Black July 1983

“The evidence points clearly to the conclusion that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils amounted to acts of genocide” - The Review 1984, International Commission of Jurists

July 23rd marks the 27th anniversary of the single most brutal and widespread act of state violence against the Tamil population of Sri Lanka. The pogroms that lasted several days caused the death of an estimated 3000 Tamil civilians all over the island and led to an exodus of more than 200 000 Tamils from the Sinhalese dominated areas into exile or the relatively safer Tamil homeland in the North and East of the country. The state-violence led by Sinhalese mobs included high-profile politicians, Buddhist monks and members of the Police and Armed Forces and serves as a manifestation of the profound sense of racism and supremacy of the majority population and it’s democratically elected governments that prevails to date in Sri Lanka against the Tamils of the island.

The large amount of destruction caused by the mobs combined with the loss of life, property and assets is today remembered as the most crucial event that led to the following decades long lasting civil war, which caused even further suffering for the Tamil population. The traumata of the events of Black July continues to live on among Tamils all over the world, who regard this widely recognised act of genocide as the proof of intent of the state to destroy and subjugate the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka.

The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam joins the global Tamil population in its remembrance of these grim weeks in the history of our people and nation and mourns for the thousands of innocent victims of the pogrom. Our prayers are with the families that have suffered in one of the most tragic episodes of our recent history.

Alongside our remembrance, we call for an end to impunity in cases of crimes against Tamils in Sri Lanka. To date, none of the victims of the Black July have been adequately recompensed for their losses nor have any of the perpetrators been brought to trial or convicted. The Sri Lankan Government contents itself with half-hearted apologies, which disregard the intent behind the atrocities and ignores the lack of justice and compensation for Tamils. Therefore, we call for an end to the grievances of the victims of Black July 1983 and urge the Sri Lankan Government to bring true justice to the thousands of victims of the state-sanctioned violence.

- History of Black July -

On July 24, 1983, the Sri Lankan capital Colombo stood in flames when Sinhalese mobs started to rampage against Tamils living in the city. Entire districts with substantial number of Tamil residents and businesses burst into flames and became victim of an unprecedented level of violence unleashed against Tamils.

Colombo became a battlefield where Tamils had to flee and beg for their lives in order to survive. Angry mobs rioted in Tamil dominated suburbs such as Wellawatte, Dehiwalle and throughout the metropolis area and destroyed more than 18 000 Tamil houses and commercial establishments within a couple of days. The violence spread like wildfire on the island and affected Tamils living in all corners of the island – even as far as Tamils living in their traditional homeland in the North and East.

Burning bodies and slaughtered people

Within days Sinhalese mobs slaughtered and burnt more than 3000 Tamils to death - irrespective of age and gender. Gruesome scenes of vehicles burning with Tamil passengers trapped inside, Tamil men and women set afire with tires around their necks and Tamil women that were raped and later chopped into pieces were reported. It is estimated that around 500 vehicles with Tamil drives and passengers were burnt alone in Colombo. Additionally, Tamil owned buses were burnt between Colombo and Jaffna. Tamil patients in hospitals were attacked and killed. Some even had their throats cut while laying in their beds. Others were hacked, beaten or lynched to death. Corpses of Tamils were lined on the streets in apocalyptic scenes that should frighten Tamils.

Western tourists reported of hotel personal and ordinary Sinhalese boasting of having killed Tamils. Others witnessed in horror busloads of Tamils being burnt alive while their Sinhalese counterparts stood aside and watched. Sinhalese mobs entered houses and dragged Tamils out to slaughter them on the streets whilst they begged for their lives. Scenes of Tamil children begging for the lives of their parents and grandparents were often seen. Entire families were forced to watch how reatives were hacked to death and others raped. The rampage affected Tamils all over the country, but most strikingly those in the capital Colombo. Few lucky ones were able to disguise their Tamil identity and flee from the raging mobs. Others narrowly escaped by fleeing from house to house while watching how their properties were set afire after being looted.

Villages of Plantation Tamils, also called Indian Tamils, were burnt to rubble and hundreds killed on the idyllic tea plantations in Nuwara Eliya, Kandy, Matale, Gampaha, Kalutara and Trincomalee. In one specific event, Tamil plantation workers who fled to the fields in order to hide from the approaching Sinhalese mobs were trapped when the tea plantation was set afire and the Tamils forced to flee out of the burning plantations. Once they reached the end of the plantation, they were awaited by the Sinhalese mobs equipped with steel sticks and machetes, who did not even spare babies in their brutality.

In the Tamil homeland of the North and East, the Army and Navy were rioting, against Tamils by killing and burning down arbitrarily.

State Complicity

The ferocity of the attackers and the inhumanity they showed in face of their thousands of Tamil victims was described by the Government of Sri Lanka as a popular and spontaneous outburst of the Sinhala public in response to the killing of 13 Governmental Soldiers by the then miniscule militant Tamil youth movement, the LTTE. However, it was clear that the Government of Sri Lanka was not only tolerating the public slaughter and persecution of Tamils, but was directly involved in the events. Moreover, the Government of Sri Lanka is even accused of orchestrating the events based on evidence gathered in lengthy studies and records.

Days before the anti-Tamil pogroms, President J.R. Jeyawardene told the Daily Telegraph (July 11, 1983; London) in an interview that he is “not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people.Now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion” and continued to state “really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy”. This provocative and controversial comment can be regarded as a premonition of what was about to happen.

In the aftermath of the killing of the soldiers, the Government of Sri Lanka did not only not put a halt to the Sri Lankan Army’s retaliatory massacre of Tamil civilians in Eastern Trincomalee, which killed 51 Tamils, but excused if not encouraged such actions. Moreover, mistreatment and arbitrary killings of Tamils were increasingly reported in Mannar, Vavuniya and as far as Jaffna. The Sri Lankan Navy burnt down Tamil houses and businesses in the East and freely

spread terror among the Tamil civilians. The tensed situation in the country was evident and President Jeyawardene was advised to not strain the situation even further by holding a public funeral in Colombo.

However, the President contradicted his adviser’s views and the bodies of the Sri Lankan Army soldiers were ought to be brought to a planned funeral in the outskirts of the city. As the bodies intentionally did not turn up, the large crowd tensed even further in a staged effort to cause disruption and was joined by a more violent group of people who were later identified to be government gangs. These gangs launched the public witch-hunt of Tamils by spreading anti-Tamil sentiments and rioting against innocent Tamils.

With violence spreading, Tamils in Colombo were targeted by mobs equipped with electoral lists that revealed the ethnic identity of the capital’s residents. These lists could only be obtained through the help of government officials. In many cases Sinhala Buddhist monks directly led the mobs to Tamil properties and their unfortunate owners and tenants. Other accounts including those of the Indian Times (August 31, 1983) reveal the participation of Sinhalese politician in the violence such as Minister of Industries, Cyril Matthew, who was witnessed directly pinpointing at Tamil shops and businesses to be burned down.

The President additionally hesitated to declare a curfew and only did so after the worst violence and damage was already caused and following violence was not disturbed by the so-called curfew. Furthermore, the media was given a strict censorship by the Government and prohibited from reporting the pogroms against the Tamil citizens of the country. The Government also closed the sole international airport of the country in order to prevent Tamils to flee and to withhold information about the atrocities committed. Self-explanatorily the violence increased and was issued a blank cheque through Governmental policies. The notion of state-sanctioned violence amplifies in consideration of how the Armed Forces and Police reacted in face of the country wide anti-Tamil violence. Instead preventing the mobs to continue their terror, the state executive forces simply stood aside, watched and cheered the looters and murderers. It was also reported that masses of new mobs were brought into Tamil areas on board of Army trucks. The London Times went even further and reported on August 5, 1983 that “Army personal actively encouraged arson and the looting of Tamil business establishments and homes in Colombo (…)” and how “absolutely no action was taken to apprehend or prevent the criminal elements involved in the actions. In many instances army personnel participated in the looting of shops.”

On the second day of the pogroms, 35 Tamil political prisoners - including the Secretary General of the Gandhian Society Dr. Rajasundaram - were massacred by Sinhalese prisoners in complicity of jail guards in the high security jail of Welikade. Their bodies piled in front of a Buddha statue in the jail grounds. Two days later, the massacre repeated with 17 more Tamil political prisoners being slaughtered by the very same prisoners and jail guards. Witness report revealed that some Tamil’s eyes were pulled out and their blood was even drunk by some Sinhalese members of the mob. Atrocities as such could have never taken place without the complicity of state in these actions.

The most important feature, which emphasis the state’s involvement in the explosion of anti-Tamil violence, is the repetitive nature of the events. Though, the Black July pogrom has been unprecedented in its violence, destruction, geographical distribution and number of victims and perpetrators, anti-Tamil violence has been a common occurrence in the state’s young independent history. Whilst in 1956, Tamils were protected by state forces against anti-Tamil agitations, the willingness to do so decreased with each new pogrom. It rose to the extent that the state forces eventually participated and abetted these atrocities. The Black July pogroms were eventually only a culmination of the racists anti-Tamil sentiments that prevailed for decades, if not longer, among the Sinhalese.

The International Commission of Jurists released in 1984 a report called “Sri Lanka: A mounting tragedy of errors”, which stated that “clearly this was not a spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people - nor was it, as has been suggested in some quarters, a popular response to the killing of 13 soldiers in an ambush by Tamils Tigers on the previous day, which was not even reported in the newspapers until after the riots began. It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organised well in advance”

The persecution and murder of Tamils rendered an estimated 200 000 Tamils homeless. Not only did they fear for their lives, but also their future after having lost all their belongings. Tamils searched for refuge in schools and temples, but were also aided by good willed Sinhalese and Muslims in their search for shelter and protection from the violence. Whilst the state failed to protect its very own citizens, civil society was forced to take upon the responsibility to do so. However, even these refugee camps were attacked and proved to provide insufficient safeguard from further crimes against the Tamils. As a result, Tamils fled on cargo ships were they were horded like cattle on their flight to the Tamil city of Jaffna while Sinhalese crowds cheered in sight of their departure.

Genocidal Impact

On the fifth day of the pogrom, the Sri Lankan President J.R. Jeywardene made his long awaited address to the state, where he famously claimed that the pogrom was “not a product of urban mobs but a mass movement of the generality of the Sinhalese people“ and that “the time had come to accede to the clamour and the national respect of the Sinhalese people.“ Differently expressed, the Sri Lankan President praised the pogrom to be a people’s uprisal of the Sinhalese as part of their national duty. The President did neither show any compassion nor empathy with the thousands of Tamil victims of the state-anctioned violence. His statement clarified the Government’s extremist attitude towards Tamils and proves the rejection of taking responsability towards the crimes committed against Tamils. It also proves that the attrocities were well-orchestrated and in compliance with official policies to drive out Tamils.

In his threat to starve out the Tamils prior to the Black July pogrom, the Sri Lankan president made the intention to destroy a substantial number of Tamils in order to please the Sinhalese very clear. Five weeks past the pogrom, Gamini Dissanayake, a Minister and later Presidential candidate of the UNP party said during a speech in front of Plantation Tamils that “it will take 14 hours to come from India. In 14 minutes, the blood of every Tamil in the country can be sacrificed to the land, by us.“ Sinhala politicians who openly threatened the very existance and survival of Tamils were just like Mr. Dissanayake not sanctioned, but promoted and publically embraced.

According to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group by killing ist members and deliberately inflicting conditions with the aim of destroying a particular group accounts as a genocide. Most importanty though, the intent of the actions needs to be clear. The various statements made and collected by the media and academics of Sinhala politicians prove the evident intent of the Sinhala rulling class to partly destroy the Tamil population and force a large number of Tamils to flee the country benefitial to an overwhelming Sinhala domination of the country’s demographic map. In another publication of the International Commission of Jurists (The Review), the lawyer’s bar association agrees by stating that “the evidence points clearly to the conclusion that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils amounted to acts of genocide.“

Implications of the Aftermath

Several tens of thousands of Tamils fled in the aftermath of the Black July pogroms the country for a life in peace and security in the West and India. The demographic implications these atrocities had are long-standing. To date, the Tamil community has not recovered from the losses of Black July 1983. According to The Economist (August 6, 2003), Tamils owned 80% of retail trade and 60% of wholesale trade in the capital prior to the genocidal pogrom. The economic motive behind the attacks was a clear elimination of the Tamil domination in the business and commercial sector in Colombo, which was successfully achieved. Demographically, a substantial number of Tamils were killed and forced to flee their homes and leave their belongings behind. Entire neighbourhoods and suburbs were virtually deserted. The entire country changed with the events of the Black July, not only physically, but also psychologically.

Further, almost every Tamil was directly or indirectly affected by the violence and its immense death toll. This is rooted in Sri Lanka’s politics of centralisation in terms of politics and economics. As a result, Tamils were in large number forced to leave their traditional homeland in order to gain access to the country’s economy and rising prosperity. Therefore, most Tamils had relatives or friends who were affected by the pogrom in the capital and beyond. Hence, the trauma was not only of individual nature, but collective and modified the Tamil psyche forever. Their vulnerability and defencelessness in face of the Sri Lankan state and its Sinhala majority population became apparent and led to a profound sense of insecurity and anger among Tamils.

Failure of Justice

The loss of life for the Tamil community is inestimable. Combined with the loss of education, jobs, belongings, opportunities and memories the tragedy of Black July becomes an abyss in the history of Tamils. Nonetheless, the material loss can be estimated. The overall property damage is reported to be above $ 300 million US Dollars. In other words, thousands of Tamil families have lost what generations needed to build up and did never recovered from these material losses.

To this day, there has been only minimal compensation to the victims of Black July 1983. $ 702, 000 US Dollars was distributed among 937 victims (approximately $750 US Dollars) in 2004 for the loss of their entire livelihood. Not only was the compensation sum beyond inadequate, it further disregarded the large numbers of victims that were affected who did not receive any aid from the Government of Sri Lanka. Though former President Chandrika Kumaratunge apologised in 2004 to the victims of the Black July, she did so only half-heartedly by denying the evident responsibility of the state and the Sinhala ruling-class in these atrocities by declaring that “every citizen” was to be blamed. The fact that these crimes were driven by the racism of certain sectors of the Sinhalese population against the whole of the Tamil population is widely and purposely ignored.

More importantly, there has to date not been any sort of justice for the victims of the pogrom. None of the perpetrators, initiators or abetters was trialled or convicted by the state, but continues to live in complete impunity. The victims of the state-sanctioned violence are forced to move on without justice and a sense of completion of a traumatic chapter in their lives. Those responsible for the genocidal crimes against Tamils continued to live a comfortable life and the involved politicians pursued their careers successfully, whilst the victims suffer till this day.

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Edited July 22, 201015 yr by akootha