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🪵 The Threshold

Nationalists pursue war to deliberately displace Tamils and boost Sinhalese dominance

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, causal_relationships, primary_study, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@devotta_sinhalese_nodate, loc. 278

2 min read

Nationalists pursue war to deliberately displace Tamils and boost Sinhalese dominance

Evidence

Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists have called for a military solution to the island’s ethnic conflict partly because they believe the LTTE will not give up on its goal of eelam but also because they think continued war will lead more Tamils to leave the country and thereby further strengthen the Sinhalese population. Many nationalists therefore support bombing campaigns in the northeast and encourage sanctions on trade and essential items. The ensuing food shortages combined with forcible recruitment into the LTTE have caused many Tamils in so-called uncleared areas to flee to South India and to government-controlled areas. Buddhist nationalists use these refugees to advertise the LTTE’s depravity. Some also feign sympathy for the destitute Tamils while hoping more would cross over to government-controlled areas. Their long-term goal is to combine such Tamil displacement with Sinhalese emplacement and thereby permanently alter the demography in the northeast. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 278

Categorization

  • XREF: Ethnic flooding as a strategy echoes China’s Tibet and Xinjiang practice named in the next paragraph — a comparative institutional case of manufactured demographic threat resolution. — connects to: Military security zones double as demographic colonization of contested Tamil land — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 272; Tamil economic success in Colombo provokes nationalist campaigns to drive Tamils out — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 283; Some Sinhalese nationalist writers publicly endorse genocide against Tamils (+6 more)

Broader Connections

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