Sri Lanka’s Black July: The Cover Up
Part 4 -
Rajan Hoole
The first comment on the violence came from cabinet spokesman Anandatissa de Alwis after the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday (27th) morning. In speaking to the Press, few deaths were admitted but there was no expression of concern for the victims. Jayewardene’s speech was broadcast to the nation in the night of 28th July. Jayewardene’s speech contained signs of his vacillations during the foregoing weeks. Had Jayewardene been firm and steady, one would have expected him to have followed de Alwis and blamed the violence on an insidious section of the opposition. He could, in addition, have said a word of comfort to the Tamils, claimed that the Government had got the situation under control, made ritual promises about bringing the offenders to book and tried to look good. But on the contrary, Jayewardene was feeling very insecure. The burden of his speech was the appeasement of the Sinhalese: “Because of this violence by terrorists, the Sinhala people themselves have reacted … the time has now come to accede to the clamour and national request of the Sinhalese people… [other than through bringing legislation to deprive those in positions of influence who campaign for separation of their civic rights, we cannot see] any other way by which we can appease the natural desire and request of the Sinhalese people to prevent the country being divided…” (T.D.S.A. Dissanayaka)
By Rajan Hoole - Jayewardene’s failure to declare curfew thus appears in an appropriate setting. About 1.30 A.M. this same witness from the Left party saw the walls of TULF president M. Sivasithamparam’s house, which was on fire, collapsing to the ground. A little over a week later, this witness was placed under arrest along with other members [...]
By Rajan Hoole - As indicated above, there are different versions and impressions about what happened at Kanatte on the 24th evening. We give below crucial pieces of testimony, which help to fill some glaring gaps. The first is an eyewitness account by a responsible member of the Ceylon Mercantile Union and is extracted from a statement [...]
By Rajan Hoole – Most people hate to see themselves as murderers. This influences the manner in which they perceive public and private tragedies, and memory often rejects the unpleasant and sanitises the true nature of the event. So it happened with Tamils in the way they sanitised and rationalised instances of Tamil violence against Sinhalese [...]
