Sri Lanka Travel Guide :: Safety

Sri Lanka's two decade old extremely bloody terrorism problem finally came to a halt two years ago. The attack on Sri Lanka's World Trade Center many years ago went largely unnoticed by the world at large. However when the WTC in New York was so tragically destroyed by international terror groups it's vibrations were felt even here in Sri Lanka.

All of a sudden everything seemed to fall into place at once, Quite fortunately for Sri Lanka an anti war government of Ranil Wickramasinghe came to power in December of the same year. The LTTE was beggining to show signs of wear and tear and the international pressure probably helped move then towards peace.

In February of 2001 came the signing of the ceasefire agreement and Peace talks began soon afterwards. Despite attempts by war mongers on both sides to scuttle the peace process the talks made steady progress until April of 2003 when the first signs of trouble occured. This lead to a temporary halt to the peace talks with both parties agreeing to disagree.

In the meantime the ceasefire meant large areas of the country which were considered unsafe due to the civil war has become accessible to the general public. Tourists from all parts of the world flocked to the beaches of the east coast after nearly twenty years.

Then all of a sudden the president took over three key ministries throwing a huge monkey wrench into the machinery. Fortunately sanity prevailed and neither party was keen on a resumption of war. And things were just stumbling along until the elections were declared.

Whether the country goes back to war or goes forward with peace depends largely on the outcome of the April 2nd elections.

Also see:

Tigers, Lions and vegetarians