http://www.massviolence.org/The-Black-July-riots-1983
The censorship imposed by the Sri Lankan government on both the local and international media regarding all activities of the Tamil rebels, added to the prevailing emergency regulations, meant that little or no information was made available to the public. Limited technology, with telephones and fax machines out of order, further complicated communication. Much of the first hand information gathered during this period therefore came from foreign tourists who had been caught in Sri Lanka during the riots and who had later returned to their respective countries. Other first hand accounts were related to foreign journalists by Tamil refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Western countries. However, one book, “The Broken Palmyra”, authored by four dons from the Jaffna University, remains a key reference for the events that occurred in Sri Lanka during 1983 and thereafter. The book offers an inside view of the Tamil crisis in the country and highlights the experiences of the Tamil population during this period of mass violence.
Chapter four of the Broken Palmyra deals specifically with the July 1983 violence against the Tamils. The book describes the course of violence during the Black July riots as follows:
“The General Secretary of the government "union" the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya (JSS) was identified as the leader of gangs which wrought destruction and death all over Colombo and especially in Wellawatte, where as many as ten houses a street were destroyed. A particular UNP municipal councillor of the Dehiwela-Mount Lavinia Municipality led gangs in Mount Lavinia. In the Pettah (the bazaar area, where 442 shops were destroyed and murders were committed) the commander was the son of Aloysius Mudalali, the Prime Minister’s right-hand man. […]. In some cases, uniformed military personnel and police were seen leading the attack. They used vehicles of the Sri Lanka Transport Board (Minister in charge, M. H. Mohammed) and other government departments and state corporations. Trucks of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation’s Oil Refinery came from many miles away […]. But in the neighbourhoods, after the initial shock, Sinhalese and Burghers organised themselves and kept off the gangs who had been sent to burn and kill” (Piyadasa 1984 in Hoole 1990:chapter 4).
The authors then go on to describe the spread of violence to the central town of Nuwara Eiya following a meeting held by a Sinhalese politician in the following terms:
“The town was closely guarded by the army. All vehicles were checked. Bus conductors had orders not to transport Tamils […]. Soon after the end of [the] party meeting they [some well-known rowdies who had been arrested the day before] were released. These people went out immediately (well-equipped with petrol, iron rods and other kinds of weapons) and tried to attack two Tamil priests in town. They managed to escape. Without having succeeded, they moved on - another mob joined up with the first one. They laid a ring of petrol around a Tamil shop which was then burnt. They were supported in this by the army who supplied them with gallons of petrol […]. Tamil people who walked the streets were beaten by soldiers. The fire brigade which stood waiting was hindered by the army and the Sinhalese mob in doing its job... Shops which had not been burnt by the mob were set fire to by the army. Around noon Nuwara Eliya was like a sea of flames...” (Sri Lanka Co-ordination Centre 1983 in Hoole 1990:chapter 4).
The Black July riots also received considerable coverage in the foreign media. In a well-known case regarding the Black July riots, a Norwegian tourist, Mrs. Skarstein, who had been holidaying in Sri Lanka with her 15 year old daughter, related her story to the Norwegian newspaper
Verdens Gang. Mrs. Skarstein described seeing 20 Tamils burned to death in Colombo when a mob stopped a minibus and poured petrol over it. The mob had set light to the vehicle and blocked the doors to prevent the passengers escaping. She also stated that foreign tourists were neither threatened nor molested. Finally, the Norwegian referred to a group of Swedish tourists whom she had met en route. The group had reportedly seen crowds pouring petrol on Tamils and setting fire to them. (
Le Figaro, July 29, 1983).
The Guardian of August 13, 1983, then revealed the murder of politician Selvarajah “Kuttimuni” Yogachandran and Ganeshanathan Jeganathan, a political writer, in a wider report about the Welikade prison massacres. The two men had been sentenced to death and were being held at the Welikade jail. They had previously announced that they wished to donate their eyes after their death, in the hope that they would be grafted on to Tamils who would see the birth of Eelam. The article went on to state that according to secondhand reports, the two men had been forced to kneel and their eyes gouged out with iron bars before they were killed. One version has it that Kuttimuni’s tongue was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: “I have drunk the blood of a Tiger”.
Two weeks earlier, on July 28, the same newspaper quoted the superintendent of the Welikade prison, Alexis Leo de Silva, who testified that he had heard a commotion from his office at about 2:15 pm on Monday July 25 and had gone to investigate. “From the lobby, I heard the sound of objects on bodies and loud screams,” he was quoted as testifying. He said that he and other prison officials were helpless to prevent the killings.
In another incident, the
Times correspondent Michael Hamlyn, in an article titled “Colombo acts to appease mobs” published on July 29, quoted witnesses on board a train running from Kandy to Colombo, whose Tamil passengers were killed by Sinhalese co-passengers. According to one witness on board the train, a young man was pursued from carriage to carriage and pummeled and beaten until he died naked and bleeding.
A few days later, upon visiting a refugee camp near Colombo, Hamlyn, in an article titled “Beirut echoes for the Tamils in torment” (August 3) described life in a refugee camp as follows: “It is only the yard of a Hindu temple, outside Colombo, but in its small space 5,000 people are trying to stay alive. […]. Two taps and two toilets serve the whole camp. A row of additional toilets with bright red doors are locked, reserved for the temple priests, whose cleanliness must never be defiled. […] The refugees were sure of at least one meal a day.[…]. Outside, a policeman sits, and a military patrol stands guard at the top of the road”.
Finally, in a report titled “Licence to kill in Sri Lanka” dated August 2,
The Guardian correspondent Martyn Halsall referred to Mrs. Sivasakthy Anandarajah, a Sri Lankan Tamil who flew with her two-year-old son to join her husband in England. She wept as she spoke of men chasing to kill her. In the same article, the journalist quotes Mr. Thomas McGuire, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, who arrived with his Sinhalese wife Chandra and their 12-month-old son. McGuire was quoted as saying “it was terrifying. We saw many of our neighbours’s houses burned down. […]. Three Tamils, a man and his two sons who had been helping at our house pleaded with us to hide them from their attackers. We hid them for several days and when we left to come to London they went to friends of ours”.