The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 912 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2019
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In May 2009 the Sri Lankan army defeated the Tamil Tigers, ending a brutal 25-year civil war; also, the economists who predicted the 2008 global economic crash, plus the Nazis' stolen children, a victim of China's One Child policy, and the building of the great Karakoram Highway.
Photo: Tamil civilians standing on the roadside after crossing to a government-controlled area 2kms from the front-line, 2009 (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, |
| 0:05.6 | the past brought to life by those who were there. This week we meet a couple of the brave economists |
| 0:11.5 | who predicted the 2008 global banking crisis but who were largely ignored. |
| 0:17.0 | You know I wasn't a professional economist, I wasn't a professor and so I was in a sense the little girl in the crowd saying the emperor has no clothes and so I didn't feel terribly |
| 0:26.9 | confident about what I was saying and it was hard to sort of keep your intellectual head above water if you like. |
| 0:34.0 | Plus we'll learn about the harrowing impact of China's One Child Policy in the 1980s |
| 0:40.0 | and the tragic story of the children stolen from their parents by Hitler's regime |
| 0:45.2 | in German occupied territory during the Second World War. |
| 0:48.6 | Dear mommy, please arrange that I can leave. |
| 0:51.8 | Dear dear mommy, please come and pick me up. |
| 0:55.0 | She never did. |
| 0:57.0 | That's all coming up later in the podcast. |
| 1:00.0 | But before that, we're looking back just one decade to May 2009 |
| 1:05.0 | when the Civil War in Sri Lanka finally came to an end |
| 1:09.0 | after 25 years of struggle between the Sinhalese majority government forces and Tamil Tiger |
| 1:14.0 | rebels. |
| 1:15.1 | As Mike Lanchin has been hearing, the final act of the war marked a bloody conclusion to what |
| 1:20.0 | had already been a conflict with many thousands of victims. |
| 1:23.4 | Sri Lanka's government says it's close to winning the Ireland's civil war after 25 years. |
| 1:30.2 | The fighting has been intense and bloody. The army is pushing on with its offensive. It's a 25 year war that's been |
| 1:39.2 | waged with brutal methods on both sides. The government now believes the military victory is |
| 1:45.1 | within sight. The long and bitterly fought conflict between the Sinhalese |
... |
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