their own homeland-Tamil Eelam-Ied to an increasing use of violence in the mid 1980s. The strongest and most hardline Tamil armed group in Sri Lanka is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LITE). Although the government has pledged to negotiate a devolution of powers with the troubled areas, the LITE insists on its objective of a separate state. The civil war continues to this day, and travelers are advised to avoid the
north, east and far southeast of the country.
1976: The LITE is founded on May 5 "to achieve what had become unachievable by peaceful methods in over 28 years." Their stated goal is to win back the Tamil's nomeland.
1983: Thirteen Sinhalese soldiers are killed in a Tamil ambush in the north. A state of emergency is declared, but rioting still
breaks out. Sinhalese-dominated mobs primarily target Tamil
residents, who die in the hundreds. Over 150,000 Tamils flee Sri Lanka.
1987: Indian troops arrive in Sri Lanka as peacekeepers. 1987: Tamil is accepted as the second official language of Sri Lanka.
1989: The Sinhalese-dominated government sponsors death squads to seek out and kill members of the Janatha Vimukthi
Peramul7la party, a Sinhalese extremist group with Marxist ten dencies. The death squads are only called off after most of the party's leaders are captured and executed.
1990: The Indian peacekeeping troops are recalled. Some members of the Tamil minority see this as a betrayal.
May 1991 : A suspected Tamil Tiger assassinates Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India.
1995: Tamil Tigers hack 42 Sinhalese villagers to death in May at a small fishing village near Trincomalee. Tamil villagers
are then warned in July by the Sinhalese-dominated govern ment to seek shelter in churches during their imminent offen sive against the LITE. After the warning, the government air force bombs a Catholic church, I
