Black July: The Testimony Of Lionel Bopage, Then General Secretary Of The JVP
Rajan Hoole
Sri Lanka’s Black July – Part 6 -
In the morning of 25th July he was near Angoda at their press, proof reading their journal. A crowd coming from Colombo advised people to close up and go home.Bopage drove home to Kelaniya, passing through Colombo. In Kelaniya cars were being stopped on the road opposite the Tyre Corporation and vehicles carrying Tamils were being burnt with their occupants. (Sources from Kelaniya University told us that one Omar, a well-known thug of Cyril Mathew’s, was responsible for killing a Tamil doctor and burning him along with his vehicle.) The thugs wanted to remove some petrol from his car. Someone recognised him and waved him off. He then got into the road to go to his home in Mawarandiya. A Ceylon Transport Board breakdown truck came towards him with 25 to 30 passengers wielding clubs and long knives.
About five of them got down and asked if he were a Tamil. He got down and shouted, “Are you fellows mad?” They went off. This and his experience over the next few days and testimony from JVP officers elsewhere convinced him that the State was the main party to the violence. Following the ban on the JVP he was detained and taken to the CID Building. The reasons for the arrest of JVP-office bearers, Bopage said, was ‘complicated.’ The house of a Tamil DIG, Vamadevan, was burnt during the riots and he had accused the JVP of burning his house. Vamadevan had earlier made a report that the JVP was re-arming, and this had been referred to on JVP platforms. Bopage felt that this was only a pretext. The real target he believed was the election petition against the 1982 Referendum filed by Wijeweera, which had a strong chance of succeeding, since these same charges were later confirmed in the Election Commissioner’s report. Read More
Part four - Sri Lanka’s Black July: The Cover Up
Part five - 30th July 1983: The Second Naxalite Plot
