INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA

Black July 1983: the Charge is Genocide

A plan presupposes objectives and the objective of the plan was clear -  terrorise the Tamil people into submission...

A plan presupposes objectives and the objectives of the July '83 violence against the Tamil people were clear.

The plan served to destroy the economic base of the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. The property damage was estimated at around 300 million dollars. Many Tamils were driven back to their traditional homelands in the North and the East, but without their possessions, without their hard earned savings and with no way of eking out a living. Some left Sri Lanka and sought to survive abroad - afraid for their lives in the land of their birth and at the same time, often, unwanted and rejected by the alien environment in which they sought asylum.

The plan served to maintain tension at a level which discouraged Tamils from returning to the island and encouraged them to somehow get away so that their wives and children may be safe. The plan served to make those Tamils who were compelled to remain in Sri Lanka more pliable and willing to serve their Sinhala master in order that they may survive.

In short, the plan served to further the subjugation of the Tamil people and bend them to the will of a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of an unitary Sinhala Buddhist state.

The Washington Post in New York was constrained to comment editorially on 4 August 1983:

''If living together is so hard, what about a separate state in the north for the Tamils? They have as good a claim to a nation of their own as most members of the United Nations. But as always it is a question of power, and in Sri Lanka the Sinhalese have the power. Do they also have the wisdom to see that the Tamil minority is treated in a way that justifies its retention within a unitary state?''

The Guardian added in London on 9 August 1983:

''There is no God-given law that an island shall support just a single state, as examples round the world, both happy and unhappy demonstrate: Borneo, New Guinea, Tierra del Fuego, Ireland. If the island of Sri Lanka is to remain a single democratic state, the rights of its minorities will have to be restored and entrenched.''

But Cabinet Minister Gamini Dissanayake who was also President of the UNP controlled Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union with a membership among plantation Tamils saw the situation in a different light. He put it bluntly to his Tamil members and without ceremony in a widely reported speech on 5 September 1983:

''Who attacked you? Sinhalese. Who protected you? Sinhalese. It is we who can attack and protect you. They are bringing an army from India. It will take 14 hours to come from India. In 14 minutes, the blood of every Tamil in the country can be sacrificed to the land by us. It is not written on anyone's forehead that he is an Indian or a Jaffna Tamil, a Batticaloa Tamil or upcountry Tamil, Hindu Tamil or Christian Tamil. All are Tamils.''

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