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SRI LANKA: No Lessons Learnt From 'Black July' of 1983

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 23 2008 (IPS) - On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka there are few signs that any positive lessons have been learnt from the gory events that changed this island nation’s history and sent a once booming economy into a downward trajectory.

Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the think tank Centre for Policy Alternatives and an often-quoted political analyst, says billions of dollars have since been spent on the quarter century of ethnic strife that followed ‘Black July’.

"We are nowhere near a solution than we ever were,’’ he said, adding that the present government does not seem interested in a negotiated settlement.

Most victims from the Tamil minority community are reluctant to speak about the terrible tragedy that befell them on Jul. 24, 1983 and thereafter. "Why talk about the past?" said one elderly Tamil woman when asked to comment.

Widespread riots broke out in Colombo and southern Sri Lanka a day after 13 government soldiers were killed in an ambush by Tamil rebels in the northern city of Tamil-dominated Jaffna. Angry mobs from the majority Sinhalese community retaliated by attacking and killing Tamil residents, raping their women and setting fire to homes and shops. The pogrom followed bouts of anti-Tamil violence in 1958 and 1977.

A Tamil industrialist K. Vignarajah spoke of how his wife, who owned and managed two garment factories that were razed to the ground, was devastated by the events. "Sarada (wife) was shocked and shattered by the events. We lost a house too but thank God nothing happened to us," he said, adding that soon after that the couple and their 10-year-old daughter left for Britain.

"Sri Lanka would have been a paradise and even better than Singapore if not for this conflict," Vignarajah, now an international consultant on garments and a stock market investor, says. "It was the absurdity of chauvinistic politicians who are responsible for this situation. We have many friends amongst the Sinhalese," he added.

Vignarajah’s daughter lives and works in Britain, but he, after spending time in the southern Indian city of Chennai, has returned to Sri Lanka.

Around 1981-82, Sri Lanka – the first South Asia country to liberalise its economy, far ahead of India – had a booming economy and was heading for the kind of prosperity enjoyed by the ‘Asian Tiger’ economies when the conflict reversed the trend.

Will Sri Lanka ever recover from this crisis? Noted peace activist Jehan Perera believes the situation has improved compared to the pre-1983 period as people now freely speak out on Tamil rights and Tamil autonomy. "Unlike earlier there is no animosity by the Sinhalese against the Tamils. Earlier because of the Tamil insurgency (and demands for an independent homeland), many Sinhalese saw the Tamils as their enemy.’’

Perera added that there is a widespread view that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has been leading the war against Colombo to secure a separate homeland in the north and east of the island for the Tamil minority, must be ‘'crushed’'. "This is not an anti-Tamil feeling,’’ he insists.

During the July 1984 riots many Sinhalese residents saved the lives and properties of Tamils from the gangs defying a curfew to maraud and rampage. Some Tamils were sheltered in Sinhalese houses during the violence as the mostly Sinhalese police and military looked on. The estimates of casualties varied from between 400 to 3,000 Tamils dead while more than 18,000 houses and commercial establishments were razed to the ground.

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils fled the country to India, Europe, Australia and Canada while Tamil youth joined various Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE, in droves. The LTTE later emerged as the most ruthless guerrilla group in the world, set up funding and promotion offices overseas and coerced Tamil expatriates to fund their war machine.

Many professionals from other communities have also left the country and still remain out as Sri Lanka struggles to contain a conflict that has cost more than 80,000 lives – including combatants from among the military, the rebels, and civilians – besides untold billions worth of damage and lost opportunities. Tourism, among the country's chief revenue earners, is now struggling to recover while garments exports and remittances from over a million Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East make up for the main earnings now.

Since 1983, the total economic loss, according to some estimates in 1998, is 1.27 times of Sri Lanka's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while a million people have been displaced internally. However, the economy has grown at a creditable five percent on an average annually since 1983 while drawing small levels of foreign investment.

The 33-month-old government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, after a couple of months trying to talk to the LTTE, launched a military offensive two years ago that has seen a great degree of success. The rebels have largely been driven away from the eastern region and have suffered serious reverses in parts of their main stronghold in the north.

Journalists are not permitted into the war zones. The few conducted trips by the military are not enough for an independent assessment of what parts remain under LTTE control or where its reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran operates from. Kilinochchi, the town where the rebels have their official headquarters, is constantly being bombed by government war planes.

"I can't see any peace (in the near term)," says Saravanamuttu, adding that the army commander who said the rebels would be destroyed by the end of 2008 now says it would take the whole of 2009. ‘’Even if the government succeeds in chasing the Tigers from their headquarters, they will go into the jungle and resort to guerrilla warfare as before, unless there is a political settlement."

Perhaps the worst consequence of the protracted conflict has been the rising level lawlessness in society prompted by a sense of impunity that soem say has origins in the fact that none of the perpetrators of the 1983 violence were brought to trial. Human rights violations, by all parties, have steadily increased over the years.

Lately, the number of abductions of civilians – mostly Tamils suspected of being connected to the LTTE – has intensified, while assaults and harassment of journalists, critical of the war, have increased. This has not helped the cause of Tamil-Sinhalese amity.

Clashes between the Tamils and the Sinhalese majority originated with British colonial rulers favouring the Tamils in administrative, educational, and economic situations. Post independence the situation reversed with the majority community ruling the country and cornering plum jobs and the larger chunk of resources. Soon Sinhalese and Tamil sub-nationalism began to grow and became sharply polarised.

"I am not bitter and have no regrets but I feel sad for my country," says Chris Kamalendran, an experienced Tamil journalist and a victim of the riots. Kamalendran, living with his father, mother and other family members in the predominantly Sinhalese town of Homagama, south of Colombo, saw a mob -of mostly neighbours – set fire and loot the family home. "I was angry, hurt and wanted revenge," he recalled, adding that he was restrained by moderate Sinhalese friends.

Kamalendran – like many Tamils and Sinhalese – is desperate for a solution in his lifetime so that "my daughter won't suffer’’. Believing in communal amity, he has married a Sinhalese woman and has a daughter who follows Buddhism, the majority religion. But, he says, the problem will drag on ‘’until a national leader capable of providing a viable political settlement emerges’’.