The Hindu – September 3, 1983

From the 24th of July to the beginning of August it is estimated that over 3,000 Tamils lost their lives in what has been described as an episode of rioting or temporary breakdown of public order. This temporary disturbance of peace has been attributed to the spontaneous rage felt by the Sinhalese people when they heard that 13 soldiers had been killed by the LTTE in an ambush in Jaffna. This is the rhetoric which was touted at the time by the Sinhalese establishment and still stands today for the lack of a proper inquiry into or official apology for those days of blood and destruction. There are a number of points to be queried in this analysis of the July 83 massacre as spontaneous rioting by the Sinhalese population in response to the killing of 13 soldiers. The first is the description of the events as spontaneous rioting. A look in hindsight at the series of events as they unfolded and evidence collected from witnesses would suggest that the events of July 1983 19;6Hwere far from spontaneous, they were in fact well planned and constitute a well organised massacre, a pogrom. To suggest that the murder of over 3,000 people in the space of a week is a disturbance of public order is at best insulting. The second point is the explanation for the violence as a response to the killing of 13 soldiers. This is hardly plausible as the violence began well before reports of the ambush had even appeared in the newspapers. However this explanation does need some consideration, firstly what historical forces led to the presence of the predominantly Sinhalese army in Jaffna and secondly what political and psychological realities can be gleaned from the linking of the killing of 13 soldiers in a military operation to the mass murder of 3,000 civilians. Spontaneous rioting well before the violence finally exploded on July 25th the Sri Lankan government promulgated two pieces of legislation, the purposes of which can only be seen with knowledge in hindsight of the terror unleashed on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. In early July, well before the ambush alleged to be the cause of the pogrom had taken place, the Jayewardene regime imposed the Public Security Act which gave the Security forces permission to immediately bury or cremate dead bodies without post mortem examination, inquest or judicial inquiry of any kind. The freedom and impunity that this legislation conferred was taken advantage of by the Sri Lankan security forces with much vigour. The story of Mrs. Ganesan, aTamil woman who survived the pogrom was retold to the Guardian.

“Mrs Ganesan said that at 10 am, on the morning of July 27 a crowd gathered near her home. Her family telephoned the police but no one came. The mob began to attack the home of a neighbour and started to break down the gate. Mr. Ramanathan, a camphor dealer who had a shot gun, fired a single round through the window to frighten them off. The army then arrived and began to take up positions behind the mob which began to attack the gate again. Mr. Ramanathan fired again. One of his son’s climbed onto the roof and was shot by a soldier from the street. Mrs. Ganesan fled to her aunt’s housenearby with her children, hiding with them in the bathroom. She heard firing outside and then an explosion. They ran out to find the house on fire. They were running away when they were stopped by a soldier, who led her and her children down a lane at the back of the house to the main road. There were pools of blood in the lane. On the main road in front of Mr. Ramanathan’s house they saw a pile of bodies, including those of her husband, her brother in law and father in law and a sister in law’s husband, Mr. Ramanathan and his four sons and one of her aunts tenants and his three year old daughter.

They all had gunshot wounds. She and her daughters, aged nine and seven, and a son of five, saw her husband’s intestines falling out and his head staved in. A brand was handed to Mrs. Ramanathan’s daughter. She was made to set on fire the vehicles and her home. The bodies were then thrown onto the flames”

The legislation was directed at the security forces who played a full part in the anti Tamil violence. It gave them the freedom to murder with impunity by allowing them to destroy the evidence. In Mrs. Ganesan story the soldiers forced her daughter to set alight the flames to destroy the bodies which they themselves had been involved in killing. The legislation was therefore apt and timely, it made legal the disposal of bodies and therefore the destruction of evidence. Even today the number of Tamils killed is claimed by many to be around 400, the timely promulgation of the Public Security Act makes it easier for this claim to be touted. The fact that this power was given to the security forces suggests that for agents of the state in the pogrom had been planned. On the 19th of July, six days before the ambush claimed to be the cause of the riots, President Jayewardene issued an emergency order imposing censorship of the press and restricting the movement of journalists. The pogrom was island wide and so ferocious in scale, particularly in Colombo, where the foreign press in concentrated,that the violence made headline news all over the world. A similar strategy is now being used by the present government which has imposed severe restriction on the movement of foreign journalists into the war zone in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The Tamil people in these areas are suffering untold hardships which do not make the headlines because they are far out of the reach of the foreign journalists. The precision with which the violence was executed is suggestive of a degree of pre-planning and State involvement. Tamil homes would be burnt to the ground while neighbouring Sinhalese homes would be left untouched, Tamil businesses in industrial areas were invariably correctly identified and destroyed. Many eye witnesses reported seeing mobs carrying lists which had information about the ownership of houses and properties which were destroyed. The lists of Tamil homes must have come from the ratings re gisters held by the local authorities and the lists of industrial premises must have come from the Ministries of Industries itself. The premises of Tamil shops rented from Sinhalese landlords were not destroyed but the contents of the shops were looted. The gangs were also simultaneously mobilised in many places as if responding to a pre – planned signal, they carried identical white cans with which to siphon off petrol from passing cars and identical iron rods and clubs. Gov! ernment involvement has always b een suscpected in the planning and execution of the violence, the mobs were often transported in state owned buses and trucks and roamed around the streets after curfew hours. “Rioting mobs? Blood thirsty thugs? Certainly, but led by cold blooded arsonists and vandals who knew exactly what they were doing, what they had to do or had been asked to do. It was deliberate methodical and thorough, and entirely one sided. In a riot there is loss on both sides, though non necessarily to an equal degree. But during the recent holocaust in Sri Lanka, the Tamils were always at the receiving end.”