The position of Tamils in Sri Lanka remained precarious. In July the government said it had successfully taken control of the entire Eastern Province. More than , people were displaced in the fighting, and many remained living in camps. Following its Eastern Province victory, the government in August began an offensive in northwestern Sri Lanka, which led to thousands more being displaced.
Escalating fighting in brought further devastation for in the north and east, particularly affecting Tamils, with fierce fighting between government forces and LTTE. The violence reached its peak in early , with the LTTE cornered in a tiny enclave in the northeast of the country, where they held more than , Tamil civilians hostage. This however did not deter the Sri Lankan military from launching an assault on the area, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
Amidst widespread reports of human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, victory against the LTTE and the official end of the conflict was declared in May The end of the conflict was marked by a wave of triumphalism on the part of the government and supported by many among the majority Sinhalese community.
There were celebrations in Colombo and several state-sponsored victory ceremonies. In contrast, in the north, while there was great relief that the conflict had ended, hundreds of thousands of Tamils remained displaced and were mourning those killed or missing in the last stages of the fighting.
International media reported that over , people, who had been trapped by the fighting for months without food and who were traumatized by the violence, had begun pouring into displaced camps.
The displaced were held in makeshift closed camps that were severely overcrowded and lacking adequate facilities. Food, water, shelter and sanitation were huge problems. Families were separated. Local and international NGOs and the media were given very limited access. There were reports of abductions, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests and torture from within the camps.
And amidst a poorly managed returns programme, by the end of there remained close to , internally displaced, including about , members of the Muslim minority. Problems of reintegration for those displaced by the conflict persisted, and women in particular faced unique hardships upon return. Despite the end of the conflict, the human rights environment continued to deteriorate in a climate of impunity. These areas remain heavily militarized; in addition to checkpoints blotting the region, the military also ran businesses, farming and development projects, and controlled civil society activity in these areas.
While there have been some improvements for the Tamil minority since , many areas in the north and east are still dominated by the military presence, with continued barriers for justice for the victims of conflict-related violence and their families, as well as lack of accountability and continued abuses and impunity by security forces.
These problems persist to this day, with continuing militarization, displacement and Sinhalization in minority areas, reflected in the construction of Buddhist shrines and victory monuments that affirm Sinhalese control. Rights violations include the taking over of land for Buddhist religious sites, the emergence of Buddhist symbols and places of worship in minority areas — in some cases where no Buddhists resided — and the denial of Tamils access to Hindu places of worship and cultural sites.
Protecting Tamil culture in the north and east, as well as reducing the pressures posed by militarization and rapid in-migration, will therefore be an essential element in ensuring peace and reconciliation in the country.
Despite this worrying global situation, we reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of minority and indigenous communities and implementing indivisible human rights for all. Sign up to Minority rights Group International's newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and publications.
Since August, MRG has been assisting Afghan minority activists and staff from our partner organizations as their lives and their work came under threat with the return of the Taliban. We need your help.
For the last three years, we at MRG have run projects promoting freedom of religion and belief across Asia. In Afghanistan we have fostered strong partnerships with amazing local organizations representing ethnic and religious minorities. They were doing outstanding work, educating minority community members about their rights, collecting evidence of discrimination and human rights abuses, and carrying out advocacy.
Not all have been able to flee. Many had no option but to go into hiding. Some did not have a valid passport. Activists can no longer carry out the work they had embarked on.
They can no longer draw a salary, which means they cannot feed their families. With a season of failed crops and a cold winter ahead, the future is bleak for too many. We refuse to leave Afghanistan behind. We are asking you today to stand by us as we stand by them. We will also use your donations to support our Afghan partners to pay their staff until they can regroup and make new plans, to use their networks to gather and send out information when it is safe to do so, and to seek passports and travel options for those who are most vulnerable and who have no option but to flee to safety.
Azadeh worked for a global organization offering family planning services. Standing for everything the Taliban systematically reject, Azadeh had no option but to flee to Pakistan.
MRG is working with our partners in Pakistan to support many brave Afghans who have escaped Afghanistan because of their humanitarian or human rights work or their faith. They are now in various secure locations established by our local partners on the ground in Pakistan. Although they are safer in Pakistan than Afghanistan, Hazara Shia and other religious minorities are also persecuted there. We need your help, to support those who put their lives on the line for basic human rights principles we all believe in: equality, mutual respect, and freedom of belief and expression.
The situation on the ground changes daily as more people arrive and some leave. Aluminium mining in Baphlimali, India, has caused environment devastation and has wrecked the lifestyle of thousands of Adivasis. For centuries, Adivasi communities like the Paraja, Jhodia, Penga and Kondh have been living amidst the Baphlimali foothills.
For generations they have lived in harmony with nature. They lived through rain fed subsistence agriculture of millet, cereals, pulses, rice and collection of non-timber forest produce, e. With widespread mining activities and linked deforestation, they have lost access to forest products and to the much needed pasture land in the vicinity of their villages. Your help will mean that MRG can support communities like these to help decision makers listen better to get priorities right for local people and help them to protect their environment and restore what has been damaged.
The above picture is of a tribal woman forcibly displaced from her home and land by District Forest Officers in the district of Ganjam, Odisha. Her cashew plantation burned in the name of protection of forests.
Please note that the picture is to illustrate the story and is not from Baphlimali. Esther is a member of the indigenous Ogiek community living in the Mau Forest in Kenya. Her family lives in one of the most isolated and inaccessible parts of the forest, with no roads, no health facilities and no government social infrastructure.
The Ogiek were evicted from some forest areas, which have since been logged. By the 15th century they had a separate language, Malayalam language , now the language of the Indian state of Kerala. After 16th century no major rulers emerged to rule Tamil lands. But, there were many smaller local rulers. For some time, rulers from the present day Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh also ruled over the Tamil lands.
By the 17th century, Europeans from the United Kingdom , France and Denmark started to establish their settlements in Tamil lands. They fought many battles. Finally, the British won, and by the end of the 18th century, most of the Tamil lands came under the British rule. Before the deluge at about yrs, Sri Lanka was a part of Tamil Nadu and Tamil rulers of the ancient pandyas ruled this place.
After deluge Sri Lanka separated from Tamil Nadu. One north Indian king of Tamil origin exiled his son Vijayan out of country for his wrongdoing Vijayan with a small troop reached Sri Lanka. The Tamil Nagas, Yakkars and vedars were the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka before Vijanyan's arrival and the land was under Pandiyan control. Pandiyan of Madurai welcomed Vijayan with good heart and facilitated his troops. He sent Tamil girls from Pandiyan kingdom to marry Vijayan and for his troops.
The Tamil people ruled parts of Sri Lanka from time to time, and played important role in the ruling of Sri Lanka. In the 10th century, the Chola kings made Sri Lanka a part of their kingdom. This continued until late 11th century. The Arya Chakaravarthi dynasty ruled over large parts of northeast Sri Lanka until By this time the Portuguese and the Dutch won many areas of Sri Lanka. The Madras Presidency became a part of the British Raj. This became the Ceylon colony, also a part of the British Empire.
When India became independent in , Madras Presidency became a part of India. Ceylon became independent in , and the Tamil lands remained a part of independent Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. It covered the areas of present-day Tamil Nadu, coastal parts of Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, northern Kerala, and the southwest of Karnataka. The Government of India rearranged the boundaries of many states of India based on language. Thus, the present day state of Tamil Nadu came into existence.
At the beginning, there was a demand for an independent country for the Tamil people. However, the constitution of India gave major rights to the states, and protected the speakers of regional languages from compulsory speaking and use of Hindi.
This satisfied most of the Tamil people, and presently there is no demand for a separate country for Tamil people outside the federal system of India. However, in Sri Lanka , the government did not give sufficient rights to people who spoke Tamil language. Most of the people living in Pondicherry of India are also Tamil people. Tamil people have been traditionally living in some other parts of India - for examples, Hebbar and Mandyam Tamils of southern Karnataka , the Tamils of Palakkad in Kerala , and the Tamils of Pune , Maharashtra.
For last one hundred years or so, Tamil people went to many other parts of India for jobs or business. Some of them settled in these places. Presently, there are two groups of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The first group is Sri Lankan Tamils. They are descendants of the Tamil people who lived in the old Jaffna kingdom or who migrated to the East coast. The second group is Hill Country Tamils.
They descended from the Tamil people who went to Sri Lanka from India as laborers in the 19th century-early 20th century. The first group mostly lives in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. The second group mostly live in the central highlands. Many Tamils people lost their citizenship of being citizens of Sri Lanka. Many others had to shift to India. These developments brought the two groups of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka closer.
By s, most of the Tamil people had got back their citizenship. Beginning from the 18th century, many poor Tamil people went as laborers to many countries of the British Empire. At the same time, many Tamil businessmen also went to places in Burma and East Africa. Many Tamils still live in these countries. Special mention may be made of Singapore. The government has made Tamil language as one of the national languages although only 4. By s many Tamil people of Sri Lanka were facing ethnic conflicts.
Today, the largest concentration of Tamils outside southern Asia is in Toronto , Canada. In recent years, many young Tamil professionals from India particularly computer programmers have gone to Europe and the United States. Tamil people call their language as "the Tamil mother. Tamil language, like other languages of south India, is one of the Dravidian languages. In the territorialization of communities scattered over their host countries, they act as identity markers and anchorage points for deities and communities in the public space.
But it also takes the form of a stage, a stage for affirming an identity and a stage for rallying a community. Finally, temples appear to be crucial links in multiple networks, centres with no equivalent in the Tamil migratory space. From this point of view, it is not only the affiliation to a home territory that is evoked by the spatial rhetoric of the temples of the Tamil diaspora, but also the Tamil migratory space itself. Barth, Fredrick ed. Raj; William P. Harman eds. Clothey, Fred W.
Dayalan, D. Deerpalsingh, Saloni; Carter, Marina eds. Pluto Press. Guilmoto, Christophe Z. Hardgrave, Robert L. Irschick, Eugene F. Jacobsen, Knut A. Miller, Frederic P.
Hookoomsing eds. Nora, Pierre ed. Pandian, J. Punzo-Waghorne, Joanne, Diaspora of the Gods. Ram, N. Rukmani, T. Vertovec, Steven The Hindu Diaspora. Comparative patterns , London: Routledge. These numbers include the restoration of existing temples. Source: Statistics Canada.
The Census data were not available at the time this article was written. Site map — Syndication. Privacy Policy — About Cookies. OpenEdition member — Published with Lodel — Administration only. Skip to navigation — Site map. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Contents - Previous document - Next document. Pierre-Yves Trouillet. Abstract Temples have been places of major importance for Tamil societies for more than fifteen centuries. Outline Framework, issues and method.
The Tamil temple as a haut lieu. Hauts lieux of identity and politics. The multi-polar roots of overseas ethnicity. Arenas for multi-scale political issues. Hauts lieux of transnational flows and spatial rhetoric. Full text PDF Send by e-mail. These numbers includ Figure 2. In other words, there may well be a Tamil nation of sorts, but no Tamil state, and the Tamil population is widely scattered around the world, although the majority of Tamils live in South and the South-East Asia.
Tamil nationalism is best illustrated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LLTE movement, which considers itself as "the heart and soul of the Tamil struggle for self-determination" and aims at creating an independent Tamil state in North East Sri Lanka.
However, Tamil nationalism is also represented by other less known organisations, certainly in Sri Lanka, but also in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Not all of them request independence, either for Tamil Eelam or for Tamil Nadu, but their mere existence has a disturbing effect on both Sri Lanka's and India's national unity.
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