Courtesy Firstpost

Colombo: Sri Lanka’s president warned that Tamil extremists were regrouping abroad to revive their demand to divide the island nation nine years after the end of its decades-long ethnic war.

At a ceremony to mark the ninth anniversary of the end of the war, Sirisena said Tamil extremists abroad were still hoping to establish an independent homeland in Sri Lanka.

File image of Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena. Reuters

“They are very active abroad. They protested when I visited London last month,” Sirisena said, referring to his participation at the Commonwealth summit.

Sirisena came to power in January 2015 on the back of strong support from the minority Tamil community after pledging reparations for war victims and accountability for rights abuses.

International rights groups have said that at least 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by government forces under the command of former president Mahinda Rajapakse in the final months of the war.

Sirisena said there were no reliable figures for civilian casualties, but said the total number of Sri Lankans killed could be about 100,000. Official records showed that 28,708 security personnel were killed while another 40,107 were wounded, he said.

Sirisena has relaxed restrictions on the former war zones in the island’s north and east, and released much of the military-occupied land back to Tamil owners.

However, he is yet to deliver on a promise to grant greater political autonomy to Tamils and set up a mechanism to probe what the UN has said were credible allegations of war crimes.

His latest remarks came a week after Sri Lanka’s army chief announced forming a special unit to defend itself against allegations of grave rights abuses during the final stages of the ethnic war.

Army chief Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake has distanced the military from the previous government’s claim that no civilians died, and acknowledged there may have been individual excesses, but there have been no prosecutions.