A Case Study on the Perceptions of Jaffna Tamils Regarding the Elongated Civil War

Abstract

Sri Lanka faced thirty years elongated civil war which originated in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country. Jaffna Peninsula (which is considered as the heart of the Northern Province) was an area which directly faced the brutality of war that occurred between the Sri Lankan government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorist group, and majority of civilians residing in this area had experiences of the war and became war victims for years. Terrorism refers to the use of violent acts to frighten people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal (Jetter, 2016). According to the Ministry of Defence (1999), LTTE, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, is a military organization that has been waging a violent secessionist campaign against the Sri Lankan government since 1970s, in order to create a separate Tamil state in the North and East of Sri Lanka. However, it is essential to find out people’s attitudes regarding the war and their memories of war as well. Therefore, this research explores the war memories of Tamils in Jaffna. A family which belonged to a fishing community in Passaivur, Jaffna was selected as the case of this research and convenience sampling method was used to select the sample. The research problem is to find out how Tamils in Jaffna reflect their memories and how they comprehend experiences of war period. The major objective of this research is to explore the perceptions of war victims about the war. Enlightening people by using the findings of this research is also an objective of this research.