Sri Lanka
Tamil genocide
The Sri Lankan military was accused of committing human rights violations during Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war. A United Nation's Panel of Experts looking into these alleged violations found "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed by both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity". Some activists and politicians also accused the Sri Lankan government which is dominated by Sinhalese people (who predominantly practice Theravada Buddhism) of carrying out a genocide against the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people, who are mostly Hindu, both during and after the war.
Bruce Fein alleged that Sri Lanka's leaders committed genocide, along with Tamil Parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran. Refugees who escaped from Sri Lanka also stated that they fled from genocide, and various Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups echoed these accusations.
In 2009, thousands of Tamils protested against the atrocities in cities all over the world. (See 2009 Tamil diaspora protests.) Various diaspora activists formed a group called Tamils Against Genocide to continue the protest. Legal action against Sri Lankan leaders for alleged genocide has been initiated. Norwegian human rights lawyer Harald Stabell filed a case in Norwegian courts against Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa and other officials.
Politicians in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu also made accusations of genocide. In 2008 and 2009 the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi repeatedly appealed to the Indian government to intervene to "stop the genocide of Tamils", while his successor J. Jayalalithaa called on the Indian government to bring Rajapaksa before international courts for genocide. The women's wing of the Communist Party of India, passed a resolution in August 2012 finding that "Systematic sexual violence against Tamil women" by Sri Lankan forces constituted genocide, calling for an "independent international investigation".
In January 2010, a Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) held in Dublin, Ireland, found Sri Lanka guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it found insufficient evidence to justify the charge of genocide. The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated "possible acts of genocide". Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity. A decision on whether India, and other states, had also acted in complicity was withheld. PPT reported that LTTE could not be accurately characterized as "terrorist", stating that movements classified as "terrorist" because of their rebellion against a state, can become political entities recognized by the international community. The International Commission of Jurists stated that the camps used to intern nearly 300,000 Tamils after the war's end may have breached the convention against genocide.
In 2015, Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Provincial Council (NPC) "passed a strongly worded resolution accusing successive governments in the island nation of committing 'genocide' against Tamils". The resolution asserts that "Tamils across Sri Lanka, particularly in the historical Tamil homeland of the NorthEast, have been subject to gross and systematic human rights violations, culminating in the mass atrocities committed in 2009. Sri Lanka's historic violations include over 60 years of state sponsored anti-Tamil pogroms, massacres, sexual violence, and acts of cultural and linguistic destruction perpetrated by the state. These atrocities have been perpetrated with the intent to destroy the Tamil people, and therefore constitute genocide."
The Sri Lankan government denied the allegations of genocide and war crimes.
