Jaffna’s population fell from 795 to 528 per square kilometer by 2001

Evidence

The LTTE has not allowed the government to hold censuses in the northeast—both in areas they control and areas administered by the state—making it impossible to determine the country’s Tamil population precisely. The Census Department estimates that Jaffna was the only district in the country to experience negative population growth from 1981 to 2001. … While the twenty-four other districts saw a rise in population density per square kilometer, the numbers in Jaffna dropped from 795 in 1981 to 528 in 2001. Indeed, some estimates place the current Sri Lankan Tamil population between 8 and 9 percent, a decline that challenges the Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology 47 LTTE’s quest for a separate state and also debunks the argument that Sinhalese Buddhists may soon lose their majority status because the minorities are multiplying at a faster rate. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 274

Categorization

• QUESTION: The excerpt cuts off mid-sentence (‘challenges the…’)—worth chasing the completed sentence in the next paragraph for the full claim about what the decline challenges.