SRI LANKA AND THE SRI LANKAN PEOPLE

by

Constantine Amalaratnam

The island of Sri Lanka lies in the Indian Ocean near India. Sri Lanka is a small island. This is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.  Sri Lanka’s total area is 65,610sq km.  The climate is tropical monsoon.

This country’s population is 18,342,660.  The ethnic divisions are Sinhala, Tamil and others. Mostly religions are Buddhist, Hindu and  Christian.

Sri Lanka became independent of England in 1948 and Independence Day is 4 February.   

If you go to Sri Lanka, you will see lot of natural parks, beaches, zoos and mountains. In this country 95% of the people receive education. 

Sri Lanka is a small island. The country looks like paradise. Everybody likes to go

to Sri Lanka. But the country is being destroyed because there are problems in this paradise.

This small country has got two different language-speaking people.   The two language are Singhalese - which is spoken by 78% of the population and Tamil - which is spoken by 22% of the population.

   

The Tamils and the Singhalese

There is a problem is between The Tamils and Singhalese.  The government has been supporting the Singhalese because most of the population is Singhalese.  Tamil people have a small population. They have not got the rights to get facilities like study in higher education, jobs and human rights etc.

Therefore war started 17 years ago.  Nearly 64,000 people have been killed in this war. Still these problems are continuing and freedom fighters and government are always ready for war.

The Tamil Freedom Fighters of Sri Lanka 

Tamil Freedom Fighters were born from Tamil families 17 years ago. They have been fighting for their own people. But they are saying that they will fight until they die.  The government thinks that Tamil Tigers are terrorists and that they are destroying a small country.  But they know the reasons why they are fighting. 

They told the world that the Tigers are terrorists.  In the past the world also believed that they are terrorists. At the moment the world understands that Tigers are not terrorists in this small country.

The Tamils know all about why this problem is happening.  Therefore they have been supporting the Tamil fighters for nearly 17 years. People know already that they are not terrorists.

I fully support the Freedom Fighters because they are fighting for their own people and their own rights.  We are all Sri Lankan. We need all rights to live, study and develop our own community. Anyway I am fully supporting them. They have been fighting for their own people and they never kill innocent people. They are good citizens in Sri Lanka.   Tamil Freedom Fighters are very kind, generous people.