Firstly, a matter which caused comment and concern was the fact that there was no statement made by any member of the government to the public for several days. As Mr. Thondaman (Minister of Rural Industrial development and a Tamil Member of Parliament) put it, when speaking in Parliament on August 4th, (Hansard p 1354),
“For four days after the incident broke out- I do no want to blame any bdoy – no body came on Television or over the radio. The country was virtually burning:unprecedented acts of violence had taken place in Colombo and in the suburbs”.

An editorial in the “The Times of India, of August 10th, carried the following report:
“...Asked by a BBC correspondent why government troops drawn from the Sinhalese population had not fired on rioters attacking Tamils and destroying their homes and business (President Jeyawardene) has said: “I think there was a big anit-tamil feeling among the forces. They also felt that shooting the Sinhalese, who were rioting, would have been anti-Sinhalese, and actually in some places we saw them encouraging (rioters)”.