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Black July 1983: the Charge is Genocide
The features of the planners of the contingent plan
emerge from the nature of the plan...
The features of the planners of the contingent plan emerge from
the nature of the plan.
- The planners were persons who had little regard for the
opinion or the lives of the Tamil people.
- The planners were persons who were in a position to command
considerable organisational resources.
- The planners were persons who were in a position to mobilise
an existing strong arm net work at short notice.
- The planners were persons who were able to assure the
goondas that no harm would befall them and that the army and the
police would look the other way.
- The planners were persons who occupied positions of power
which rendered such assurances credible.
- The planners were humans, if such they were, who were in a
position to influence and direct the police and the army to look
the other way and ensure that such directions were not
countermanded.
- The planners were persons who were secure in the knowledge
that they themselves would be safe after the event - that the
thousands who implemented the plan would not and could not 'tell
on them'.
- The planners were persons who were secure in the knowledge
that there would be no investigation by the government - because
the planners themselves were persons who were in a position to
direct and influence government action.
The circumstances
taken together, support the charge that the Sri Lankan authorities
(and nobody else) were the planners of Genocide '83.
Cabinet Minister S. Thondaman (who continued to serve in the Sri Lanka
government) remarked in an interview in
the Illustrated Weekly of India on 18 December 1983:
''We all know who these people are. I am not naming them
right now... How can any action be taken against them? They are
important people. They are part of this government, just as I
am. Behind all this are our own people... We all know them.''
And Professor Wilson writing in 'Break
up of Sri Lanka' quotes a letter written to him by George
Immerwahr, a United Nations civil servant and a US citizen who had
worked in Sri Lanka in the late 1950s. The letter dated 13 February
1985 said:
" .. the most shattering report came from a
friend who was a civil servant; he told me that he had helped
plan the riots at the orders of his superiors. When I heard him
say this, I was so shocked I told him I simply couldn't believe
him, but he insisted he was telling the truth, and in fact he
justified the Government's decision to stage the riots. When I
heard this, I telephoned an official in our own State
Department, and while he declined to discuss the matter, I got
the impression that he already knew from our embassy in Colombo
what I was telling him."
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