Historic Exodus Out Of Jaffna
Rev. Dr S.J. Emmanuel
“This mass exodus of half a million Tamils proclaims to the world that our people are determined to live as free beings with dignity and prepared to face any form of suffering to be independent rather than subjecting themselves to domination by the aggressor’’ – (LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on 27th Nov.1995)
The night of Monday October 30, 1995 was a black night in the entire history of the age-old City of Jaffna. Never has history witnessed such an exodus of fear and panic stricken people screaming and squeezing themselves out of the narrow roads and lanes of Jaffna. Nearly half a million population in and around the Town was literally on the roads in pouring rain inching its way out of the densely populated town into the sparsely populated and ill-equipped suburban villages of the southern Peninsula. For each of these 500,000 it was a flight for survival.
1. Tamils fleeing away from Sinhala “liberators’’
In 1987 when the then Minister for Security Mr. Lalith Athulathmudali suggested that the people of Jaffna move to the South of Vavuniya so that the Sri Lankan Army could take on the LTTE in a straight war, the Tamil population laughed it off as a joke. It was such an impossible and ridiculous task to evacuate the large population of the once second largest town of Sri Lanka. But this “impossible and ridiculous’’ scenario was forced on us and was happening before our very eyes in 1995.
The fear and the horror the Tamils have for the Sri Lankan Forces are well known. The Colombo Government kept proclaiming loudly to the world outside that the State Forces were moving into Jaffna “to liberate the Tamils from the clutches of the LTTE’’. But the bitter lessons, the Tamils had learnt for four decades at the hands of the Forces, were never to be forgotten. Hence at every military operation the fear-filled Tamils were fleeing with all their might away from an advancing army as if all hell had been let loose on them! The Riviresa Operation to capture Jaffna and the consequent exodus out of Jaffna was no exception.
Those who sat in authority in Colombo continue to think that their army is disciplined and courteous. This may be true to a certain extent in the South where an almost hundred percent Sinhala army moves at ease among its own people. But when the same army is among those whom they consider as potential terrorists, if not LTTErs, their behaviour is charged with fear and anger reaching a heightened level of state terrorism. The attitude of a nearly one hundred percent Sinhala Army to the exclusion of Tamils has been an important factor in the escalation of anti-Tamil operations of the army. Even the break down of the cessation of hostilities on the 19th April 1995 many Tamils know, was largely due, to the Army being unwilling to implement or give in to the decisions of the Government
Hence on the whole, the Tamil experience of Sinhala army during the last few decades was never a fearless one, but one fraught with unforgettable incidents of death, disappearance, destruction, loot, rape and bribery. And these hard learnt lessons of bitter experience cannot be easily erased off from the Tamil mind.
