Another July ’83? People don’t deserve it, economy can’t stand it

July 7, 2012

Rajan Philips

"April is the cruellest month," wrote T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land. Ian Goonetilleke recalled this line in his introduction to a bibliography of writings on the JVP insurrection of April 1971. Seasonally, unlike in Eliot’s West, April is not a bad month in the tropics. It is a temperate month between monsoons and is the month of traditional New Year festivities in Sri Lanka and India. July is intemperate in the tropics and it is the month of power cuts and water cuts in Sri Lanka. Drought stricken farmers have no help from heaven or the state. Politically, April was a cruel month in 1971. But that cruelty was certainly surpassed twelve years later in July 1983. Will it happen again? I am not making this up.

"Is Sri Lanka heading towards another July ‘83" was the ominous title of Latheef Farook’s responsibly written article that appeared a month ago in the Sunday Times of June 10. Just last week an email arrived giving the story of an attack allegedly by military personnel on political prisoners in the Vavuniya remand prison. No comparison to the prison massacre in 1983, but the Vavuniya incident is worrisome enough. According to Farook, the targets of a repeat July ‘83 will not be Tiger-supporting Tamils but al-Qaeda supporting Muslims. Already, unprovoked vandalism, even led by monks, has targeted Muslim places of worship in Anuradhapura, Dambulla, Kurunegala, Colombo and Dehiwela.Read more...