Abstract
A descriptive account of the destruction of Jaffna during Eelam wars I,
II and III. Eelam wars I and II are documented well by the Citizens
Committee of Jaffna, the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (Jaffna Branch), by the
Jaffna Diocesan Human Development Centre in Bishop's House, by the Council
of 10 Non-Governmental Organisations, Jaffna District, and by the reports of
the GA and the Government of Sri Lanka. Then, there are the daily news in
four newspapers being issued in Jaffna.
Very well informed is also the European NGO forum on Sri Lanka with its
centre in London. There are also the very qualified reports by the ICRC and
are the reports by embassies stationed in Colombo. Finally, there are the
daily reports by the LTTE in the form of "Compilation of telephone news by
the Liberation Tigers". They balance the reports by the Government of Sri
Lanka. Putting all these sources together, it is possible to write a
detailed war history of Yalppanam.
There has been made an attempt already to present a war history with
special emphasis on the destruction of civil life in Yalppanam. Its title is
Assessment of War Damage to City of Yalppanam and is a report commissioned
by Municipal Commissioner, Jaffna Municipal Council.
Another important attempt to describe the destruction of civil life is
Sri Lanka is the Economic Blockade by Mayan Vije from 1993, published by the
TIC in London. It covers the whole period relevant here from 1990-92. Civil
life during the time in the early 1980s, before the Tamil migrations and
destruction caused by the wars, is well documented in a flood of scientific
publications that, however, only seldom reach the West.
I wish to mention Statistics of Jaffna District prepared by the
Department of Geography, University of Jaffna in 1983. Important also is
Jaffna District in Facts and Figures by professor Po. Palacuntarapillai and
Ka. Rupamurtti. Facts from these publications are a good base for a
diachronical description of the war history of Yalppanam.
