Sri Lanka to constitute panel to study cause of ethnic crisis

As he tries to win the hearts and minds of Tamils in a post-LTTE era, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa plans to constitute a committee to study the root cause of the ethnic question and ways to prevent a repeat of such a conflict that has claimed 70,000 lives.

The proposed committee would also study the lessons the Sri Lankan state learned since sections of the minority Tamils took to militancy in the late 1970s and the rise and fall of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which fought for a separate state for Tamils for over three decades.

"The committee would study on the development of the LTTE and the nearly three decades of war involving the militant outfit besides the challenges in the post-Prabhakaran era, among other things," Disaster Management and Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe said recently.

The move comes close on the heels of the Tamil National Alliance, a pro-LTTE Tamil ethnic party, saying that the people in Sri Lanka's north and east took to the streets demanding equal rights because of the "state-sponsored colonisation (of Sinhala community)".

Samarasinghe said the President plans to appoint the committee "in order to avoid such a conflict from occurring again in the future."

After the end of the 30-year-old civil war in May last year with the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, Rajapaksa had offered equal rights for minority Tamils through a political solution but said it won't be "imported".

The minister's comments come weeks after the UN announced its plans to constitute a panel to go into the alleged human rights violations in the last phase of the civil war.
   
The Sri Lankan Government is also under pressure from various countries, including India, to take steps to protect the rights of Tamil minorities.

Soon after re-election in January this year, Rajapaksa said he would soon unveil a political plan for the estranged Tamils.

He had also said he would hold a dialogue with Tamil leaders after the April 8 parliamentary elections before unveiling the plan.

Tamils are minorities in Sri Lanka and constitute over 12 per cent of the total population in the island. North and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka are dominated by Tamils.

The over three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka that began in 1975 with the establishment of LTTE ended in 2009 claiming over 70,000 lives.