Black July Anti-Tamil Pogrom #1
On Sunday 23 July, members of the Tamil diaspora community gathered opposite 10 Downing Street, London, to commemorate the beginning of the anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka forty years ago in 1983. During the course of a single week, as many as 5,000 Sri Lankan Tamils were killed and 150,000 more ethnically cleansed.
After independence in 1948, Tamils, who constituted around 25% of the Sri Lankan population were increasingly subjected to restrictions on the Tamil language and increasingly discriminated against in access to university education and employment. As demands for an independent homeland in Tamil majority areas grew, on 23 July the Tamil rebel group, "Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam," ambushed a Sri Lankan army unit, killing 13 soldiers.
In response, the governing United National Party orchestrated a pogrom starting the same day using electoral roll information to locate vulnerable Tamil families. According to a display at Sunday's meeting, attacks that day were targeted on Tamil properties and Tamils in Vehicles who "were stopped to be beaten or killed," while other Tamils faced extrajudicial executions by soldiers and Tamil detainees in prisons were brutally murdered.
Quickly the violence escalated, with the government doing nothing to prevent Sinhalese rioters taking the law into their own hands. During the following week mobs attacked, burned and looted Tamil communities, killing as many as 5,000 and making 150,000 homeless. The Economist reported that "for days the soldiers and policemen were not overwhelmed; they were unengaged or, in some cases, apparently abetting the attackers. Numerous eyewitnesses attest that soldiers and policemen stood by while Colombo burned."
However, the violence against Sri Lanka's population did not end with the Black July pogroms. Between 1983 and 2009, the country was plunged into a devastating civil war, with the United Nations documenting wide-scale war crimes committed by government forces, who continued to receive arms from the British government while British SAS officers, "under the auspices of the private firm of Keeny Meeny Services (KMS) were instrumental in training Sri Lankan troops in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency techniques'', according to Global Security. [1]
Similarly, according to a report in Asia Times, "British pilots were (allegedly) seen flying helicopter gunships and airplanes to bombard and attack innocent Tamil civilians in the Northern Province, especially on the Jaffna peninsula. These British mercenaries were paid a monthly salary of around 2,500 British pounds per person and other fringe benefits...." [2]
An estimated 40,000 Sri Lankans were killed during the 1980s by British armed and trained Sri Lankan security forces, the latter often being a polite technical term for death squads.[3] The supply of weapons however continued, even under Tony Blair's Labour Government.
In 2001, according to the Foreign Office's own report, the British government exported £15.5 million worth of military equipment to Sri Lanka, including "components for sniper rifles... equipment for the use of weapon night sights, flash suppressors, grenade launchers, gun mountings, illuminators, laser range finders, military aero engines... small arms ammunition, sniper rifles... (and) stun grenades."
A recent report by the UN High Commissioner on human rights for Sri Lanka on 25 February 2022, "documents discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities and security forces' targeting of civil society groups, while accountability for past abuses has been blocked." According to Human Rights Watch it shows "the rights situation (in Sri Lanka) in alarming decline and contradicts government claims of improvement."
www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/03/sri-lanka-un-report-describes...
[If anyone kindly uploads this photo to Wikimedia Commons, please attribute and please also use your own description or caption. Thanks.]
Footnotes
1. Global Security cited in T. J. Coles, "Britain's Secret Wars," Clairview Books, 2016, p. 97
2. K. T. Rajasingham, "Sri Lanka: The Untold Story," Asia Times, 26 October 2001.
3. T. J. Coles, Op. Cit, p 98.
Black July Anti-Tamil Pogrom #1
On Sunday 23 July, members of the Tamil diaspora community gathered opposite 10 Downing Street, London, to commemorate the beginning of the anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka forty years ago in 1983. During the course of a single week, as many as 5,000 Sri Lankan Tamils were killed and 150,000 more ethnically cleansed.
After independence in 1948, Tamils, who constituted around 25% of the Sri Lankan population were increasingly subjected to restrictions on the Tamil language and increasingly discriminated against in access to university education and employment. As demands for an independent homeland in Tamil majority areas grew, on 23 July the Tamil rebel group, "Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam," ambushed a Sri Lankan army unit, killing 13 soldiers.
In response, the governing United National Party orchestrated a pogrom starting the same day using electoral roll information to locate vulnerable Tamil families. According to a display at Sunday's meeting, attacks that day were targeted on Tamil properties and Tamils in Vehicles who "were stopped to be beaten or killed," while other Tamils faced extrajudicial executions by soldiers and Tamil detainees in prisons were brutally murdered.
Quickly the violence escalated, with the government doing nothing to prevent Sinhalese rioters taking the law into their own hands. During the following week mobs attacked, burned and looted Tamil communities, killing as many as 5,000 and making 150,000 homeless. The Economist reported that "for days the soldiers and policemen were not overwhelmed; they were unengaged or, in some cases, apparently abetting the attackers. Numerous eyewitnesses attest that soldiers and policemen stood by while Colombo burned."
However, the violence against Sri Lanka's population did not end with the Black July pogroms. Between 1983 and 2009, the country was plunged into a devastating civil war, with the United Nations documenting wide-scale war crimes committed by government forces, who continued to receive arms from the British government while British SAS officers, "under the auspices of the private firm of Keeny Meeny Services (KMS) were instrumental in training Sri Lankan troops in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency techniques'', according to Global Security. [1]
Similarly, according to a report in Asia Times, "British pilots were (allegedly) seen flying helicopter gunships and airplanes to bombard and attack innocent Tamil civilians in the Northern Province, especially on the Jaffna peninsula. These British mercenaries were paid a monthly salary of around 2,500 British pounds per person and other fringe benefits...." [2]
An estimated 40,000 Sri Lankans were killed during the 1980s by British armed and trained Sri Lankan security forces, the latter often being a polite technical term for death squads.[3] The supply of weapons however continued, even under Tony Blair's Labour Government.
In 2001, according to the Foreign Office's own report, the British government exported £15.5 million worth of military equipment to Sri Lanka, including "components for sniper rifles... equipment for the use of weapon night sights, flash suppressors, grenade launchers, gun mountings, illuminators, laser range finders, military aero engines... small arms ammunition, sniper rifles... (and) stun grenades."
A recent report by the UN High Commissioner on human rights for Sri Lanka on 25 February 2022, "documents discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities and security forces' targeting of civil society groups, while accountability for past abuses has been blocked." According to Human Rights Watch it shows "the rights situation (in Sri Lanka) in alarming decline and contradicts government claims of improvement."
www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/03/sri-lanka-un-report-describes...
[If anyone kindly uploads this photo to Wikimedia Commons, please attribute and please also use your own description or caption. Thanks.]
Footnotes
1. Global Security cited in T. J. Coles, "Britain's Secret Wars," Clairview Books, 2016, p. 97
2. K. T. Rajasingham, "Sri Lanka: The Untold Story," Asia Times, 26 October 2001.
3. T. J. Coles, Op. Cit, p 98.