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Sri Lanka: One Year After Civil War Ends, Tamil Tiger Territory a Tourist Attraction

No Comments | May 19th, 2010 | Trackback

May 18 was the first anniversary of the end of the almost-three-decade Tamil Tigers’ civil war that killed as many as 100,000 people, but the government postponed indefinitely a military parade and ceremony to mark the occasion. Reminders of the war in the northern Jaffna peninsula, however, have become tourist attractions, with visitors flocking to see a destroyed water tower, a burned out bulldozer, a disheveled cemetery, or the naval museum in the northeastern port city of Trincomalee housing war memorabilia. The government would prefer to move beyond the conflict, so such evidence of the war may not last long. One site was too sensitive to retain: the ancestral home of Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, razed in April because it became a top tourist attraction.