Can we ever forget Black July - 1983?

Dew GUNASEKARA

The ugliest and the most barbarous event in the post-independent Sri Lanka entered the pages of history 25 years ago. Some people ask why these blackest events are being reminded ritually in the month of July year after year.

I believe that it is of no other reason than to reassure ourselves to see that such an event should never be allowed to recur.

The General Elections in 1977 brought about the strongest Government in power since Independence with a five-sixth majority. The election results provide evidence that no party since the Independence did ever get such an overwhelming backing from the ethnic and religious minorities of the country.

Mystery prevails how under such a Government with sympathy and goodwill of the minorities, communal disturbances erupted within a few months of it being installed in power.

The first communal clashes occurred on August 15 in the estate areas of Sabaragamuwa. So, the events sporadically spread elsewhere in 1978, 1979 and 1981 culminating in the Black July of 1983.

The year 1981 witnessed the burning of the Jaffna Library with 94,000 books and the dirtiest ever the District Development Election. On July 23 1983 with the bodies of 13 soldiers having been brought to a single place for cremation in Borella, emotions were allowed to run high for the eruption of virulence and violence unprecedented in our recent history.

July 23 to 30 was the darkest week of the Black July where it was officially estimated that 471 Tamils were killed, 8,077 of their houses burnt, 3,769 persons injured, 3,835 cases of looting. Fifty three Tamil prisoners in the Welikada jail were brutally murdered.

As a result of this event the biggest refugee problem erupted making more than seven hundred thousand people homeless, unprecedented in the history of our country, of which more than 400,000 were forced to leave the country.

It was the Black July of 1983 which signalled the outbreak of the on-going war in the North-East, with the virtual division of the country.

The war commenced with a military budget of Rs. 1.8 billion in 1983 and it has risen to Rs.117 billion by 2007.

In all, from both sides a little less than 100,000 may have been killed by now - leave alone thousands of those who have been disabled. Damage to property is incalculable. Ethnic relations completely collapsed with mutual fear and suspicion between Sinhalese and Tamils escalated.

With Black July, dawned the era of gun culture, disappearances, child soldiers, collapse of rule of law and erosion of democracy. Within the first ten years of UNP rule from 1977, the draconian Constitution was further strengthened with 16 further constitutional amendments - with the two notorious 4th and 6th.

Amendments to the Constitution, whereby the General Elections were postponed and 18 elected MPs from the North and East were removed from the Parliament. The banning of CP, NSSP and JVP was a pretext for the perpetration of all those Machiavellian acts of the JR regime.

With the Black July, fortunes of Prabhakaran dawned; all other Tamil groups and parties being decimated or marginalised. The physical elimination of all leaders of rival Tamil political parties gave way for the emergence of Prabhakaran. Thanks to perpetrators of Black July the most murderous, blood thirsty terrorist group in the world was given birth to.

The process of brutalisation and criminalisation of the present day Sri Lankan society was commenced with the onset of the Black July.

In the history of our country, the entire Sinhalese people were most unjustly portrayed internationally as the most barbarous ethnic group of the modern society while the few perpetrators of those ugliest crimes were allowed to escape unpunished.

It is still afresh in our minds how the Tamil people who were the main victims of Black July voted at the 1982 Presidential Elections for the Sinhala leaders just a few months prior to the Black July.

Despite the boycott campaigns of the TULF and other Tamil groups, between 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the Tamil people went to polls in the 1982 Presidential elections even in the North and East, the lowest being in the Jaffna district with 50 per cent, still relatively high.

It is on record that 60 per cent of the Jaffna people who polled, in fact voted for Sinhala candidates, the highest being obtained by Hector Kobbekaduwa of the SLFP. The figures for the other districts were more eloquent.

Vavuniya - 85 per cent
Trincomalee - 89 per cent
Batticaloa - 60 per cent
Digamadulla - 95 per cent

This was the response of the Tamils and Muslims in the North and East to the Sinhala leaders. Let the people in the South remember this stark fact of history.

All this goodwill evaporated with the Black July. The Tamil people were driven to the clutches of the LTTE, thanks to the perpetrators of Black July, engineered by those in power then.

The international image of Sri Lanka was completely tarnished. The traditional Indo-Sri Lanka relations were strained to the lowest ebb. In my view the emergence of terrorist, chauvinistic JVP in the South too was a by-product of the Black July. How people in the South suffered during the 1987-1990 period are still fresh in their minds and hearts, with the killing spree by JVPers as well as Green Tigers.

In the first round the finest leaders and cadres of the CP, LSSP, NSSP and SLMP were brutally murdered. Of course, they gave their live for the cause of national unity and communal harmony. The killing spree continued and thousands of UNP and SLFP supporters too lost their lives. Can this black chapter of our recent history be forgotten or be allowed to be obliterated?

Much water has flowed under the bridges of Sri Lankan rivers since the Black July. We remain where we were having failed to weed out the root cause of terrorism through the search of a political solution to the national question. Even if we forgive those perpetrators of Black July, we can never forget the event.

The writer is General Secretary Communist Party of Sri Lanka.