Background
Sri Lanka has been embroiled in a civil war for more than two decades. More than 64,000 people have been killed and more than one million have been displaced since 1983. In July 1983, the most savage anti-minority pogrom in Sri Lanka's history, known as the Black July riots, erupted. Government appointed commission's estimates put the death toll at nearly 1,000.President Kumaratunga's speech on the 21st Anniversary of 'Black July' mostly minority Sri Lankan Tamils. Amnesty International Canada || News Release died or 'disappeared' over the course of the three-year government crackdown.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Sri Lanka
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)