One Year After Terrorism: Sri Lanka Needs to Demilitarise Reconstruction and Development for Sustainable Peace

On April 12, 2010 the majority of citizens of the island of Sri Lanka’s two main linguistic communities celebrated the Sinhala and Tamil new year and the categorical end of war and terrorism with considerable optimism, despite the lack of a clear political solution to the ‘ethnic conflict’. The new year celebrations, the first since the end of the state’s 30 year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were in the wake of recently concluded parliamentary elections that returned the ruling party to power. President Rajapaksa, who in January had already won the presidential election for another six year term, noted that the new year brought into focus shared cultural and kinship ties between the Sinhala- and Tamil-speaking communities on the island.