GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
MSC POLITICAL SCIENCE -INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
W
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ID THE
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Author: Luis M. Villafañe Jorge Supervisor: Abbey Steele, PhD Second Reader: Darshan Vigneswaran, PhD Master thesis Political Science-International Relations
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to explain why did the LTTE cause the displacement of Muslim communities in Sri Lanka during the civil war. I argue that the reason was because the Tigers perceived that the displaced people were disloyal to them. I claim that those civilians were considered disloyal because they supported a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s war goals. After examining two cases of displacement of Muslim communities, I found strong support for the abovementioned theory. However, the data demonstrated that military collaboration from Muslims to the LTTE’s rival armed groups also revealed signs of disloyalty. Furthermore, I discovered that the displaced civilians were targeted based on their ethnicity. Finally, I claim that the disloyalty theory explains better the causes of those displacements than the theories based on ethnic hatred or resentment.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my supervisor, Dr. Abbey Steele, my dear friends, Alexandre Marcou and Alex L’Huillier, and my beloved parents, Luis and Elsa. This thesis would not have been possible without you. I will always be grateful for all the help and support you gave me during this whole process.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction ...1
II. Literature Review ...4
III. Theory ...8
A. Argument ...8
B. Hypothesis ...9
C. Assumptions and Scope Conditions of the Theory ...9
IV. Methodology ...10
A. Dependent Variable ...10
B. Independent Variables ...11
C. Case Selection and Data ...13
V. Background of the War ...15
A. General Aspects about the Sri Lankan Civil War ...15
B. Rise of Muslim Politics during the War ...16
VI. Cases of Displacement ...18
A. Variation of Displacement ...18
B. Description of the Cases of Displacement ...19
1. Northern Muslims ...19
2. Mutur Muslims ...21
VII. Analysis and Discussion of Data ...25
A1. Evidence of Political Support ...25
1. North-1990 ...25
A2. Discussion of Evidence of Political Support ...32
1. Ethnic Indicator ...33
2. Other Possible Causes of the Displacements ...34
B1. Evidence of Military Collaboration ...35
1. Northern Muslims ...36
2. Mutur Muslims ...38
C. Discussion of Evidence of Military Collaboration ...38
D. Counterfactual Analysis ...39
E. Adaptation of Theory ...40
VIII. Discussion of Alternative Explanations ...43
A. Ethnic Hatred ...43
B. Resentment ...44
C. Inapplicability of Alternative Explanations ...46
D. Why Disloyalty is the Best Answer to the Research Question ...46
E. Caveats ...48
IX. Conclusion ...50
1 Introduction
The Sri Lankan civil war was a conflict in which the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the “LTTE” or the “Tigers”) fought the armed forces of the Government of Sri Lanka (the “Government”) to create an independent Tamil State. The war brought dire consequences, not only to the combatants, but also to the civilians. One of them was displacement. The violence perpetrated by both armed groups caused thousands of civilians leave their homes. However, displacement was not merely a by-product of the war. Both the LTTE and the Government intentionally cleansed different areas of Sri Lanka from the population residing in them. As a result, the Sinhalese and the Tamil civilians had to relocate to other parts of the island or outside of the country. Nevertheless, those ethnic groups were not the only ones that were affected. The Sri Lankan Muslims (also known as the Sri Lankan Moors), the second minority group in Sri Lanka, were also displaced from their homes. In particular, the LTTE was responsible for displacing whole communities of Muslim groups in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. The purpose of this research is to investigate the reasons why the LTTE caused the displacement of those Muslim communities.
The result of this investigation will be useful because it will help gather more knowledge about all the elements that can influence the violence perpetrated, not only in the Sri Lankan civil war, but potentially in other conflicts. The core grievance of the Sri Lankan civil war is the differences between the two major ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. However, this research will show how other disputes that are not part of the main cleavage, in this case the problems between Muslims and the LTTE, can influence how a war is fought. Also, the results could help complement or supplement theories about violence in ethnic wars. Most of the theories explain the violence committed in those conflicts along ethnic lines. Since the Sri Lankan conflict was an ethnic war, it can be expected that the violence was strictly linked to ethnic elements. However, the results of this research can demonstrate that, although ethnicity could play a role during ethnic wars, other factors (social, political, etc.) can also help dictate when and where armed groups use violence against civilians.
To conduct my research, I discuss the theories that address the reasons why armed groups want to cleanse a territory from a particular population and elaborate an argument that is applicable to this investigation. According to Steele (2011), armed groups displace civilians when they want to gain control of a territory and when and where they can infer if the civilians are
2 disloyal or not to them. Among other things, she claims that loyalties are difficult to detect (Steele 2011, 427). However, she explains that election results are one possible source of information about the links between civilians and armed groups that can help the warring parties to infer their loyalties (Steele 2011, 428). Taking her arguments as inspiration, I argue that, when armed groups want to control a territory, they will cleanse the area from those civilians they perceive are disloyal to the warring party. However, I believe that analyzing the possible links between civilians and armed groups is not the only way to determine if a civilian is loyal or not. I claim that loyalties can also be perceived from the relationship the civilians might have with other actors that can influence the outcome of the war, including political parties, even if they are not affiliated with a warring actor. Therefore, one way armed groups might consider that civilians are disloyal to them is when those civilians support a political party whose political objectives are hindering or could be hindering the armed group’s war goals, regardless if the party is affiliated or not to its rivals. Since loyalty can be inferred based on political support, elections results can help armed groups to identify those civilians who are disloyal. In light of this, my hypothesis is that the LTTE displaced Muslims communities that supported a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s war goals because the Tigers perceived that those civilians were disloyal to them.
After explaining my theory, I discuss the methods and variables that I used to test my hypothesis. Then, I provide general information about the Sri Lankan civil war, the Muslim politics throughout the conflict, and the variation of displacement of Muslim communities during wartime. Also, I describe in detail the two cases of displacement I chose for my research, one in the Northern Province in 1990 and one in the Eastern Province in 2006. After, I analyze and discuss the evidence related to my argument. There were indicators that confirm the hypothesis that the Muslim communities were displaced because they were disloyal to the Tigers. In particular, there was strong evidence for the claim that the LTTE considered those people disloyal because they supported the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (the “SLMC”), a Sri Lankan political party whose interests conflicted with the LTTE’s goals. However, the data revealed that military collaboration with the rival armed groups of the Tigers, either by joining the rival armed group and/or by attacking the Tamils or the LTTE’s members, was another element that demonstrated that the displaced Muslims were disloyal to the Tigers. Furthermore, the evidence revealed that the LTTE used the Muslim ethnicity to identify and target them. To confirm that
3 disloyalty was the cause of the displacements, I analyzed if other alternatives explanations (ethnic hatred and resentment) could have been the true motives. Finally, this thesis concludes by providing a summary of my findings, explaining the contributions of my results to the existing literature and suggesting some ideas for future investigations.
4 Literature Review
Displacement is one of the terrible consequences of civil wars. Thousands of civilians are forced, or decide, to leave their homes. The violence perpetrated by armed groups can influence that decision. The civilians can or have to decide to flee from a certain area either as a response to a direct attack from the armed groups or to avoid being attacked by the combatants (see Ibáñez 2009, 69). Since armed groups’ violence can be responsible for this outcome, several studies have analyzed how that violence influences the different patterns of displacement during a civil war.
A group of investigations have focused on linking levels of violence with levels of displacement. The general conclusion is that higher levels of violence produce higher levels of displacement. For example, Davenport et al. (2003) argue that higher levels of state, dissident or joint state-dissident threats to the personal integrity of civilians produce more displacement. Also, Moore and Shellman (2004) claim that violent behavior from the government, from the dissidents or from the interactions between the armed groups are the main causal factors for displacement. However, not all studies of this type have always found a correlation between levels of violence and levels of displacement. For example, Doocy et al. (2015, 10) found that even in some areas with low levels of violence in Syria there were high levels of displaced people. Therefore, the studies that just analyze the levels of violence do not seem to adequately explain what the causes are behind the displacement. There are more investigations that have demonstrated that displacement is not simply a by-product of the violence. They have asserted that armed groups intentionally cause this outcome.
According to Steele (forthcoming), there are three ways in which armed groups target civilians to provoke their displacement. The first one is known as selective targeting. In this case, civilians are attacked based on something they personally did or allegedly did. The second is indiscriminate targeting. Here, the violence is not based on any particular trait. The civilians are targeted indiscriminately when armed groups employ violence randomly to communities or when the civilians become “collateral damage” of the confrontations between armed groups. The third one is collective targeting. It occurs when the violence is directed to members of a civilian group because of a trait or behavior the group share in common. Steele (forthcoming) also explains that each one of these forms of targeting civilians can bring different types of displacement. In this regard, selective targeting is likely to produce the individual escape of the targeted person (if he
5 finds out about the threat in time), indiscriminate violence can provoke mass relocation and collective targeting can lead to political cleansing (Steele, forthcoming).
Political cleansing means the expulsion of a civilian group from a particular territory (Steele, forthcoming). Usually the term “cleansing” is linked to ethnic violence. In particular, some studies have stated that an armed group engages in “ethnic cleansing” when it removes people of a certain ethnic group from a territory (see Bulutgil 2015, 578). However, it must be clarified that ethnic cleansing is a subcategory of political cleansing (Steele, forthcoming). The term “political cleansing” refers to the removal of civilian groups from a particular territory, regardless of the element that armed groups use to target them.
The literature related to ethnic and/or political cleansing provides some theories that explain why armed groups want to cause displacement of certain groups of civilians. One of the possible explanations that this literature offers is based on ethnic hatred. It has been claimed that tensions and cultural differences between ethnic groups contribute to the violence that is perpetrated against them (Valentino 2014, 92). Taking this in consideration, some scholars have studied how ethnic hate and prejudice increases the likelihood of violence and affect the way armed groups cleanse an area. For example, Fein (1979) found that in territories that were occupied by the Germans during the Holocaust, the Jewish populations had more chance of survival in those areas in which the attitude towards them was friendlier (Bulutgil 2016, 12). Also, Mann (2005, 5) argues that hostilities to an ethnic group increases “when ethnicity trumps class as the main form of social stratification, in the process capturing and channeling class-like sentiments towards nationalism”.
Another possible explanation of why displacement occurs is due to the wartime experiences of armed groups. It has been claimed that there are events during civil wars that can generate feelings of resentment that can affect the willingness of ethnic groups to cooperate and live with each other (Bulutgil 2015, 581-582). Petersen (2002) alleges that when the ethnic hierarchy is reversed, it fosters resentment from the group that loses status. Also, recent cycles of violence between ethnic groups can bring the desire for revenge. Therefore, scholars have argued that status reversals and collaboration with an enemy can be reasons why armed groups displace those civilians (Bulutgil 2015, 581-582). These two kinds of theories are based on the emotions that ethnic groups have towards each other; either on feelings that are exogenous to the war experience or on sentiments that are developed during the conflict. However, there is another
6 type of theory that help explain why armed groups cause displacement that is based on the assumption that they use violence strategically.
Multiple studies have shown that armed groups employ violence to achieve their objectives. For example, it has been claimed that armed groups can use violence against civilians to increase the size of its membership (see Richards 2014). They can abduct children to manipulate and indoctrinate them, so that they can have them eventually fight for their cause (see Haer and Böhmelt 2006, 154). Also, armed groups may use violence to create cohesion between their members. Cohen (2013) argued that warring parties that recruit by force (abduction or pressganging) use rape during wars as a method of socialization between the cadres.
Like these methods, political cleansing can also be used to obtain strategic objectives. Scholars have claimed that armed groups use displacement when they want to take control of a territory (Ibáñez 2009, 39-40; Steele 2011, forthcoming). Having control of territories is crucial for armed groups because it can shape the collaboration of the population that will be living in the area after the cleansing, prevent civilian resistant movements, allow the armed group to have access and enjoy the resources available in the place, weaken or divert the sources of the opposing party and other aspects (see Ibáñez 2009, 15-26; Kalyvas 2006, 118-124). Also, scholars have claimed that armed groups displace civilians when and where they can infer if civilians are loyal or not (Steele 2011). Loyalty or lack thereof can be the difference between winning or losing the war (Steele, forthcoming). Disloyal people can actively collaborate with an opposing party and help them to achieve their objectives. They could provide food for the rival groups, inform them where the armed groups are camped or who is working for them among their neighbors, among other aspects (Steele, forthcoming). However, Steele (2011, forthcoming) argues that loyalties can be hard to detect. One way she claims that armed groups can determine if a civilian is loyal or not is by looking at ascriptive clues, e.g., ethnicity (Steele 2011, 428; forthcoming). Nevertheless, in wars where there is no ascriptive clues, one source of information can be election results (Steele, forthcoming). Elections held before or during a war can reveal the loyalties of the population (Steele 2011, 424). For example, in those areas in which civilians voted for a party affiliated with the insurgents, the counterinsurgents can infer that those citizens are disloyal to them (Steele 2011, 424). In light of that, those civilians that are perceived to be disloyal according to the elections results are more likely to be displaced (Steele 2011, 429).
7 Bulutgil (2015, 581) also addresses how strategic objectives can lead to cleansing. She argues that armed groups remove people from certain areas when the warring parties believe those citizens are hindering or are anticipated to hinder their war efforts. On one hand, she alleges that when a minority group in a host state is part of the majority group in a neighboring enemy state, it will have more probabilities to experience ethnic cleansing. She claims that this relationship might lead the host state to believe that the minority group “would join the enemy forces or aid them behind front lines” (581). One the other hand, Bulutgil also claims that ethnic groups that collaborate militarily with an enemy state or rise in rebellion during war can also be considered risky and, therefore, are more likely to experience ethnic cleansing. She argues that the presumed motivation behind ethnic cleansing in these cases is “to prevent the ethnic group from undermining the war effort by indirectly diverting resources from the front line or directly increasing the strength of the enemy” (Bulutgil 2015, 581).
It is important to take into account all these theories when analyzing in general the causes of displacement. However, as explained in the next chapter, some of them are more suitable than others to account for the reasons why the LTTE displaced Muslim communities during the Sri Lankan civil war.
8 Theory
A. Argument
After examining the relevant literature related to political cleansing, I reject the ethnic hatred and resentment theories, and claim that armed groups are more likely to cause displacement strategically. Although some combatants may be driven by those sentiments in the way they attack other civilians and/or cause displacement, in general, armed groups tend to employ violence more strategically than emotionally (see Stanton 2009). Wars are costly (see Fearon 1995). Armed groups cannot just use the resources they have motivated by their personal feelings. They have to be cautious about how they utilize what they have available. Therefore, armed groups will likely use violence to achieve particular objectives during the conflict that may help them to eventually win the war (Bulutgil 2015, Stanton 2009). Taking inspiration from Steele’s theory, I argue that armed groups cause displacement of civilians in territories they want to control when they perceive that those civilians are disloyal to them.
The literature about strategic cleansing discussed in the previous chapter mentions different elements that can reveal if civilians are disloyal or not. However, most of the literature ties the loyalty of civilians to the armed groups (e.g., groups that are the ethnic kin of an enemy state in war can face a higher risk of ethnic cleansing, or counterinsurgents can perceive that people who voted for insurgent-affiliated party are disloyal). I agree that analyzing the possible connections between the civilians and armed groups can certainly allow us to assess the loyalties of the civilians. Nonetheless, those links are not the only ones that can help in this endeavor. Although armed groups are the main parties in a civil war, there could be other actors that are not affiliated with them but could still affect the possibilities that a particular armed group has to achieve its objectives and win the war. I argue that armed groups might also consider disloyal civilians who support those other groups that are hindering or could hinder their war efforts. Political parties are some of the actors that can affect the outcome of the conflict. If they are supported by the population they can have access to the government and they can implement, or at least try to implement, their policies. If those political ideas are against the objectives of a particular armed group, that warring party would be constrained in achieving its war goals if the policies are eventually implemented, regardless if the political parties are linked or not to its rivals. With all of this in consideration, I claim that armed groups will categorize as disloyal those civilians that are supporting a political party whose political objectives are hindering or
9 might hinder the armed group’s war goals, even when the political parties are not affiliated with a specific armed group. Since loyalty can be assessed based on political support, I also claim that elections results can help identify those that might be disloyal or not to an armed group.
B. Hypothesis
My hypothesis is that: the LTTE caused the displacement of Muslim communities that
supported a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the Tigers’ war goals. That support led the LTTE to believe that those civilians were disloyal to the Tigers.
C. Assumptions and Scope Conditions of the Theory
There are some assumptions and scope conditions related to the applicability of my theory. First, the research focuses on the form of displacement known as political cleansing. Therefore, from now on, whenever I use term “displacement” I may be referring specifically to political cleansing depending on the context of the information provided. Second, I will restrict the application of my theory to cases of displacement of Muslim communities in Sri Lanka, which means the displacement of communities integrated mostly by civilians identified with the Sri Lankan Moor ethnic group. Third, I assume that armed groups fight for the control of territories and that they use different types of violence to achieve that goal. Since wars are costly, I assume that armed groups assess the costs and risks of their actions before executing them and that they use the type of violence they believe is more effective to control a territory at the moment they implement their tactics.
10 Methodology
In order to test my argument, I will use the case study and process tracing methods. On one hand, I will perform an in-depth study of the Sri Lankan civil war. I will focus in variation over time in regards to the displacement of Muslim groups caused by the LTTE. I will analyze the circumstances surrounding the occasions in which the LTTE caused said displacement since the war started in July 23, 1983 until it ended in May 18, 2009. However, I will also take in consideration variation across space. I will examine the different conditions surrounding the displacement that occurred in distinct provinces in Sri Lanka, particularly between the Northern and Eastern provinces. On the other hand, in regards to each situation of displacement the LTTE caused, I will use process tracing to analyze the sequence of events related to each one of those displacements to find evidence that will me allow to identify the causal mechanisms that led to the political cleansing.
A. Dependent Variable
As explained before, I will focus on the form of displacement known as political cleansing and, specifically, on the displacement of Muslim communities from a particular region of Sri Lanka. For the purpose of this research, the term “region” refers to a town, a district or a province of that country and the term “community” refers to a group of civilians living in a particular region of the island. Not all members of the community had to leave the region, but the majority of them. Also, there are several elements that I will take into account while measuring my dependent variable to confirm that the displacement was caused by the LTTE, either in total or in part. First, the LTTE had to express to the Muslim group that it had to leave the region. Although the LTTE could have used other methods to demonstrate that it wanted a Muslim community to leave a certain area, its intentions might have not always been clear. For example, a Muslim group might have left a certain region because of several killings the LTTE carried out there. However, the intention of the LTTE could have been just to kill certain people that it believed was disloyal to them, not to cause the displacement of all the civilians from the whole area. If the LTTE expressed that it wanted those Muslim groups to leave the region that they eventually evacuated, then we have a clear indicator that the LTTE actually wanted that displacement to happen.
11 Second, the displacement must have occurred within three months since the LTTE sent the message. This element helps to control the effect of other factors that might also influence the displacement. During a war, there can be several reasons why people decide to leave their homes. For example, they could decide to leave because of poor economic conditions in the area and not necessarily because of the armed groups’ violence (see Adhikary 2013). Although the Muslim communities that were displaced during the Sri Lankan civil war could have decided to leave for various reasons, the time frame provided will allow me to infer that the LTTE’s attacks caused the displacement at least partially. This time period is short enough to causally link the LTTE’s violence with the displacement, but also sufficiently ample to let me examine the additional tactics (besides ordering the groups to leave) that the LTTE could have used to cause the displacement.
Both of these factors will demonstrate that the displacement was not just a by-product of the violence that occurred during the war or that it was caused solely by other elements not related to the LTTE’s attacks and intentions.
B. Independent Variables
In terms of the independent variable, there are also several factors that will allow me to infer if a Muslim community from a particular region was disloyal to the LTTE or not. According to my argument, a group of civilians can be regarded as disloyal if it supported a political party whose political interests are opposed to the LTTE’s goals. To measure that support, the most important element that I will take into consideration are elections results. For this analysis, I will focus particularly on the Sri Lankan parliamentary elections. The reason is that, unlike other elections that were not celebrated in all parts of Sri Lanka during the conflict, the parliamentary elections were held in all districts and provinces during the whole war period. Nonetheless, I will also use other election results as long as they can help clarify the data obtained from the parliamentary elections. I will consider that a Muslim community supported a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s goals, if that group was located in a district in which the party gathered enough votes to gain at least one seat in the Sri Lankan Parliament. Also, I will determine that a Muslim community supported that political party, even though it did not win a seat in the Parliament, if the party had the second highest number of votes in the district where the Muslim community was located or if it gathered enough
12 votes to at least qualify to compete for seats in the Parliament according to the Constitution of Sri Lanka (more than 5% of the total votes in the district) (Parliament of Sri Lanka 2015, 76). The reason why I will use that threshold is because, although the majority of Muslims in a region might have supported a rival party, sometimes their votes were probably not going to be enough to grant that party a seat in the Parliament. For example, according to the 1981 Census in Sri Lanka, there were 12,598 Muslims living in the Jaffna district from a total population of 830,552 (Department of Census and Statistics–Sri Lanka [DCSSR] 2015, 144). During the 1989 Parliamentary Elections, 239,855 people casted a valid vote in that area (Election Commission of Sri Lanka [ECSR] 2017b, 11). If the political party that Muslims supported wanted to qualify to compete for seats in the Parliament, they needed at least 11,993 votes in their favor, i.e., 95% of the Muslim population in general would have had to vote for them (regardless if they were able to participate in the election process or not). With this minimum threshold, I take in consideration those smaller Muslim groups.
Although elections results are a crucial factor to determine if a Muslim community supported a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s war goals, these are not the only aspects that I will take in consideration. I will also examine if there were: 1) campaigns in favor of the political party in the districts where Muslim communities were located; 2) protests against the LTTE in the strongholds of the political party; 3) possible common political interests between the communities affected by displacement and the political party; 4) communications from the LTTE or the political party against each other; 5) LTTE’s communications indicating that the displacement was caused because the displaced people voted for the political party; and other relevant factors. None of these elements will be enough by themselves to determine if a Muslim community supported the party or not. To make that inference, I will analyze all of them. The more elements I can identify, the more likely it will be that a community supported the political party. After considering these aspects, if I find that a displaced Muslim community was supporting a political party whose political interests hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s goals, then I will infer that the Muslims groups were displaced because the Tigers believed they were disloyal to them.
While examining if my argument answers the research question or not, I will also analyze if the other two major possible explanations that the literature about ethnic and political cleansing discusses apply to my case. First, I will examine the ethnic hatred theory. To establish that the
13 displacement was caused because the LTTE hated the Muslim ethnic group in Sri Lanka, I would expect to see: 1) disputes between the Tamils and the Muslims before the war; 2) communications from the LTTE or Tamils against Muslims based on ethnic differences or prejudice against them, raised before or during the war; 3) discriminatory treatment from the LTTE to the Muslim community based on ethnic differences between Tamils and Muslims; and 4) unwillingness from the LTTE and/or Tamils to collaborate with Muslims.
Second, I will verify if revenge against Muslims was the cause of the displacement. To measure this variable, I will look for: 1) attacks by Muslims against the LTTE in the areas that the displacement occurred before it happened; 2) attacks by Muslims against the LTTE in other areas before the displacement occurred; 3) communications from the LTTE expressing that the displacement occurred because of those attacks; and 4) unwillingness of the LTTE to collaborate with Muslims groups. Although the first three elements are also going to be considered to determine if the reason why the LTTE displaced Muslim communities was because they were loyal or not, there are some differences between them. When analyzing if disloyalty was the cause or not for the displacement, these elements play more of a strategic role rather than a revenge role. According to my argument, I would expect to see that armed groups used that information not necessarily to make the Muslims pay for what they did, but to determine the tactics they should use that may allow them to gain control of a territory and achieve its objectives. Therefore, to infer that resentment played a role in the displacements, the communications from the LTTE about the cleansing have to be based on what and how the Tigers suffered because of the Muslim attacks and not based on the threats they want to prevent that could affect the LTTE’s war goals.
It is important to state that the displacement that is caused by any of the possible motives that I discussed in this section is different from the one that is just a by-product of violence. In all of them, the LTTE’s violence could have caused the displacement of Muslims communities. However, if the reason behind it was disloyalty, ethnic hatred or resentment, I expect to see that the elements that account for any of those explanations were revealed before the LTTE’s violence that triggered the displacement occurred.
C. Case Selection and Data
14 discussed the displacement in general that occurred in Sri Lanka. In those articles, I found two cases of displacement of Muslim communities that the LTTE allegedly caused, one in the Northern Province in 1990 and one in the Eastern Provinces in 2006.
To test my hypothesis in those cases, I gathered data from several reports of different organizations and agencies, investigations of different scholars and other reliable sources that describe in detail the events that occurred before and after the war started that are related, directly or indirectly, to the relationship or interactions between the LTTE and the Muslims during wartime. First, I analyzed the particular events that occurred during each case of displacement. I started by gathering information from the moment in which the LTTE sent the message to the Muslim communities that they have to leave their homes until the displacement process was completed. However, I also collected data about events that happened before and after the displacements occurred. I evaluated the violence perpetrated from the LTTE or the Tamils against the Muslims and vice versa, the relationship in general among those groups, the way the Muslim communities voted in the elections held before and during the war, and other events that will help clarify any possible doubts regarding the motives behind the displacements.
To understand better the analysis of the events related to the cases of displacement that I selected to test my theory, I provide next a background on the Sri Lankan civil war. I included some aspects about the conflict in general and about the Muslims politics during wartime.
15 Background of the War
A. General Aspects about the Sri Lankan Civil War
During 25 years, Sri Lanka was the center of an ethnic war. The main grievance of the conflict was the divisions between the two major ethnic groups in the country: the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils (Uppsala Conflict Data Program [UCDP] 2017b).
The problems with these two groups started around 1948 when Sri Lanka gained its independence from India (UCDP 2017b). By that time, the Tamils were worried that the Constitution of the new country was not going to include adequate protections to this minority group against possible discriminatory policies that may be implemented by the Sinhalese (UCDP 2017b). Those divisions intensified when the Constitution of Sri Lanka was enacted in 1972. It established that the religion of the Sinhalese, Buddhism, was going to have the “foremost place” among other religions of the island and that Sinhala, the language of the majority ethnic group, was going to be official language of Sri Lanka (Parliament of Sri Lanka 2015, 3, 10). Also, Tamils suffered from discriminatory policies from the Sinhalese government in terms of their education and other aspects that led to their distrust of national politics (UCDP 2017b). As a result, Tamils started claiming non-discriminatory treatment and equal status for their culture and language (UCDP 2017a). “These demands became radicalized over the years, transforming into Tamil demands for self-government and independence in the areas where they are a dominant community” (UCDP 2017a).
In May 14, 1976, the main Tamil political party, the Tamil United Liberation Front (the “TULF”), approved the Vaddukoddai Resolution which stated that the Tamils are a distinct and separate nation apart from the Sinhalese (Bandarage 2009, 19; UCDP 2017b). It called for the creation of the State Tamil Eelam, which was going to be comprised by the people living in the Eastern and Northern Provinces of the country, and demanded the guarantee of full rights to all Tamil speaking people living in Sri Lanka and Tamils of Eelam origin living in other parts of the world (Bandarage 2009, 19, 71). Also, it urged the Tamil population to fight until they achieve this goal (Bandarage 2009, 19; International Crisis Group [ICG] 2012, 3n15). From these nationalist objectives, the LTTE was born. It was an armed group created in May 1976 by Vellupillai Prabhakaran which had the same platform as the Vaddukoddai Resolution and which initiated an insurgency in Sri Lanka to obtain the goals established in said document (UCDP 2017b).
16 Initially, the LTTE committed only some military attacks and political assassinations (UCDP 2017b). However, the civil war formally started in 1983 when the Tigers killed 13 soldiers in Jaffna Town in the Northern Province (ICG 2006, 3; Spencer 2008, 611, 615-616; UCDP 2017b). The war lasted 25 years and was mainly fought between the LTTE and the armed forces of the Government (Höglund 2011, 229; UCDP 2017b). During the war, there were several periods of ceasefire in which the warring parties tried to reach or enforce agreements between them to put an end to the war (see UCDP 2017b). As part of the efforts to settle the conflict, the Northern and Eastern Provinces were merged temporarily into one (Shashtri 1992, 725; United Nations Peace Maker [UNPM] 2017, sec. 2.2). Also, a provincial council was established for the newly created province (UNPM 2017, sec. 2.2). Moreover, India deployed a peacekeeping force aimed to oversee the enforcement of some of those possible solutions (UCDP 2017b). However, those efforts were unsuccessful. Eventually the North-Eastern Province was demerged in 2006 and the parties were not able to reach a final agreement between them (DeVotta 2009, 1038; UCDP 2017b). The war finally ended in 2009 with the victory of the Government against the LTTE (UCDP 2017b).
B. Rise of Muslim Politics during the War
Despite the tensions between the two major ethnic groups before the war, most of the time Tamils and Muslims lived peacefully after the independence of Sri Lanka, particularly the Northern and Eastern Muslims during the 1960s and 1970s (Imtiyaz 2009, 410). The Muslim politicians commonly worked with other parties to try to achieve their interests. The Muslims from the South usually maintained cooperation with the major Sinhalese parties that controlled the government, the United National Party (“UNP”) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (“SLFP”) (Imtiyaz 2009, 418). However, Muslims politicians from the North and the East usually contested under the Federal Party which was dominated by Tamils (Imtiyaz 2009, 418).
During the early 1980s, some members of the Muslim community, particularly from the East, started to feel isolated from national politics (SLMC 2017b). This led to creation of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (“SLMC”) (SLMC 2017b). It was originally a social movement formed on September 11, 1981 in Kattankudy town located in the Batticaloa district, whose goal was to fight for the rights of the Muslim community, particularly the ones from the Eastern Province (SLMC 2017b). It was not until 1986 that the SLMC officially became a party (SLMC 2017b).
17 After that, the SLMC participated in the Provincial Council Elections of 1988 where it won, among others, 17 seats in the Eastern Province (Matthews 1989, 231). The SLMC also contested the Parliamentary Elections of 1989 and won three seats thanks to the votes it obtained in the Northern and Eastern Provinces and one seat for the votes it received in total during the elections (ECSR 2017b). After the Provincial Council Elections of 1988, “the SLMC almost monopolized Muslim politics in the East and also emerged as one of the major forces in Sri Lankan national politics too” (Imtiyaz and Iqbal 2011, 382-383). Among other aspects, the SLMC advocated for the protection of Muslims against the violence from the Tigers during the war (INFORM Human Rights and Documentation Center [INFORM] 1992b). Also, it objected to the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces and demanded a separate Muslim provincial council in the east area of Sri Lanka (Johansson 2016, 113-114).
18 Cases of Displacement
During the civil war, more than 800,000 people were displaced in Sri Lanka, either to other areas within the island or to other countries (Brun 2003, 381; Internal Displacement Monitoring Center [IDMC] 2014). Among them there were thousands of Muslim civilians (IDMC 2014). It has been argued that the violence perpetrated during the war caused the displacement of Muslim communities. For example, reports have claimed that Muslims abandoned several villages located in the Batticaloa district of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka1, which resulted in the displacement of 500 families (University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) [UTHR] 1993a, chap. 5). Although several Muslim communities were displaced during the conflict, there are two cases of displacement that appear to be the most obvious ones that the LTTE wanted to cause. I chose them to test my theory to be sure to analyze cases that have all the elements to account for my dependent variable and, therefore, to be able to answer my research question adequately. I will proceed now to explain first the spatial and temporal variation of my dependent variable within Sri Lanka and then I will describe the details of each case of displacement.
A. Variation of Displacement
Sri Lanka is a country that is divided in nine provinces: Northern, Eastern, Western, Southern, Central, North Western, North Central, Uva and Sabaragamuwa (DCS 2013). Each of those provinces is divided as well in districts that incorporate several towns and villages (DCS 2013). From all of those provinces, two of them seem to had cases of displacement caused by the LTTE: the Northern Province and the Eastern Province (UTHR 1991a, chap.3; UTHR 2006a). Although there were other Muslim communities in other parts of the country during the war, e.g., in Kandy town in the Central Province (Mayilvaganan 2008, 834), the LTTE do not seem to have caused displacements of Muslim communities in the other seven provinces, or at least, the reports and studies that were analyzed do not appear to reflect the contrary.
In terms of time, the Sri Lankan civil war was divided into four periods: 1) from July 1983 to July 1987 (“Eelam War I”); 2) from June 1990 to January 1995 (“Eelam War II”); 3) from April 1995 to February 2002 (“Eelam War III”); and 4) from July 2006 to May 2009
1 The villages that Muslims allegedly abandoned were: Illuppadichchenai, Kasar-Kudah, Kokku-Thangia-Madu, Komparchenai, Kooththuchchenai, Koppaveli, Mavadi-Odai, Oorugamam, Pavatkodichchenai, Rugam, Sillikudiaru, Sivaththa-Bokkadi, Thumpavan Cholai and Veppa-Vedduwan (UTHR 1993, chap. 5).
19 (“Eelam War IV”) (Destradi 2012, 66). Each of those stages were separated by ceasefire periods (Castellano 2015, 131; UCDP 2017b). The LTTE apparently caused displacement at least two times during the war: one in 1990, four months after Eelam War II started, and one in 2006, one month after Eelam War IV began (UTHR 1991a, chap. 3; UTHR 2006a). In particular, the Tigers caused the displacement of Muslims communities in the Northern Province in 1990 and in the Eastern Province in 2006 (UTHR 1991a, chap. 3; UTHR 2006a). Even though there were Muslim communities living in those two provinces and in other provinces of Sri Lanka at other stages during the war, the LTTE do not seem to have caused displacement during other periods of the conflict.
B. Description of the Cases of Displacement
1. Northern Muslims
The first case of displacement of Muslim communities occurred in 1990 between the months of October and November (Jeyaraj 2015; UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). During that period, more than 60,000 Muslims had to leave their homes located in the five districts (Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitivu) within the Northern Province of Sri Lanka (IDMC 2014). According to some reports, the LTTE transmitted the expulsion order in the following dates and areas: 1) on October 21, 1990 in Chavakachcheri Town in Jaffna; 2) on October 23, 1990 in the Marichukkatty village in Mannar, 3) on October 24, 1990 in Mannar Island in Mannar; 3) on October 23, 1990 in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi; and 4) on October 30, 1990 in Jaffna Town in Jaffna (Imtiyaz and Hoole 2011, 229; Jeyaraj 2015; UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). These orders were delivered in at least four of the five districts of the Northern Province. However, reports claim that some Muslims from the Vavuniya district were also asked to leave around that period (Jeyaraj 2015).
The Muslims that were ordered to evacuate the region were given less than a week to move out of the area (Imtiyaz and Hoole 2011, 229; Jeyaraj 2015; Shanmugaratnam 2000, 7; UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). In places like Mannar, the LTTE used loudspeakers to transmit its order for expulsion against the Muslims (Jeyaraj 2015; Shanmugaratnam 2000, p. 7; UTHR 1991b). The messages transmitted by the LTTE not only ordered them to leave those districts; they also notified those civilians that they need to seek permission and clearance from the Tigers before leaving and that the LTTE was going to decide their exit route (UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). In other
20 places, like Jaffna, the LTTE gathered the whole Muslim community first and then told them that they needed to leave. For example, on October 30, 1990 at 7:30 a.m., the Tigers announced through loudspeakers that all Muslims living in Jaffna had to assemble at the Jinnah Stadium in the Osmania College located in the same district (Jeyaraj 2015). Also, some LTTE members did a house-to-house announcement about the assembly (Jeyaraj 2015). During the meeting, two LTTE leaders, Prabhakaran and Anjaneyar, told the Muslims that they only had two hours to leave (International Crisis Group [ICG] 2006, 15; Jeyaraj 2015; UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). The Muslims were released at 10:00 a.m. and had to report at 12:00 p.m. at different check points established across the town (UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). However, a lot of them were checked before they even left their homes (UTHR 1991a, chap. 3).
The Muslims that were leaving the Northern Province were ordered to queue up at Ainthumuchanthi (Jeyaraj 2015). When the civilians arrived, the LTTE ordered them to give the Tigers all their belongings (Jeyaraj 2015). The Muslims were only allowed to carry 150 rupees and one set of clothes (ICG 2006, 15). The reports do not mention if the LTTE expressly said that it wanted to control those areas. However, their acts after the displacement might lead us to believe that this was its goal. After the Muslims left those zones, the LTTE allegedly sold Muslim houses, lands and vehicles to Tamils (Jeyaraj 2012; ICG 2007, 8). Also, the Tigers established administrative organisms in some parts of Sri Lanka, including areas in the north (Stokke 2006, 1022).
As we can see, the displacement of Muslims in the Northern Province was not a byproduct of the LTTE’s violence. The Tigers clearly wanted to cause the displacement of those civilians. The LTTE ordered them to leave the different districts, the cleansing occurred less than a week after the Muslims were told to evacuate the area and the LTTE controlled the displacement process. It is important to also clarify that this displacement was not the only one that the LTTE was apparently trying to instigate around that time in Sri Lanka.
While the displacement of the Northern Muslims was occurring, the Tamils were also generally attacking other communities in the East and more specifically targeting the Muslim population. On August 3, 1990, two months before the displacement of 1990, the LTTE allegedly entered into two Muslim mosques in the Kattankudy town in the Batticaloa district and killed the worshippers (Ali 2014, 377; ICG 2006, 15; UTHR 1990a, chap. 9). In those attacks, the LTTE apparently assassinated at least 120 Muslims and wounded 75 of them (UTHR 1990a, chap. 9).
21 On August 12, 1990, the LTTE went to the town of Eravur in the Batticaloa district and attacked Muslim civilians (UTHR 1990b, chap. 1, chap. 2). Specifically, approximately 200 Tigers went to the Muslim villages of Saddam Hussein Village, Pooaikadu and Kalawaichnai in the Muslim division of Eravur electorate and killed around 122 Muslim civilians who were mostly decapitated (Bandarage 2009, 153; UTHR 1990b, chap. 2). Moreover, some reports claimed that the LTTE issued warnings to all Muslims to vacate their homes in the North and the East (INFORM 1990b, 8). This demonstrates that the LTTE also wanted to displace Muslims in other areas. However, it was not successful in this endeavor. One key difference between the Northern and Eastern Provinces was the amount of Muslim population. According to the last census performed before the displacement of 1990, the Muslims were only 5% of the total population in the Northern Province (see DCSSR 2015, 144). Nevertheless, the Sri Lanka Muslims were around 32% of the total population in the Eastern Province (see DCSSR 2015, 144). In the East, there were more Muslims than Sinhalese, the major ethnic group in the whole Sri Lanka, who only made up 25% of the ethnic demography (see DCSSR 2015, 144). In terms of the amount of people, there were 50,841 Muslims in the North compared to 315,436 Muslims in the East (see DCSSR 2015, 144). The fact that Muslims were almost one third of the total population of the Eastern Province could have helped them resist the LTTE’s violence. However, the reasons why these people did not leave their homes is beyond the scope of this research. For this investigation, the only event around 1990 that seems to account for my dependent variable is the displacement of Muslims in the Northern Province.
2. Mutur Muslims
The second case of displacement of Muslim groups that the LTTE caused was in 2006 when the Muslim community living in Mutur Town located in the Trincomalee district of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka fled the area (IDMC 2007, 10; UTHR 2006a). The way the displacement occurred there was different in some aspects from the one that occurred in the Northern Province. However, it still has all the elements that demonstrate that the LTTE wanted to cause that displacement.
Around June 2006, just weeks before Eelam War IV started, the LTTE sent threats to the Muslims in Mutur Town ordering them to leave (UTHR 2006a). At that time, the Muslim community did not seem to have evacuated the abovementioned place or, at least, the documents
22 that were revised do not mention that they did. Nonetheless, the LTTE perpetrated a series of attacks in the following two months that eventually led those civilians to flee Mutur. After a period of four years of ceasefire in Sri Lanka, on July 20, 2006 the LTTE closed the Mavil Aru sluice gates which provided water to more than 15,000 families in territories which, at that point, were controlled by the Government (IDMC 2007, 10; ICG 2007, 16; UTHR 2006a). As a consequence, the Government retaliated against the LTTE and heavy conflict occurred between both armed groups in the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts (IDMC 2007, 10). While those attacks happened, on August 1, 2006 the LTTE regrouped in Mutur Town (IDMC 2009, 41; UTHR 2006a). Around 11:30 p.m. the Tigers cut the power supply (Mohideen 2012; UTHR 2006a). Then, a couple hours later, one of the LTTE leaders called a Muslim community leader in Mutur and informed him that the Tigers were going to battle for the control of the town (UTHR 2006a). Consequently, the LTTE started attacking several camps in the area (UTHR 2006a). As a result of those attacks, the Government started to shell Mutur constantly from outside of the region causing the death of several Tamils and Muslim civilians in the area (UTHR 2006a). It has been claimed that the LTTE was firing from civilian positions to allegedly provoke the Government to fire against those locations (UTHR 2006a). On August 3, 2006, the LTTE fired rockets at the Government and then stood close to the Arabic College where thousands of Muslims were seeking refuge (UTHR 2006a). Air Force helicopters were flying overhead (UTHR 2006a). It is believed that the LTTE soldiers could have been spotted since they were standing outside wearing their uniforms (UTHR 2006a). The Government then started shelling the Arabic College causing the death of 36 people (UTHR 2006a).
After two days of constant exchange of attacks between the LTTE and the Government, on August 4, 2006 the LTTE leaders took the decision to evacuate Mutur (UTHR 2006a). As a result, more than 25,000 Muslims left the town (ICG 2007, 16). The Muslims first walked towards the 64th Mile Post, but then the LTTE made them take a detour through Kinanthimunai because the Tigers said that the road was mined (UTHR 2006b). As the crowd approached the place, LTTE members that were hidden started to come out (UTHR 2006b). The Muslim men had to walk past some hooded men who allegedly were screening people to identify supporters of LTTE’s enemies (UTHR 2006b). However, the process was interrupted by the Government. At about 1:00 p.m., it started shelling the checkpoint and the civilians that were there ran away in
23 different directions (UTHR 2006b). Despite the thousands of civilians that were displaced, around 3,000 people stayed in Mutur (UTHR 2006b).
The LTTE gained control over that city, but not for long. By Saturday August 5, 2006, the Government reclaimed the town (UTHR 2006b). After that, the Government started to bring back to Mutur the Muslims that were displaced (UTHR 2006b). However, on September 22, 2006, the LTTE ordered again the Muslims to leave the city temporarily so that they could regain control of it (INFORM and Center for Policy Alternatives [CPA] 2006, 1; UTHR 2006b). The Muslim community started to leave again for the towns of Kinniya, Kantalai and Trincomalee, but the Government forced the civilians to turn back (INFORM and CPA 2006, 1; UTHR 2006b). Nonetheless, on that same day more than 800 Muslim families eventually reached Kinniya (UTHR 2006b).
The events discussed in the preceding paragraphs are relevant to measure the dependent variable that is the object of this research. The displacement that occurred in August 4, 2006 has all the elements that are necessary to consider it as one of the cases of displacement of Muslim communities caused by the LTTE. On June 2006, the LTTE sent a message to the Muslim group living in Mutur asking them to leave the area. Two months later, those Muslims left the abovementioned town. In addition, the LTTE was in charge of the displacement. It authorized the movement, controlled the exit route the Muslims took and screened the Muslims that were living before they could go settle in a new place. The LTTE even reinstated its intentions to cleanse the area from the Muslim community when it distributed leaflets on September 22, 2006 asking the residents from that ethnic group to, once again, leave Mutur.
At the beginning of Eelam War IV, the LTTE was also using violence in other parts of Sri Lanka. For example, on August 11, 2006, the LTTE attacked the government forces in the Jaffna Peninsula located in the Northern Province (Human Rights Watch [HRW] 2007, 21). Another example is when the LTTE battled the Government for the control of Sampur which is close to Mutur Town on August 2006 (“Sri Lankan troops take key town” 2006). Many civilians in general allegedly fled because of the violence perpetrated in those areas (“Sri Lankan troops take key town” 2006), but it does not look like the LTTE caused any other act of displacement of Muslim communities around that time. The event that seems to account for my dependent variable during that period is the displacement that occurred in August 4, 2006. The
24 circumstances surrounding it clearly reveal that it was in fact caused by the LTTE and, therefore, that it was not a by-product of the violence.
25 Analysis and Discussion of Data
In the previous chapter, I discussed the two events of displacement which I focus on in this research, one that occurred in 1990 in the Northern Province and the other that occurred in 2006 in Mutur Town. As I am going to explain in more detail in this section, the analysis of the events related to those cases demonstrate that the Tigers caused the displacements because they perceived that those civilians were disloyal to them. There is strong evidence that show that support for a political party whose political objectives hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s war goals allowed the Tigers to infer that the displaced civilians were disloyal. However, the analysis also reveals another source of disloyalty. Military collaboration with the LTTE’s rival armed groups, either by joining their forces or by attacking the LTTE or the Tamils, allowed the Tiger to assess the loyalties of the displaced civilians. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates that the LTTE used the Muslim ethnicity to target those that it considered disloyal.
A. Evidence of Political Support
There are several elements related to those cases of displacement and the events that occurred during the war in general that I expect to observe in order for those incidents of political cleansing to be the ideal cases to test my theory. I expect to see evidence of support to a political party whose interests are against the LTTE’s goals in the areas the displaced civilians used to live. Also, I will be looking for signs that lead me to believe that the LTTE knew the displaced civilians were supporting that political party. Moreover, I hope to find data about several clashes between the LTTE and the political party, as well as its leaders or its supporters during the war.
1. North-1990
There are some elements that demonstrate a strong political support from the displaced Muslims to a political party who interests hindered or could have hindered the LTTE’s war goals. Before 1989, the parliamentary elections in the Northern Province were dominated by Tamil political parties (De Silva 1998, 39). Only on two occasions did the main ruling Sinhalese political party in Sri Lanka, the United National Party, win a seat in the Parliament on its own (De Silva 1998, 39). The first one was in 1952 with a Tamil candidate and the second one in 1954 with a Muslim candidate (De Silva 1998, 39). The seats in the Northern Province were usually shared by the Tamil Congress, the Federal Party and, its successor, the TULF (De Silva 1998,
26 39). Moreover, in the Parliamentary Elections of 1977 (the last elections before the war started) all the seats in the Northern Province were won by the TULF (ECSR 2017a, 20-21). However, things changed in the Parliamentary Elections of 1989. At least one member of the SLMC won a seat in one of the two electoral districts in the Northern Province (ECSR 2017b). In the Vanni electoral district, which included the administrative districts of Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitivu, the SLMC won a seat with 32.82% percent of the total votes (ECSR 2017b, 12). The votes for the SLMC were not enough to grant that party a seat in the Jaffna electoral district, which covered the Jaffna and Killinochi administrative districts (ECSR 2017b, 11). The SLMC did not even receive the minimum threshold of 5% required to qualify for a seat in the Parliament (ECSR 2017b, 11). However, the SLMC ended up being the party with the second highest number of votes in the Jaffna electoral district with 8,439 votes, which was 3.52% of the total amount (ECSR 2017b, 11).
Besides elections results, there are other factors that reveal that support for this party was the reason the LTTE displaced Muslim communities in the Northern Province. First, the SLMC was a party whose political interests conflicted with the LTTE’s objectives. The Tigers wanted to create a separate Tamil state comprised of the Northern and Eastern Provinces (UCDP 2017b). However, the SLMC obstructed the achievement of this goal (see INFORM 1990a; Johansson 2016, 113-114). After the Northern and Eastern Provinces were temporarily merged, the SLMC claimed for a separate administrative division for Muslims in the Eastern Province where this ethnic group represented one third of the total population (INFORM 1990a, 3). It argued that the Muslim group living in the north were only 5% of the total population in that area and, by merging the Eastern and Northern Province, the Muslims were still going to be a minority in the new state proposed by the LTTE (Johansson 2016, 113-114; SLMC 2017a).
Second, the SLMC started claiming security measures against the LTTE’s violence before the displacement occurred. On September 28, 1990, the SLMC requested the Sri Lankan government to increase the intake of Muslim Home Guards in order to protect the Muslim communities (“Situation in East Sri Lanka Complicated, Says Minister” 1989; INFORM 1990a, 2, 11). In regard to this, the Sri Lanka Government implemented a Home Guard system in the Sinhalese and Muslim communities in 1985 (Silva 2010, 31). This was designed to be a civil force to protect areas that were threatened or attacked by the LTTE (Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights[OHCHR] 2015, 31; Silva 2010, 31-32). In general, their tasks
27 included “protecting vulnerable villages, manning sections of forward defence lines, protecting suspected LTTE targets such as Buddhist temples in border villages, manning check points on roads and monitoring any suspected events or movements of people in and out of the villages” (Silva 2010, 32). The Home Guards, mostly adult males, were put into service after 48 hours of training by the Police Department (Civil Security Department of Sri Lanka [CSDSR] 2017; Silva 2010, 31; UTHR 1990b, chap. 1).2 The Government gave them “12 bore shotguns and brown colored uniforms”, and assigned them to a local police station (CSDSR 2017; Silva 2010, 33). Muslims were part of the Home Guard system. The Sri Lankan Government apparently started recruiting them on or before September 1990 to provide protection to Muslim villages in the East (see INFORM 1990a, 2; UTHR 1990b, chap. 1). By the time the displacement in the Northern Province occurred, some Muslim Home Guards were deployed in places like Trincomalee and Batticaloa towns located in the eastern districts of the same names (UTHR 1990b, chap. 1).
Fourth, the SLMC contested elections that the LTTE were boycotting. In particular, the LTTE boycotted the 1989 provincial council elections (“Nomination for provincial council election in Sri Lanka ends” 1988). The Tigers even threatened, through posters and handbills, the people in the north and the east that were going to take part in the elections (“Preparations for PC Elections in North-East Sri Lanka Faces Standstill” 1988). Although several parties decided not to participate, the SLMC contested them and won 17 seats in the Eastern Province (Lewer and Ismail 2011, 122). Fifth, the LTTE tried to restrain the support for the SLMC. In regards to the parliamentary elections that were held in 1989, the LTTE started banning political activities from the SLMC in the areas it controlled in the north and the east of Sri Lanka (UTHR 1990a, chap. 7). Also, around January 1990, some news emerged that the LTTE again warned the SLMC to halt any political activity in the north-east (“Tamil Militants Warn Muslim Political Activity in Sri Lanka” 1990). Finally, without mentioning the SLMC specifically, the LTTE alluded to the complaints of the political party about the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces while explaining the reasons why the displacement occurred in the North (UTHR 1991b, chap. 6). Among other aspects, during a speech that the former LTTE political spokesman, Yogaratnam Yogi, delivered at the University of Jaffna after the expulsion, he mentioned that the Eastern Muslims claimed that they were losing privileges in the new province (UTHR 1991b, chap. 6).
2 After 2006, the guards were grouped into a separate troop known as the Civil Security Force under the direction of the CSDSR (CSDSR 2017; Silva 2010, 33).
28 Although these circumstances can lead us to infer that the LTTE perceived that the Northern Muslims that were displaced were disloyal because they supported the SLMC, there are other events, or lack of them, that may weaken this inference.
First, before the 1990 displacement occurred, apparently there were no direct attacks against political leaders of the SLMC in the Northern Province or in the rest of Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the documents that were examined also did not mention that the LTTE specifically attacked SLMC supporters. These elements are important because they show the Tigers’ perception towards the SLMC and what their knowledge about the loyalty of the displaced community was when the political cleansing occurred. The absence of this type of violence put into question if, at the time of the displacement, the LTTE believed that the SLMC hindered or was hindering its war goals or if the LTTE knew that the displaced community supported the SLMC. Second, it does not seem that the SLMC represented the interests of the Northern Muslims when they were displaced. In fact, it discriminated against them when it claimed a separate provincial council for the Eastern Muslims. Therefore, the interests of the Northern Muslims might not have been the same as the ones from the SLMC. Third, it does not seem that the Northern Muslims were actually involved much in political campaigns in favor of the SLMC. The elections results revealed support for the SLMC in those areas, which could have been the factor that the LTTE ultimately took in consideration to determine if the civilians living there were disloyal or not, but the Northern Muslims did not seem to have shown that support in other ways before the elections. Fourth, when the LTTE told the Muslim communities that they had to leave, they did not mention the support to the SLMC as one of the reasons. In fact, the orders to evacuate the areas were not directed to the SLMC supporters or to a particular community regardless of the ethnicity of the civilians that were living there. The messages sent through loudspeakers mentioned the Muslims in general without making any other distinction (Jeyaraj 2015; UTHR 1991a, chap. 3). Finally, the discrepancies regarding the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces were not the only aspects that the LTTE alluded to as part of the reasons why the Northern Muslims were displaced. Yogi also mentioned in his speech that 2,000 Tamils were killed in the East by Muslim Home Guards, that 70,000 Tamils were displaced in the Eastern Province, that Muslims joined the government forces and that LTTE members were worried that a Muslim jihad organization was going to develop in the North (UTHR 1991b, chap. 6). Although these elements at first seem to weaken the inference that political support was a source
