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1 1 (May 17, 2018)

handle is hein.crs/govzdl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service Informing the I ~gi Ialiv. debate since 1914 Updated May 17, 2018 Sri Lanka The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon until 1972, is a constitutional democracy in South Asia with relatively high levels of development. It is located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern tip of India's Deccan Peninsula. Historical Setting The island nation was settled by successive waves of migration from India beginning in the 5th century BC. Indo- Aryans from northern India established Sinhalese Buddhist kingdoms in the central part of the island. Tamil Hindus from southern India also settled in northeastern coastal areas and established a kingdom on the Jaffna Peninsula. Beginning in the 16th century, Sri Lanka was colonized in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Although Ceylon gained its independence from Britain peacefully in 1948, succeeding decades were marred by ethnic conflict between the country's Sinhalese majority, clustered in the densely populated South and West, and a largely Hindu Tamil minority living in the northern and eastern provinces. Following independence, the Tamils- who had attained educational and civil service positions under the British-increasingly found themselves discriminated against by the Sinhalese-dominated government, which made Sinhala the sole official language and gave preferences to Sinhalese in university admissions and government jobs. The Sinhalese, who had deeply resented British favoritism toward the Tamils, saw themselves not only as the majority, but also as a minority in a larger Tamil context that includes over 60 million Tamils across the Palk Strait in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in India. Civil War For two-and-a-half decades, from 1983 to 2009, political, social, and economic development was constrained by ethnic conflict and war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers. The war cost an estimated 70,000- 130,000 lives. The LTTE rebels had sought to establish a separate state or internal self-rule in the Tamil-dominated areas of the island's north and east. The United States designated the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. After a violent end to the civil war in May 2009, when the military crushed LTTE forces and precipitated a humanitarian emergency in Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated north, attention turned to whether the government had the ability and intention to build a stable peace in Sri Lanka. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, elected in 2005, faced criticism for an allegedly insufficient response to reported war crimes, a nepotistic and ethnically biased government, increasing restrictions on media, and uneven economic development. In the January 2015 presidential election he was defeated by President Maithripala Sirisena. This result was affirmed in parliamentary elections later in 2015 that led to the formation of a unity government supportive of Sirisena's reform agenda, including efforts to reduce the authority of the executive presidency. Current Po itical Deve opments Some reformers in Sri Lanka hoped that a new constitution would decentralize political power (a key interest of the Tamil minority) and reduce the strength of the executive presidency. Observers now expect, however, that the current Government of President Sirisena of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) will not be able to pass a reform constitution. Rifts within the coalition government reportedly deepened as a result of its poor performance in local elections in February 2018. The newly-formed Sinhalese nationalist party Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) political party received 45% of the vote, compared ittps://crsreports.congress .o

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