ABSTRACT
Various debates have emerged on whether Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) committed genocide during the last phases of the civil war. While many human rights groups argue that the government carried out ethnic cleansing and/or genocide against its minority Tamil population in northern Sri Lanka, some defence strategists consider the obliteration of the LTTE during the last Eelam war as a successful counter-terrorism operation. Given the highly opaque and convoluted nature of the civil war, it is difficult to take a clear stand but state-sponsored xenophobic attitudes between the two parties are explicit.
