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The ending of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009 led to significant changes in the political strategies pursued by Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups in the UK. One contentious feature of these groups' campaigns has been their use of the ‘genocide’ frame to describe the actions of the Sri Lankan state, which has been predominantly viewed either as a signal of these groups' strategic naivety or as a coded expression of a wider nationalist agenda. In this article I argue that its growing use in the post-war period is more complex and is best understood in relation to these organizations' strategies of legitimation. Deploying the genocide frame has served two key functions: to demonstrate groups' responsiveness to popular demands, and to challenge dominant international approaches to post-war Sri Lanka. Together these functions served to bolster groups' legitimacy in an environment characterized by political change and high levels of inter-organizational competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 30-year ethnic-based civil war in Sri Lanka between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lanka government ended in May 2009. This article analyzes the impact of the violent ethnic conflict on shaping and reshaping the nationalistic ideology of the women of the majority ethnic group—specifically, the Sinhalese. Based on a field survey of urban, educated Sinhala women in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this article argues that women adopted a Sinhala Buddhist ideology to counter what they perceived as a threat to the integrity of a Sinhala Buddhist nation by the Tamil Hindu minority. In particular, this study demonstrates that the ethnic conflict while reinforcing a gendered ethnoreligious identity also seems to have created a political space for their voices to be heard in representative electoral regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explains the impact of substate nationalism on the political dynamic surrounding ethnic kin migration through a case study of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Examples drawn from the migration studies literature identify ethnic kinship between refugees and host as an indicator of favorable reception and assistance. While this expectation is borne out to an extent in the Tamil Nadu case, it is tempered by a period of hostility following the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, when the refugees were figured as a disruptive and dangerous presence by Tamil Nadu's political elites. A version of the “triadic nexus” model of kin state relations, reconfigured to accommodate the larger political unit within which the substate nationalism is incorporated, is proposed as a framework of analysis for these events. This can better account for Tamil Nadu's substate ethnonationalist elite's movement between expressions of coethnic solidarity with the refugees and the more hostile, security-focused response postassassination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores how the dominant discourses of identity politics in the Sri Lankan conflict have silenced people in northern Sri Lanka and closed spaces for political participation. In order to understand the discursive processes and their material outcomes, the article addresses in particular the role of young people in northern Sri Lanka and explores their relationship to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author examines the LTTE's discourse on gender, young people, nationalism, and governance through the lens of two books written separately by Anthon Balasingham and by Adele Balasingham. Birds of Freedom, the LTTE's women's wing, is shown to be an example of how the warring parties have monopolized liberation discourse through the uncompromised nationalism of a militant movement. The article discusses how this dominant discourse informs young people's lived experiences, material realities, and life opportunities for participation as social actors in their communities in the Jaffna peninsula. A particular feature of people's everyday lives in northern Sri Lanka is described as a complex citizenship characterized by the presence of several governing and uncompromising actors to whom people must relate. The latter part of the article analyzes the way young people in the north of Sri Lanka relate to this context of complex citizenship, with particular reference to the LTTE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, females have been an integral part of fighting forces in both international conflicts and in armed struggle in at least 38 internal conflicts. While some scholars argue that recent wars have thrust women into new roles, enabling them to transform their social situations, identities and destinies, others question whether females achieve 'emancipation' through active participation in warfare. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka that has been engaged in conflict with the Sri Lankan government since 1983, and actively recruits female cadres, provides an interesting context to explore issues of female empowerment in the context of armed struggle. Drawing from interviews with four Sri Lankans living in Canada, this paper traces the perceived extent of female emancipation within the LTTE. While the participation of females in unconventional military roles represents a drastic change in behaviour expected of Tamil women, the militant movement appears to reinforce existing patterns of gender constructions, ultimately impeding the attainment of meaningful empowerment for females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]