Black July: Planned Violence And Its Significance
Rajan Hoole
Sri Lanka’s Black July – Part 36
In discussing the violence of July 1983, we have adduced four different kinds of testi- mony. The first kind are testimonies consis-tent with the violence having been planned by the Government, but do not imply it, however tantalisingly close to doing so they may seem. That concerning Gunawanse’s role is of this kind. So are Jayewardene’s attitudes to declaring cur- few, the Government’s inaction regarding stop- ping the violence, Jayewardene’s call to the Sin- halese to lay down their arms and so on. Also in this category are the statements of Anandatissa de Alwis.
A second kind points to Government com- plicity in the violence once it started. Testimony of this kind is damagingly plentiful.
A third kind of testimony tells us that the Government was driving towards a violent blow up. A number of statements and actions in the run up to the July violence indicate that the Government’s thinking on the Tamil problem was to place the Law in abeyance and teach the Tamils a lesson. The attack on students at Peradeniya University and Jayewardene’s Daily Telegraph interview belong to this category. It was also the thinking behind the violence of 1977, 1981 and the arson in Jaffna during the 1981 DDC elections. The evidence here is very strong, but it does not imply any systematic organisation.
The fourth kind points to definite evidence of planning. The instances are few but crucial. One is the mobs in Colombo on the 25th going street by street not just with electoral lists, but also processed and assigned lists, certainly pre- pared well in advance by JSS agents in the pro- fessional sectors – e.g. the media. Another is the arrangement of transport and assignment of mobs to other areas where they could not be identified. Then we have important ministers around Colombo – e.g. Lalith Athulathmudali, Mrs. Sunethra Ranasinghe and Ranil Wickremasinghe – not being available to their constituents and perhaps looking over things elsewhere during the violence, and then offer- ing the same truthful but ridiculous excuse that miscreants from elsewhere had invaded their electorate. Such actions did not come from a few hours of planning or from a spontaneous tele- pathic resonance among UNP members. Note also the uniformity of the initial attacks in widely separated areas.
A further important instance of advance planning is to do with the Welikade prison mas- sacres. In the first attack there were on the one hand brutal and merciless attacks on Tamil pris- oners, and on the other, a careful handling, with- out causing hurt to the two senior prison offi- cials who intervened. Elements had been picked in advance and instructed on keeping certain things under control. Further, there is the defi- nite involvement and the key role of Jailor Rogers Jayasekere. Read More
