Sri Lankan protesters lit flames and offered prayers to remember the thousands – including ethnic Tamil civilians – killed in the final stages of the country’s decades-long civil war. Al Jazeera reports that it was the first-ever event in the island nation where mostly majority ethnic Sinhalese openly memorialised the minority group. Since Sri Lankan troops defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, Sri Lankan authorities had widely prohibited Tamils from publicly remembering their family members and have denied allegations that Tamil civilians were killed.
