SRI LANKA

GEOGRAPHY:
Sri Lanka is an island of 62,337 sq. miles in the Indian Ocean, off the tip of India.
Capital: Colombo, with the administrative capital at Sri Jayawardanapura, eight km (five miles) southeast of Colombo.

POPULATION:
Total 18.2 million

RELIGION:
Buddhists 69.3 %
Hindus 15.5 %
Moslems 7.5 %
Christians 7.6 %
Others 0.1%

MILITARY:
Army: 105,000 (including 42,000 active reservists).
Navy: 10,300
Air Force: 10,000.
Paramilitary: (Ministry of Defense): 80,000 including reserves and 1,000 women.
Special Task Force - more than 3,000-man anti-guerrilla unit.
National Guard: 15,000.
Home Guard: 15,000.

ECONOMY:
Annual per capita GDP, income $713 (1995 figure)
Main industries - food, beverage, tobacco, textiles, apparel, leather, wood, paper, chemicals, paper, non-metallic minerals, fabricated metal, manufactured goods, services.
Main crops: rice, tea, rubber, coconut, tobacco, fish, sugar, spices and minor crops.
Main exports: tea, rubber, coconut, textiles and garments, petroleum products, gems.
Main imports: Rice, flour, sugar, petroleum, fertilizer, chemicals, wheat, textiles and clothing, machinery and equipment, transport equipment, building materials.
Employment: Of total labor force of 8.9 million or 49.2 percent of population, 42 percent is in services, 37 percent in agriculture, 16 percent in industry and 5.1 percent in construction. Overseas employed - estimated 400,000 in the Middle East and 150,000 in other countries.

PRINCIPAL MINERALS:
graphite and gems. No natural gas.

MODERN HISTORY:

Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, got independence from Britain in 1948 after 443 years of rule by the Portuguese, Dutch and the English. It recognized the British monarch as its head until becoming a republic in 1972. An executive presidency on U.S. and French lines was set up in 1978.

Junius Richard Jayewardene, then prime minister, became the first executive president in 1978. In October 1983 he called a presidential election, and was elected for a second term.
In 1983, a demand by the minority Tamils for a separate state in the north and east triggered large-scale ethnic violence. Since then, the government says more than 50,000 people have been killed in the war.

In July 1987, Jayewardene and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed a controversial accord, which brought about 50,000 Indian troops to the north, to end the Tamil revolt. All terrorist groups, except the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), accepted it. The accord was also opposed by the Sinhalese extremist Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP).

Presidential elections in December 1988 were won by Ranasinghe Premadasa, who asked Indian troops to leave, lifted a five-year-old emergency and held general elections in February 1989, where the ruling United National Party won another term. After the departure of Indian troops, Premadasa started Peace Talks with LTTE terrorists looking for a political solution. During the peace talks, LTTE insisted all police stations in the northern and eastern parts of the country must be closed, and all police personnel surrendering would get a safe passage. Most police officers did just this under government orders, but instead of getting a safe passage over 600 Sinhala and Muslim police officers were lead to a jungle in northern Sri Lanka. There they were blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their back, murdered by spray upon spray of automatic fire.

The emergency was reimposed in 1989 when the JVP ignored appeals for calm, after being blamed for the 1983 ethnic violence, and began attacking families of security personnel, leading to a crackdown in which thousands of youth were killed.

After Premadasa was assassinated by the LTTE terrorists on May 1, 1993, parliament elected Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga president. In June 1994, to catch the opposition off guard, Wijetunga called early general elections in August, which were won by the People's Alliance, ending the 17-year-rule of the UNP.

Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, became prime minister, until she won the presidency in October 1994, and appointed her mother to take over as prime minister. Kumaratunga launched peace negotiations with the LTTE after assuming power in 1994 but talks broke down after the LTTE attacked and sank two naval boats in the eastern port of Trincomalee in April 1995 while engaged in peace talks. The LTTE terrorists then carried out a spate of attacks on the military over the next month, killing over 250 military personnel who were caught off guard.

Since then, the government has adopted a two-pronged strategy, both military and political. The fighting has continued and the government's peace efforts centered around efforts to introduce a new constitution devolving more power to minorities.

In January 1996, LTTE Tamil terrorists rammed a lorry packed with 500-kg (1,100-lb) plastic bomb into the Central Bank building in the middle of the rush hour. The explosion brought down a huge section of the nine-storey building, killed 100 people and injured about 1,400.

In July 1996, 57 people were killed in two bomb blasts carried out by Tamil terrorists on a packed commuter train during rush-hour.

After seizing control of the Jaffna peninsula, a terrorist stronghold, in April 1996, some 20,000 army troops launched an offensive in May 1997 to open a vital northern highway to Jaffna through terrorist-held regions. The offensive has met with fierce resistance from the LTTE and hundreds of soldiers and terrorists have been killed in recent fighting.

In July, Tamil Tiger terrorists attacked and seized a North Korean food ship after it had unloaded food and other essential items on the Jaffna peninsula. One North Korean crew member was killed during the attack. In September, terrorists attacked a civilian ship north of Trincomalee. Thirty-two people were then killed in a gun battle between terrorists and the Sri Lankan navy.

On 10 October 1997, the United States designated 30 groups, including the LTTE as foreign terrorist organizations, making it illegal to provide funds for them and denying their members or representatives U.S. visas.

On October 15, LTTE terrorists explodes a massive truck bomb in the parking lot of the Galadari Hotel, opposite the presidential. Nine civilians, five terrorists and one soldier die and up to 100 others, many of them foreigners, were injured after a large explosion and gun battle in the central district of Colombo. Two of the dead were terrorists killed by security forces in the shoot out.

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