1990 Batticaloa Massacre - Background Information

Background Information

During the British colonial period, approximately 60% of the civil service jobs were held by the minority Sri Lankan Tamils. They constituted approximately 15% of the population prior to 1948. This was due to the availability of Western-style education as provided by the Protestant American missionaries, Hindu revivalists, and local Catholic missions in the Tamil-dominated Jaffna peninsula. After gaining independence from Britain in 1948, Sinhalese politicians made the apparent over-representation a political issue. They initiated measures aimed at correcting the over-representation by establishing ethnic quotas for university entrants. These measures, and a series of riots and pogroms starting from 1958 that targeted Sri Lankan Tamils and the resultant mass murder, displacements and refugees, led to the formation of rebel groups advocating independence for Sri Lankan Tamils. After the 1983 Black July pogrom, full scale civil war erupted between the government and the rebel groups. During the course of the civil war there were number of massacres of civilians, war rapes, torture and enforced disappearances attributed to both the government and allied groups as well as the various rebel formations.