The month of July has had an uncanny relationship with landmark events in recent Sri Lankan history. The latest took place only last year. A cataclysmic mass movement (“Aragalaya”) resulted in an elected President fleeing the country and being replaced in an unprecedented manner by one whose party had been comprehensively defeated in the preceding parliamentary elections.
However, the truly epoch-making series of events took place way back in July 1983.
The July 83 anti-Tamil riots ripped Sri Lanka apart. They triggered the mass exodus of Tamils who came back to haunt Sri Lanka as the formidable “Tamil Diaspora”. The riots led to Indian political and military intervention. But most importantly, the riots gave birth to Tamil terrorism and a full-scale war for 26 years.
Sharvananda Commission
In 2001, eight years after the riots, President Chandrika Kumaratunga set up a three-man commission to go into the causes of violence in Sri Lanka between 1981 and 1984. Headed by S. Sharvananda, the commission had S.S.Sahabandu and M.M.Zuhair as its other members.
The commission reported that the violations of human rights directed against the Tamils were “unquestionably the worst in Sri Lanka’s modern history.”
“The killings, torture and harassment of unarmed Tamils went hand in glove with the more widespread destruction of and damage to Tamil homes, businesses and industries. Over 75,000 Tamils in Colombo alone and nearly 100,000 in all, were temporarily located in nearly 27 refugee camps. Refugees in large numbers were sent to the North by ships since the government had failed to stop the violence which raged for a period of ten days.”
On the death toll, the report noted that the government acknowledged 350 dead even as the Tamils claimed over a thousand dead. The toll included 51 killed in the North by the army on July 24, the 35 Tamil prisoners killed by fellow prisoners in Welikade on July 25 and another 18 prisoners killed on July 27.
More than 18,000 houses and numerous commercial establishments were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Tamils fled the country “though many Sinhalese and Muslims courageously sheltered Tamils against the politically-backed hoodlums,” the report noted.
The pogrom was triggered by the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Tirunelveli (Jaffna) on July 23.
But trouble was brewing even before July 23. The Sharvananda report quotes President J.R.Jayewardene’s telling the London-based Daily Telegraph of July 12: “I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now. Now we can’t think of them. Not about their lives or their opinion about us on terrorist issues. We are going to deal with them ourselves, without any quarter being given”.
Civil servant Devanesan Nesiah said in an article in Groundviews in July 2013, that the regulation permitting the police to get rid of bodies without a judicial inquiry was extended island-wide with effect from July 18, well before the commencement of the pogrom.
On July 28 in the midst of rioting, President Jayewardene appealed for calm over television, but he had no message for the victims or apologies, the Sharvananda noted.
First Suicide Bombing
On July 5, 1987, Sri Lanka saw its first suicide bombing. Vallipuram Vasanthan alias Capt.Miller, an LTTE cadre, drove a truck laden with explosives into an army camp in Nelliady (Jaffna) killing 40 soldiers. This day was observed every year as ‘Black Tiger Day’ by the LTTE till its decimation in 2009. Between 1987 and 2008, 356 called ‘Black Tigers’, had laid down their lives in suicide missions.
The India-Sri Lanka Accord was signed by President Jayewardene and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on July 29, 1987. It aimed at ending the fighting between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE and laying the foundation for the devolution of power to the provinces, principally to the Tamil-speaking North and East.
But the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led an agitation and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) took to violence against the Indian intervention. On July 30, Rajiv Gandhi was hit on the neck by a naval rating Wijemuni Vijitha Rohana de Silva who was participating in the Guard of Honour. He took a swipe at the Indian leader’s head with his rifle butt, but only managed to graze his neck.
Rohana de Silva faced a Court Martial that charged him with attempted murder, but his defence team, made up of top lawyers like Sarath Wijesinghe, Susil Premajayantha, Stanley Thilakaratne and Nalin Laduwahetty, argued that he was not aiming to kill Rajiv Gandhi since he did not stab him with the bayonet affixed to his rifle but only hit him with the butt.
The court martial found him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to six years in prison. But he was pardoned by President R. Premadasa two and a half years into his prison term. Subsequently, he became a graduate, a professional astrologer and a seller of Buddhist and Hindu religious videos. He even contested the 2000 general election as a “Sinhala Urumaya” candidate.
On July 18, 1996, the Mullaitivu army base in the North was overrun by the LTTE, killing 1,400 Sri Lankan troops. This was a major blow to the army which had wrested Jaffna from the LTTE only a year earlier. On July 24, 1996, bombs placed by the LTTE in four railway carriages in Dehiwela killed 64 and injured 400.
The next major LTTE strike was at the Bandaranaike International Airport cum air force base at Katunayake on July 24, 2001. Fourteen LTTE Black Tiger cadres destroyed or damaged 26 military aircraft including jet fighters and choppers. Parked Airbus civilian aircraft were also damaged causing a loss of US$ 350 million. Tourism caved in and the GDP growth became negative as a result of the attack on the country’s only international airport.
On July 29, 2017, a controversial agreement was signed by Sri Lanka and China with the former leasing out Hambantota port for 99 years to a Chinese company for US$ 1.1 billion. India and the West harboured apprehensions about the use of the port by China for its military expansion, though the Lankans and the Chinese insisted that it would be a commercial port.
Exit of Gotabaya
The dramatic and ignominious end of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Presidency took place in July 2022. President Gotabaya would go down in history as the first Sri Lankan Head of State and government to flee from the country as a result of a public uprising.
His mismanagement of the COVID-hit Sri Lankan economy made Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ambition of opening “Vistas of Prosperity” for Sri Lankans, a tragic farce. In July 2022 the offices and residences of the President and the Prime Minister were stormed and occupied by mobs. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s personal residence, housing thousands of books and works of art, was burnt to ashes by a mindless rabble.
President Gotabaya had a tough time getting out of the country as the airport and airline staff did not allow him to take a flight. He had to be flown to Maldives secretly by an Air Force plane. With the Maldives allowing him to land only as a transit passenger, he flew to Singapore by the next available flight. But even Singapore allowed him only a temporary sojourn. On July 13, he sent in his resignation by email.
July 2022 also saw Ranil Wickremesinghe becoming President, not by a popular vote but by a vote of parliament in which his party had no elected member. Wickremesinghe had been appointed Prime Minister by President Gotabaya in May following the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Wickremesinghe became Acting President on July 13 and was elected President by parliament on July 21, bringing the curtains down on the most unusual political turmoil in Sri Lanka in recent times.
By P.K. Balachandran/Daily Mirror