In May 2009, Sri Lanka marked the end of its civil war—but for the Tamil minority, it was the beginning of a new, relentless chapter of state repression that continues to this day. What followed was not reconciliation, but a rebranding of repression, one that was more organized, more institutionalized, and more silent.
The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) was not simply a clash between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgent group; it was the culmination of decades of systematic marginalization and violence against Tamils. While both the LTTE and the government committed grave abuses, the war’s conclusion did not bring justice for the Tamil population. Instead, it ushered in a new phase of militarization and silencing of Tamil people.
The Sri Lankan state is actively maintaining and expanding a structural system of organized repression. This system thrives and operates through military occupation, bureaucratic suppression, cultural erasure, and economic domination, all under the guise of security and national unity.
Military Presence
Years after the end of the war, thousands of troops remain in Tamil-majority provinces within the North and East due to government fear of a resurgence of Tamil nationalism. The Prevention of Terorism Act (PTA) of 1979 has been implemented to suppress activists and dissenting voices, according to research by the Adayaalam Center. The PTA subversively allows the Counter Terrorism Investigation Division (CTID) and the Terrorism Investigative Department (TID) to target Tamils without granting them due process.
This enduring military presence violates the Tamil minority’s rights to privacy more than a decade after the war’s end. These violations are not limited to security operations, but extend into civilian life— the military run their own tourism businesses, monitor public gatherings, and intimidate local activists.
Reports from Human Rights Watch and Freedom from Torture reveal patterns of abuse, including torture and coerced confessions, under the PTA. In many areas, the military occupies private property seized during the war, and has been involved in building Buddhist monuments and tourist facilities on historically Tamil land, deepening fears of cultural erasure and demographic engineering. This enduring military presence is not merely imposed for national security; it is part of a deliberate strategy of control to prevent any dissent.
Economic Means of Control
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the military systematically appropriated Tamil and Muslim lands in the North and East under the guise of development and security, deploying a coordinated toolkit that included High Security Zones (HSZs), legal expropriation, heritage reclassification, militarized tourism ventures, and orchestrated resettlement of the Tamil and Muslim minority groups to other regions of Sri Lanka.
Despite repeated assurances from successive governments, more than 2,500 acres of Tamil-owned land in Jaffna remain occupied by Sri Lanka’s military, navy, air force, and police. Legal mechanisms like the Land Acquisition Act of 1950 were invoked to justify expropriation without meaningful consultation or adequate compensation. Under its vague “public purpose” clause, state agencies were empowered to permanently seize Tamil-owned lands. This pattern of land seizure reveals more than opportunistic post-war development; it reflects a deliberate strategy to displace Tamil and Muslim communities from their historical homelands and sever their political and cultural ties to the land. The use of legal instruments to legitimize dispossession reveals just how severely repression is woven into the bureaucratic fabric of the state.
In tandem with this economically-fueled occupation, recent reports have raised concerns about archaeological reclassifications facilitating land control in the North and East. These biased classifications designate Tamil areas as “archaeological sites” based on often-contested claims of Buddhist relics, particularly in the Northern and Eastern regions of Mullaitivu and Trincomalee . These zones have seen the erection of new Buddhist structures with little regard for local history or consent. State-backed Sinhalese settlements are coincidingly promoted as “development projects.”
Environmental regulation has also been weaponized against the Tamil population. There have been allegations that governmental departments have reclassified Tamil-owned farmland as protected zones, preventing cultivation and resettlement under the pretext of conservation. These archaeological and environmental designations serve dual purposes: they obscure the political nature of land control while creating an administrative smokescreen to deny resettlement. By transforming Tamil spaces into Sinhala-Buddhist religious or ecological reserves, the state enacts a soft form of erasure, rewriting both the physical and historical landscape to legitimize a majoritarian national narrative.
Linguistic and Bureaucratic Exclusion
Sinhala continues to be privileged as the primary language of administration, deeply impairing Tamil speakers’ access to services, legal recourse, and education. The 1956 Official Language Act, or Sinhala Only Act, made Sinhala the sole official language—explicitly excluding Tamil—and effectively institutionalized linguistic hierarchy in post-colonial Sri Lanka. The act was eventually adjusted through the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which declared both Sinhala and Tamil as official languages of Sri Lanka and established the Official Languages Commission.
Much is still to be done, however, to meaningfully include Tamils in government institutions and public service. Obtaining government jobs remains challenging for Tamils due to language barriers, and conducting business in Sri Lanka has likewise posed significant difficulties. The Tamil language is, legally, an official language of Sri Lanka, but in practice Sinhala has been used much more widely across the nation. The Sinhala Only Act, although amended, entrenched a system that prioritized Sinhala, and its repercussions are still deeply felt today.
This language policy is not a simple administrative oversight, but is instead a foundational element of the state’s broader ethno-nationalist agenda. By encoding Sinhala as the dominant language of public life, the state reaffirms the cultural superiority of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority while rendering Tamil voices structurally invisible. This linguistic exclusion acts as a quiet yet persistent mechanism of control, one that not only limits access to state institutions but reinforces the message that Tamils are perpetual outsiders in their own country.
The Way Forward
The enduring power of the Sri Lankan state to marginalize its Tamil population lies not just in the memory of war, but in the permanence of policies, structures, and laws designed to suppress Tamil autonomy. While the state portrays itself as a post-conflict success story, its continued use of repressive laws and demographic manipulation exposes the fragility of that narrative.
To move forward, Sri Lanka must be held accountable both for its past atrocities but also for the systematic erosion of Tamil rights that continues under the banner of peace. Repealing the PTA, demilitarizing the North and East, restoring land to displaced communities, and affirming linguistic and political rights are not optional reforms, but are necessary preconditions for justice. Without international scrutiny and domestic reckoning, the architecture of organized hate and marginalization will remain intact, and the promise of reconciliation will remain a myth.
(Arya Patri is an intern at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH). Her research interests include human rights in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora.)