The Brutalisation Of The Tamil Polity
Rajan Hoole
The Indo-Lanka Accord and Sri Lanka’s Fault Lines: July 1987 – Part – 7
With the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, Citizens’ Committees in the North-East were quick to seek the assistance of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) regarding the resettlement of Tamils in areas from which they were displaced by the combined action of the Sri Lankan Forces and politically supported mobs. Trincomalee District was one area where this problem was extremely grave as testified by numerous ruined dwellings. The IPKF delegated senior officers to study this problem and suggest remedial measures. Being new to this situation, it was bound to take them time.
In the meantime, the situation in Trincomalee was explosive. The extent to which a combination of external aggression and internal degeneration had brutalised the Tamils is revealed in an incident taken from our Special Report No.8, Trincomalee: State Ideology and the Politics of Fear, which recalled in its quality the atrocities suffered by the Tamils in July 1983:
“A combination of events led to the first attack by Tamil hoodlum elements against Sinhalese civilians in early October 1987. The Indian Peace Keeping Force had arrived in early August. Tamil militant groups opposed to the LTTE had returned to town and there was a new assertiveness on the part of the Tamils. There was also growing friction between the Indian Army and the Sri Lankan Army which took being confined to barracks very badly. On one occasion a Sri Lankan Army vehicle speeding past the Town Hall opened fire at a group of Indian Army men and local civilians which included Brigadier Joshi. About this time around 2000 Tamil youths who had been confined at Boosa without charges were shipped to Trincomalee and released under terms of the Indo-Lanka Accord. Read More
*From Rajan Hoole‘s “Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power - Myth, Decadence and Murder”. Thanks to Rajan for giving us permission to republish. To read earlier parts click here
