{"id":96826,"date":"2013-07-24T00:24:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T18:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=96826"},"modified":"2013-07-27T12:14:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T06:44:01","slug":"black-july-ethno-political-conflict-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/black-july-ethno-political-conflict-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Black July: Ethno-Political Conflict In Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Imtiyaz+Razak&amp;x=9&amp;y=4\">Imtiyaz Razak<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0Ben Stavis &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_96827\" style=\"width: 123px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/black-july-ethno-political-conflict-in-sri-lanka\/imtiyaz-razak\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-96827\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96827\" class=\"size-full wp-image-96827\" title=\"Imtiyaz Razak\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Imtiyaz-Razak.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"113\" height=\"125\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-96827\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr.Imtiyaz Razak<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">Scholarly works on the Sri Lanka ethnic conflict suggest that communal riots in 1958, 1961, 1974, 1977 and 1983 in which Tamils were killed, maimed, robbed and rendered homeless were carefully designed by the Sinhala elites.This persistent pattern of violence set the stage for violent Tamil retaliation and efforts to secede.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The incident in 1983, known as Black July, is particularly well documented. Approximately two thousand Tamils were killed in July\/August 1983 by Sinhalese mobs in an attempt to begin genocide (or at least ethnic cleansing) of the Tamils. Human Right\u00a0Watch documented the cruelty of the 1983 .\u201cstate sponsored.\u201d Sinhalese riots. .\u201cMany neighborhoods were destroyed and nearly 100,000 Tamils in Colombo were displaced. Evidence suggested government collusion in the riots..\u201d Further, an eye witness who\u00a0rescued a Tamil employee of the state media company-Lake House described the cruelty of the day:<\/p>\n<p>Well organized gangs that had the blessings of powerful Government politicians mainly from the city of Colombo began their orgy of murder, looting and arson in broad daylight while the Police and the Armed Forces appeared to be helpless. I remember taking a vehicle out of Lake House to Wattala, with my colleagues also taking a Tamil accountant at Lake House, Mr. Edward, who also lived in Wattala. Five colleagues and the driver were all Sinhalese and we kept Mr. Edward between us in the middle of the vehicle and at each 100 meters or so gangs armed with clubs, swords and knives stopped each vehicle and inspected them to see whether any passenger or driver was a Tamil. Smoke filled the streets of Colombo and while we were leaving Lake House a flourishing textile shop, Sarathas was being looted while the armed forces and\u00a0police were turning a blind eye to the crime.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to the state\u2019s role behind the violence, the witness reported:<\/p>\n<p>.\u2026most notable matter that was observed was that the gangs carried official\u00a0Householders Lists and stopped their vehicles in front of the homes or offices of\u00a0the Tamil people. If the UNP Government of J. R. Jayewardene had not\u00a0provided them with those official documents, how could the gangs have had\u00a0access to them? It meant two things. The Government deliberately delayed the\u00a0burial of the corpses of the soldiers on July 24 to plan an attack on the Tamil\u00a0people in Colombo and the suburbs to provide their own goons with documents\u00a0to make sure that only Tamils were attacked. Any other political party or group\u00a0could not have managed both these things without State power.<\/p>\n<p>Neither the Sinhala ruling elite nor state institutions openly condemned or took any meaningful immediate measures to prevent the violence against the Tamil civilians from spreading to the other parts of the island from Colombo.28 Instead J.R. Jayewardene,\u00a0then President of Sri Lanka, referred to the mobs as a &#8220;mass movement by the generality of the Sinhalese people.\u201d and praised the mobs as heroes of the Sinhalese people. Jayewardene.\u2019s complicity was reflected in the interview he gave to Ian Ward, a British journalist, prior to the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983:<\/p>\n<p>I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna (Tamil) people now. Now we\u00a0cannot think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us. The more\u00a0you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here.\u2026 really,\u00a0if I starve the Tamils, Sinhala people will be happy\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The Sinhalese atrocities against the Tamils continued unabated even\u00a0after the notorious ethnic violence in 1983. According to Human Rights Watch, after 1983, tens of thousands of people ended their life in prison cell.31 Several studies accuse Sinhala politicians of institutionalized anti-Tamil violence and atrocities.32 S.J. Tambiah\u00a0reported that the Sinhalese ruling elites hired some Sinhalese to butcher the Tamils.33 The evidence suggests that the Sinhalese who were hired by local Sinhala politicians to kill the Tamils are deprived and they did it for some economic benefits\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The article cane be found <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1292357\">here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">*A. R. M. Imtiyaz and \u00a0<\/span>Ben Stavis ,Temple University &#8211;\u00a0Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 135-152, Fall 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":96827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Black July: Ethno-Political Conflict In Sri Lanka - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/black-july-ethno-political-conflict-in-sri-lanka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black July: Ethno-Political Conflict In Sri Lanka - 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