"Death Won't Deter Us," - Diaspora Tamils mark 83 Black July Genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 July 2006, 09:28 GMT]
The 1983 Black July anti-Tamil pogroms in which more than 3000 Tamils were killed and billions of rupees worth of property were destroyed by Sinhala thugs, sections of Sri Lankan armed forces, and ruling UNP party cadres, fuelled the Tamil armed struggle towards a defensible Tamil homeland. Thousands of Tamils fled the island to Tamil Nadu state in India, Europe and elsewhere. The recent extra-judicial killings in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) controlled areas in the NorthEast, during the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), have added significance to the widespread observance by the Tamil diaspora of the 23rd year remembrance of the anti-Tamil pogroms.




Black July 83 anti-Tamil pogroms in Southern Sri Lanka, that shocked the world, were the biggest of politically orgnised anti-Tamil riots of 1956, 1961, 1977 and 1983.

In the July 83 anti-Tamil pogrom Sinhala thugs, ruling UNP party cadres, sections of Sri Lankan troopers, and Sri Lanka Police killed more than 3000 Tamils and destroyed property worth billions of rupees.

53 Tamil political prisoners in the Welikade prison in the South were killed by armed Sinhala inmates, on the 25th and 27th of July 1983.

Although the Sri Lankan authorities have attempted to describe the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms as Sinhala backlash to 13 SLA soldiers death on 23 July landmine attack by the Tigers, records later exposed that the 83 riots displayed a preplanned, organised pogroms rather than spontaneous upsurge of violence against Tamils.

Paul Sieghart, the then chariman of the British section of International Commission of Jurists, in a report titled "Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors, noted that the 83 July riots were "a series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organized well in advance."

"Clearly this [83 riots] was no spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people - nor was it as has been suggested in some quarters, a popular response to the killing of 13 soldiers in an ambush the previous day by Tamil Tigers, which was not even reported in the newspapers until the riots began," the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) report said.

One of the first accounts of the July 83 anti-Tamil pogroms, "Sri Lanka: the Holocaust and After," revealed details on UNP led goon squads who went searching for Tamils with electoral lists containinng details of Tamils in Colombo. The book gives details how the then Sri Lankan Industries Minister Cyril Mathew organised the pogroms in Kelaniya and Kandy and notes that the preparations to attack Tamils had been made in advance.

In 2004, 21 years after 1983, a token apology was issued by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Again, in 1998 and onwards, mass graves, came to be known as Chemmani graves, were exposed in Jaffna. Hundreds of Tamil civilians who were abducted by the Sri Lanka Army after 1996, were reported missing. Amnesty International reported that the organisation estimated as many 540 people as disappeared in Jaffna in mid-1996.

On October 25, 2000, Twenty-eight Tamil inmates, between the ages of 14-23 years, in Sri Lankan detention centre jail Bindunuwewa, were massacred while 14 other Tamil youths were seriously injured by Sinhala mobs and Sri Lanka Police.

The recent outburst of extra-judicial killings against Tamil media personnel, parliamentarians, traders, auto-rickshaw drivers and ordinary Tamils in an alleged campaign of terror, have caused an emotional sense of unity among the Tamil diaspora, supporting the Tamil cause for a contiguous defensible homeland.

Country Date Time Location Canada 24,25 18:00 USA 29 18:00 Texas Belgium 25 14:00-17:00 Shuman Place New Zealand 25,27,29 15:00 Auckland Normal Inter- mediate School Denmark 25 12:00-17:00 in 4 cities Finland 25 09:00-19:00 Australia, Melbourne 24,25 08:00-20:00 Federation Square Australia, Sydney 25 12:00-19:00 Martin Place Swiss 23 and onwards in 26 locations Sweden 25-28 Sergel Torg Norway 25 11:00-15:00 in 3 cities Germany 25 09:00-17:00 in 15 cities UK 25 12:30-15:30 Hyde Park Netherlands 25 09:00-19:00 Dam Amsterdam France 25 15:00-18:00 Mur de la paix Italy 25 09:00 in two cities

Related Articles:
05.01.06   Large crowd partake in students funeral procession in Trinco..
25.10.00   25 killed in detention centre massacre
06.07.98   '300 to 400 bodies have been buried'


Chronology: