The Riot that Lit the Fuse of Sri Lankan Civil War

In the city of Colombo, thugs came during the day and in the night, by the hundreds, looking for vengeance. In the first hours of July 24, 1983, the first innocent blood was spilled. Since then, Sri Lanka would bleed for decades. On this teardrop-shaped island, countless tears were shed.
 
Until that moment, the hatred and violence had been delegated to the army. On July 23, a deadly ambush by the Tamil Tigers killed thirteen Sri Lankan Army soldiers from the notorious fifteen-man army patrol known as Four Four Bravo. The patrol was being targeted to avenge the rape of three Tamil schoolgirls and the death of Charles Lucas Anthony, commonly known by the nom de guerre Seelan, a leading member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an insurgent group formed in 1976. Before this armed insurrection, Tamils tried on numerous occasions to gain their rights through democratic means — but to no avail.
 
Though there were two other riots against Tamils in 1958 and 1977, the astonishing brutality of the 1983 riots was the tipping point. This act of vengeance by LTTE lit the fuse of communal tension. The result was the Black July riots, which lasted for seven days. If the Sri Lankan civil war can be said to have had a beginning, this was it.
 
July 24, 1983, was like 9/11 for Sri Lanka’s Tamils. Day after day, Tamils were targeted on the capital streets of Colombo as they went about their days, inside buses on the way to work. Sinhalese mobs identified Tamils, stripped them naked, kicked and beat them before setting them ablaze or hacking them into pieces with machetes. Some families were burned to death inside their cars. Mobs raped Tamil women, looted and burned Tamil homes and businesses. Even while Tamils were sleeping in their own homes — it didn’t matter. Tamil homes were identified with ruthless efficiency with the help of voter lists distributed by the Sri Lankan government. 
 
Doors and windows were smashed in, hinges bursting as the mob howled on one side and its victims cried out in terror on the other. Women and children were not spared by the thugs drunk on anti-Tamil bloodlust. Even the pitter-patter of terrorized infants’ feet didn’t matter. Those Tamils who took shelter behind walls were burned alive. When the riot was over, almost three thousand Tamils lay dead. Even the Buddhist monks in their saffron-coloured robes did not stand apart from the violence. For those nightmarish days, the Buddha’s teachings of liberating sentient beings from suffering were set aside, forgotten, or as though they missed that session at the monastery.
 
A few brave Sinhalese — who protected Tamils from this unimaginable savagery — the few righteous ones on the island, represented civility in this uncivil nation. They represented a flickering spark of humanity in a country that had gone dark.
 
But, the president of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, seemed to fret that perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough. He told Ian Ward of London’s Daily Telegraph, “I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna [Tamil] people; now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion . . . really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.” 
 
His callousness created more Tamil Tigers than it destroyed. His words made it impossible for Tamils to think of themselves as Sri Lankans anymore. From then, the war began to intensify. The idyll life of Tamils was over. Since the country had exploded in civil war in 1983, the rancid cobweb of human pain and suffering was barely noticed except by the victims’ families. When it was all over, more than one million Tamils went into exile.
 
Many years after the independence from the British — Tamils in Sri Lanka assembled, organized, and resisted first peacefully and then by an armed insurrection to stand up against the tyranny of the majority. July 24, 1983, was a day of infamy — for Sri Lanka’s Tamils. The government orchestrated the mass killing of many innocent Tamils. Now known as ‘Black July.’ 
 
Thirty-nine years later, not a single person has been charged with committing this horrific crime. Sri Lanka’s brutality from the dawn of its independence is a legacy of humans’ inhumanity to humans. Meanwhile, the courage and tenacity of Tamil people in Sri Lanka and around the globe, in the aftermath of many such atrocities and devastation — represents the highest aspirations of the human spirit.
 
Now, the country is an unmitigated disaster. Sri Lanka went from a thriving democracy with freedom of speech as its governing ethos to thug law. The decline of Sri Lanka’s moral fibre represents the single most serious threat to its own survival. At the height of the Vietnam War, Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont once told President Lyndon Johnson, “I’m never keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls.” In Sri Lanka, owls, alas, so far have not ruled the country since the independence. Hawks, there have been a-plenty, and a disastrous mess these hawks have made in Sri Lanka, from which no easy escape beckons.
 
In 1948, when Sri Lanka got its independence, it was considered to be the post-colonial nation most likely to succeed economically and democratically. Unfortunately, since then, Sri Lanka has been governed by hawks who lust to spill blood in a barbaric frenzy of ethnic fanaticism. We must not allow splattered blood from Tamil victims of Sri Lankan tyranny to stain our conscience forever. The proud flags of democratic nations must not be allowed to wave alongside countries such as Sri Lanka.
 
For the victims, it seems there can be no closure, no dignity, and no respect. There is nothing but ghastly memory in haunting desolation. Even today Sri Lanka consoles itself by talking of common human feelings, but as Tamils found out in July of 1983, there are times in history when there is no such thing.
 
Sri Lanka's cruelty and brutality filled the empty canvas of the unlived and dreamless lives of so many innocent Tamils. The cries of the dead still speak to us with words we will never hear, and that deafening silence breaks our collective heart in two. They are the true faces of this sad epoch in Sri Lankan history.​

Tamils’ emotions, no matter how much we have tried to jimmy them into seeing things another way, will not budge because Sri Lanka’s evil unleashed on Tamils since independence cannot be undone. But by dismissing Sri Lanka’s twisted logic for the poisonous nonsense, it is, we can act to ensure it does not metastasize into the marketplace of ideas.

Sri Lanka is sick with racial tendencies — and political and economic freedom for Tamils from the clutches of its tyranny is the only antidote. Tamils will keep saying this and say it against all odds and all organized powers. When the time comes, to anyone who will listen, to everyone who won’t listen, and — above all — to us, when no one will listen.

If any good were to come from this ugly chapter in the cursed history of Tamils, it would be a celebration of the notion that Sri Lanka’s anti-Tamil policies will never ultimately triumph over the indomitable spirit of the Tamil people. Tamils should celebrate this interminable triumph in the midst of this tragedy. Many Tamils like me are living this today. The Tamil diaspora has an important role to play in making sure we remember.