Sri Lanka’s Black July: Borella, 24th Evening

By Rajan Hoole -July 24, 2013 

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 and Muslims. Several of these have been described in our reports over the years. The Sri Lankan State with its ideology is an institution, which most Sinhalese actively or passively empathised with. The fact that there was no investigation into the violence of July 1983, made it easy for Sinhalese in general to opt for versions that distanced their government and hence themselves from the holocaust. Likewise the Tamils, with the subsequent communal attacks by their militant groups.

Black July 83 - A Tamil boy stripped naked and later beaten to death by Sinhala youth in Boralla bustation | Photo - Chandraguptha Amarasingha

Thus one often hears said about the 1983 violence that it began spontaneously on the evening of 24th July when the bodies of the slain soldiers were brought from Jaffna, after which the Government lost control of the situation – so that the ‘Tamil terrorists’ or simply ‘terrorists’ who ‘brutally’ killed the soldiers in a routine military incident were largely to blame. This pedestrian version, more or less, with the qualification that Tamil civilians too suffered brutal reprisals, has got into several respectable accounts. It is thus very much the official version of the country’s ruling interests. It distances the Government from blame.

A different version of events is held by many Sinhalese who are conscious of the interests of the Sinhalese people. They are keenly aware that the violence did irreparable harm to Sinhalese interests, subjected the Sinhalese people to worldwide obloquy and legitimised the division of the country. Many of them hold the violence to have begun spontaneously, but are clear that the Government which had soldiers on the streets of Colombo every few yards could have stopped the violence if it wanted to. Among this more discerning layer, there was also anger that the main parties, the UNP and the SLFP, which showed no leadership qualities then, had let the Sinhalese down badly. Many of them in the higher levels of society, such as lawyers, professionals and university lecturers, came to have an emotional leaning towards the JVP rebels who made a bid for power during 1988-89.Read More