The Causes,Development And Resolution Of Tamil Issue

Through the second half of the 20th century, reconciliations for Sri Lanka's ethnic problem between Sinhalese and Tamils ended in failure again and again. Sri Lanka's contradictions and conflicts have upgraded step by step, and brought difficulties to people of all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. What is the reason and crux of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict? This is what the thesis mainly discusses. Today, scholars generally believe that the conflict in Sri Lanka can not be described as a"civil war in Sri Lanka"or the so-called"ethnic conflict"accurately. It is defined as national crisis in"ceasefire agreement". This thesis mainly discusses the national crisis in Sri Lanka from the national perspective, and most of Sri Lanka's ethnic problem revolves around the issue of Tamil. Therefore, this thesis will call Sri Lanka's ethnic problem as Tamil issue. This thesis mainly adopts the method of case study while it employs also the integration of deduction and induction and of theoretical analysis and practical examination partly.This thesis analyzes the causes, development of the Tamil issue and the difficulty of solving it from the perspective of concerns of Sri Lanka's government,LTTE(Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and international community. It falls into five chapters.Chapter one analyzes the causes of Tamil issue, including historical causes——British colonial policy and domestic causes——the government's wrong implementation of ethnic policy in language, education, religion, economy and immigration.Chapter two comprehensively introduces the course of development of Tamil issue, which can be divided into three phases: the first phase, from independence to 1983, is non-violent-campaign stage; the second phases, from1983-2002, is low-intensive-civil-war stage; the third phases, from 2002 to present, Sri Lanka experiences a difficult stage of the peace process. Chapter three introduces the "LTTE" resulting from the domestic ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, including the formation and development,guidelines,ideology,and overseas activities of this organization.Chapter four mainly expounds the influence of India on Sri Lanka's ethnic issue as Indian constitutes the most important external factor. It mainly covers the analysis of India's policy for Sri Lanka, the cause of Indian involvement in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict, and settlement of"India-Sri Lanka peace Agreement". This part also introduces other western countries' influence on Tamil issue and the change of their attitude towards Tamil issue with the change of the international situation.Chapter five discusses the solution to Tamil issue and its reference to Chinese government. This part analyzes military and political solutions respectively. The military solution will not work. Although a political solution is not easy, it is the most possible solution. China is also a multi-ethnic country. Chinese government can learn something from the study of Tamil issue about how to handle the minority issue. Chinese government can work on these four aspects, including the correct formulation of national policies, and strengthening political, and cultural and economic development, and striving for support from the international community.