deaths per day until the end of April, due to alleged intense bombing. The Sri Lankan government denies the use of heavy shelling.
The situation raises the question of national or state sovereignty, the autonomy of a people and pushes one to question the value and cost of retaining the political integrity of historically given and arbitrary national borders and regimes. It would appear that while Tamil violence is clearly to be condemned out of hand, the efforts to eliminate it may have surpassed those very atrocities. This fundamental irony forces one to and to pose the question, at what point do a people actually have the right to declare independence? That is, unless a poorly masked political hegemony is what is really at stake.