Sri Lanka’s 26 years of civil war effectively ended on May 19, 2009 with a single image. Televisions across the globe broadcast a government-issue photo of slain Tamil Tiger head, Velupillai Prabhakaran, lying on a muddy patch of ground with wide eyes and a fractured skull. His life’s end terminated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s decades-long fight for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority — about ten percent of the population — and a cycle of violence that Sri Lankans of all ethnicities and religions have been living with for decades
