Twenty five years ago on the 25th of July the world watched in horror, the vicious and the violent attacks against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. While the shocking images of burning bodies, gruesome prison massacres and masses of Tamil refugees were flashed across the screen of the world television, the detailed news articles about the murders, rapes and the plight of refugees were started to emerge in the media all over the globe. An extract taken from the Guardian correspondent speaks for itself.
“Smoke from hundreds of shops, offices, warehouses and homes blew idly over Colombo yesterday. Any business, any house belonging to or occupied by a Tamil has been attacked by gangs of goondas and the resulting destruction looks like London after a heavy night’s attention from the Luftwaffe. The sharp smell of destruction fills the nostrils and the roads beneath the feet crunch with broken glass. Cars and lorries lie at ungainly angles across the footways. In Pettah, the old commercial heart of the city, row after row of sari boutiques, electronic dealers, rice sellers, car parts stores, lie shattered and scarred… government officials yesterday estimated that 20,000 businesses had been attacked in the city.” – The Guardian 28 July 1983
The riots began in retaliation for an ambush of an army patrol in Jaffna that left thirteen Sinhalese soldiers dead. The army immediately retaliated by randomly killing a number of innocent civilians in the Jaffna peninsula. This followed by an extensively organised anti-Tamil riot which initially started in Colombo and soon spread to southern part of Sri Lanka where ever the Tamils lived. Sinhalese rioters in Colombo were provided with voters’ lists containing details of names and addresses to enable them to specifically target the Tamil Community. The police, security forces, Buddhist monks and the State Officials turned a blind eye but encouraged the mobs and in some cases they themselves actively took part in the carnage.
The following statement appeared in The Financial Times is a testament to this.
“The violence was vicious and bloody. In street after street in Colombo groups of rioters hit only at shops and factories, as well as homes owned by Tamils. Troops and police (almost exclusively Sinhalese) either joined the rioters or stood idly by. The events were so well organized no one doubts that there was a master list of targets.” – Financial Times, 12 August 1983.
Mobs of angry Sinhalese roamed the streets targeting properties and businesses owned by the Tamils. They chased down and beat any vulnerable people they could find. This lasted for several days and claimed the lives of over 3,000 Tamils. Over 50 Tamils political prisoners were butchered by the fellow Sinhalese inmates and the prison guards.
David Beresford, correspondent to the “The Guardian†newspaper described the prison massacres with the following statement.
“While accounts of these massacres are circulating widely among Sri Lanka’s Tamil population, it is the massacres in the Welikada gaol which are attracting the most attention. There is particular interest in circumstances in which two alleged guerrilla leaders were killed.The two men, Sellarasa “Kutimani†Yogachandran, leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation and a political writer and Ganeshanathan Jeganathan had been sentenced to death last year for the murder of a policeman.
In speeches from the dock, the two men announced that they would donate their eyes in the hope that they would be grafted on to Tamils who would see the birth of Eelam, the independent state for which they were fighting.
Second hand reports from Batticaloa gaol, where the survivors of the Welikada massacre are now being kept, say that the two men were forced to kneel and their eyes gouged out with iron bars before they were killed.
One version has it that Kutimani’s tongue was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: “I have drunk the blood of a Tiger.â€â€ – The Guardian, 10 August 1983
This riot created a mass movement of refugees within the island. Over 100, 000 Tamils fled the island and sought refuge in Europe North America, New Zealand, Australia and India.
The government headed by the President Jayewardene refused to condemn these brutal attacks and did not even release a statement until after four days of mayhem. In 2004 President Chandrika Kumaratunga made just a token apology to the nation.
To this day no one has been prosecuted and no compensation was paid to the families who have lost their loved ones or to the refugees who were forced to abandon their properties and businesses.
This pogrom was the final blow for the Tamils, who immediately began an armed struggle to exercise their right to self-determination. Thousands of youth joined the Tamil militant organisations, took up arms and fought against the Sinhalese regime. This in turn gave resurgence to the Tamil rebel organisations especially to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This upsurge violence pushed the country into a full scale civil war.
This civil war has already cost hundreds and thousands of lives. The official figure is around 70,000 but recent estimates suggest over 300,000 mostly Tamil lives. Over million Tamils are internally displaced and further a million Tamils have left the island for the safe havens in the West. Riots left a deep psychological scar between the two major ethnic groups
Tamil Tigers were transformed from a hand full of part-timers into a powerful and influential guerrilla movement capable of running over army bases manned by over thousands of professional soldiers. Angry Tamil refugees who settled in the West provided the necessary financial backing to the Tamil Tigers. The relationship between the Tamils and Sinhalese community have since further deteriorated.
However this pogrom and the ongoing civil war have made the world to acknowledge that the Tamils have legitimate grievances in Sri Lanka.
To commemorate this pogrom, Tamil Tigers attacked the heavily fortified Katunayake airbase on the 24th of July 2001. This was the biggest blow for the security forces and crippled the already fragile economy of Sri Lanka. Millions of dollars worth of military and civilian aircrafts were destroyed and stopped the flow of tourists coming into the island. The Guardian correspondent Derek Brown describes the attack on the airbase with the following statement.
“Tamil Tiger rebels have inflicted awesome damage on Sri Lanka’s only international airport in what was their most audacious attack since they assassinated the president eight years ago.†– Guardian 24 July 2001
In 2002 the newly elected government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers signed a Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) in February 2002. Both parties held six highly publicised rounds of talks mediated by the Norwegians. The peace talks were abandoned mainly due the pressure from Sinhalese nationalist coalition parties. Although some progress were made, namely Tamil Tigers agreeing to a federal model as an alternative to an independent Tamil state called Eelam.
The current Sri Lankan regime under President Mahinda Rajapaksa is determined to crush the Tamil Tigers. They have pulled out of the CFA in January this year and started a full scale war in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The security forces have made some progress in the East and managed to bring the Eastern province under their control. Rebels withdrew from the East and fortified their northern stronghold. They are fiercely resisting Sri Lankan forces in the Northern Sri Lanka. In a recent battle rebels have proved their strength by inflicting heavy casualties to the security forces in the northern front of Mukamalai.
The Sri Lankan State has already spent tens of billions of US dollars against fighting the Tamil Tiger rebels. It has allocated a record US $1.5 billion into the war effort this year alone and country’s external debt has increased to US $14 billion.
The Sri Lankan government is getting isolated by the International Community and the State is finding it difficult to fund the war and manage the economy. The war is destroying the economy. The high commodity prices, hike in food prices, near 30% inflation and trade union strikes are crippling the economy to almost bankruptcy. As a desperate measure Sri Lanka took up a massive loan of US $ 500 million through an international bond issue underwritten by HSBC, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan to balance its finances. Recently Sri Lanka has officially become a top 20 failed State as well.
The human rights situation in Sri Lanka is atrocious. Abductions, disappearances and murders are very common. Sri Lanka has the second highest number of disappearances in the world, ranking only behind Iraq according to the UN.
There is no media freedom any more. The defence ministry has publicly labelled the journalists who cover the war as “traitorsâ€. Within the last 3 years 12 journalists have been killed, 11 of them in government-controlled high security areas. There have been series of abductions and assaults against journalists in Sri Lanka. A senior minister marched into the offices of the state broadcasting corporation and attacked the news editor in day light. The opposition party UNP has openly accused the country’s most senior army officer of being behind violent attacks on journalists. So far no-one has been brought to court for the attacks and most Sri Lankan believe that security forces are behind these attacks. The World Association of Newspapers has ranked Sri Lanka as the third most dangerous country in the world for media workers. (Iraq and Somalia are ranked 1 and 2 respectively.)
Sri Lanka’s newly found friendship with Iran, China and Pakistan is making India and the West very uncomfortable. West is piling a lot of pressure on Sri Lanka to come up with an acceptable proposal. Sri Lanka is getting a fraction of the aid it used to get and now EU is using GSP-plus as a bargaining chip to improve the human rights situation.
The gulf between Sinhalese and Tamil communities is ever widening by the day. Unless the Tamil grievances are addressed by the majority government there will be no end to the violence in Sri Lanka.