Sri Lanka History

The oldest inhabitants of Sri Lanka - the ancestors of the Veddas - belonged to the australian-vedoid race .

Singals arrived on the island around the VI century. BC e. from north india .

In the III century. BC e. Buddhism penetrates the island.

In the III – XIII centuries. n e. On the island there were large Sinhala kingdoms with capitals, first in Anuradhapur , then in Polonnaruwa . The frescoes of the Sigiriya rock (Lion's rock) in the central part of the island also belong to this period.

Tamils penetrated the island gradually, and by the 13th century. a large community has already formed in the north and east of the island.

After the fall of the Polonnaruwa dynasty of Sinhala monarchs, the capital was postponed several times. By the time the Portuguese occupied the coast of the island in the 16th century, it was in Cotta .

In the 17th century, the Portuguese were replaced by the Dutch . However, even during the period of Dutch domination, the internal regions remained independent. In 1795, the expansion of the British began, supplanting the Dutch from Ceylon; in 1796, the Dutch possessions were completely conquered by the British. In 1802, British Ceylon was declared a colony of the British Empire . The last Sinhala kingdom with its capital in the city of Kandy was liquidated by the British in 1815; the entire island became a colony of the British Empire.

In 1948, the country gained independence, being transformed into the dominion of Ceylon .

In 1972, the country was renamed Sri Lanka and ceased to be a dominion , remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations . The first president was the former Governor General of Ceylon, William Gopallava , who was replaced in 1978 by Richard Jayawardene .

The last 20 years of the country's history are overshadowed by an armed conflict with the rebel organization Tigers of the Liberation of Tamil Ilam ( LTTE ). The LTTE armed struggle for the creation of an independent Tamil state in the northeast of the island, predominantly Tamil Ilama, began in 1983. Since then, more than 65 thousand people became victims of the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic conflict, hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes. In 1991, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed by Tamil terrorists (in revenge for sending Indian troops to the island to help the Sri Lankan government troops in the mid-1980s), and in 1993 - Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa .

The numerous Tamil diaspora provided active assistance to the rebels. Starting the armed struggle, the LTTE movement aimed at gaining full independence. However, subsequently, its leaders agreed to consider a proposal to provide the north-eastern part of the island with wide autonomy within a single state. In 2002, a mediation agreement was signed with Norway . However, after the fall of 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa , a hardliner, was proclaimed president of Sri Lanka, proclaiming the slogan “No negotiations with terrorists,” the negotiation process came to a standstill.

In December 2004, the country was hit hard by the tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra . More than 38 thousand people died, 6 thousand were missing, hundreds of thousands lost their homes. Substantial financial assistance was provided to Sri Lanka. The program for economic recovery is being actively implemented; It is planned to recreate 19 cities destroyed by the tsunami.

On May 18, 2009, the 50,000-strong group of government troops in Sri Lanka completed the operation in the war, which has been waged with brief interruptions since 1983. In the north of the country, on the Jaffna Peninsula, after the capture of Mullaitiva, the main forces of the Tamil separatists from the LTTE movement were surrounded and liquidated (“ Tigers of the Liberation of Tamil Eelam "). Over the course of the week, separate clashes continued with scattered separatist troops hiding in the Selva, but the outcome of the operation and war, due to the overwhelming superiority of government forces, could no longer be changed. Regular forces established confident control over the last hotbed of resistance; during the operation, the permanent separatist leader Velupillai Prabahakaran was killed ^[1] .

On February 9, 2010, President Mahinda Rajapaksa issued a decree on the dissolution of parliament ^[2] and ordered the arrest of opposition leader Sarath Fonsecu ^{[3] [4]} , thus taking a sharp course toward moving away from democracy towards authoritarianism.