Because of its historical value, the full article has been given as Appendix III. We have re- ceived independent confirmation of this in the course of our documentation over the years, from Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa and Amparai Districts. The now deserted Tamil village of Thiriyai was part of Mr. Dassanayake’s world. We have been told by people from there how the Tamil and Sinhalese villagers used to cel- ebrate harvest festivals together. If a Tamil in Thiriyai was bitten by a snake, a bullock cart would be dispatched to Gomarankadawela to fetch the Sinhalese snake doctor and he would remain in Thiriyai until the patient was cured. The late Mr. A. Thangathurai, TULF MP for Mutur and Trincomalee, used to recall how close his people in Kiliveddy were to their Sinhalese neighbours in Dehiwatte (Lime Garden), even though the latter was a colony village.

We will try to place the story of division and bloodshed in its historical perspective. Without understanding it, a solution to the ethnic con- flict would also continue to evade us and we will be condemned to partisan shouting matches. In some ways, the latter contribute more towards tearing the nation asunder than the clash of armed groups. A good example is the set of two events in mid-September 1999. The Air Force bombed Puthukkudiyiruppu mar- ket killing 21 Tamil civilians. Three days later, on 18th September, LTTE militants, including women, attacked the border Sinhalese village of Gonawela in the Amparai District, killing about 50 civilians.

President Kumaratunge immediately con- demned the latter in the strongest terms. A state television crew was dispatched and relief was also quickly sent to Gonawela. Despite the ICRC confirming the death by bombing of Tamil ci- vilians, the military spokesman Brig. Sunil Tennekoon kept claiming that they had only bombed a carefully selected LTTE target, and that if civilians had died it was because the LTTE had planted them there. There was not a word of sympathy for the Tamil victims from the Presi- dent. Much later, under pressure, the Govern- ment agreed to hold an inquiry into the bombing, the conclusions of which have so far not been revealed. But the record has been that in the event of Tamils being killed by the state forces, there has been no word of sympathy from the Government or the President, and when it came, it was grudging and belated.

Although commentators in Colombo sug- gested that the bombing tragedy resulted from a technical error, to many balanced Tamils in the North who had lived through aerial bombing in the past, this seemed a deliberate retaliatory attack. It came soon after the Army suffered a significant defeat, and if they were taking on a well-identified target far from the scene of fight- ing, this seemed an odd time for it.

Thus today, for the LTTE, using every pre- text to massacre Sinhalese in the border areas has become more a credit than a liability, be- cause the Government continues to react in a manner demonstrating to the Tamil people that it is at heart a government of the Sinhalese alone. It does not do any good to the Sinhalese or to the Tamils. That aspect of partisanship with which the problem originated remains the same despite changes of government. Nowhere is this official partisanship better demonstrated than in the document titled Massacres of Civil- ians presented to Parliament by the Deputy Minister for Defence Anuruddha Ratwatte on 6th February 1996, and was no doubt eagerly purveyed by Sri Lankan missions abroad. President Kumaratunge holds the portfolio for defence.

It is a document which lists incidents in which nearly 2900 mostly Sinhalese civilians were killed. A “minor omission” concerns those violations by the state forces in which, up to then, in the region of 20,000 Tamils were killed. The institutional memory of the State is at a to- tal loss as to what it has been doing to Tamil ci- vilians. For practical purposes, the Tamils exist only in the ranks of terrorists. Even with regard to massacres of Sinhalese civilians in the North- East by Tamil militants, there are significant omissions. In the period covered in the docu- ment (1984-1996) there were also massacres of Sinhalese civilians in the South by the armed forces during 1988-1990 by way of reprisals (see Sect.17.2). These massacres of Sinhalese do not find mention in the official document Massacres of Civilians. With these qualifications, it is a very useful document giving an idea of massacres of Sinhalese civilians by Tamil militants up to early 1996. We take this as our starting point.