Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 2:03 am Post subject: Peace for All
First of all, all those people who act like they know thier stuff please stop writing. Kiribath you say how Sri Lanka gave shelter to the tamil people, how Tamil are slaves, and how we were given recognition by by sinhalese and MUSLIMs. You really dont know your information. First of all Muslims speak tamil. Sinhalese like Tamils and Muslims migrated to Sri Lanka. The real inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the ancestors of the Veddas, aboriginal people now numbering around 3,000 and living in remote mountain areas.
Buddhism arrived from the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BC. The country's written history is almost exclusively sinhalese-Buddhist, but since the earliest times the presence of Tamil-speaking people in the island is mentioned in many chronicles.
In 1505 the Portuguese arrived on the island, and colonial rule began. At that point the island consisted of three autonomous kingdoms, namely Yarlpanam (ruled by the Tamil,Anglicised Jaffna) in the north, Kandy in the central hills (ruled by the sinhalese) and Kotte at the Western coast. The island is the home of two main traditional cultures: the sinhalese (centred in the ancient cities of Kandy and Anaradhapura) and the Tamil (centred in the city of Jaffna, where the Tamil public library was destroyed in 1983 by the Sri Lankan Army, was the world centre of Tamil archives and scholarship).
There were numerous reports of torture by police, as well as reports of death in police custody. Some torture victims seeking redress in the courts were reportedly put under pressure to withdraw their cases. Among them was Gerald Perera( a sinhalese), a torture victim due to give evidence against seven police officers in the High Court, who was shot on 21 November and subsequently died.
The Sri Lankan Government even passed laws to discriminate the Tamils. In 1972, Mrs. Bandaranaike passed a law that made forced Tamil students from the North to obtain higher marks than the Sinhalese to enter the University.
The worst massacre started on July 23, 1983. Where the LTTE attacked and killed 13 soldiers, after the governments dispute with Tamils and the replacement of Singhalese settlers in Tamil owned land for Votes in favour for the Government’s Party. It started as a spontaneous reaction by Sinhalese mobs who gathered at the Kannate Cemetery where the bodies of the soldiers were to be buried, it was apparent that elements associated with the ruling Sinhalese-dominated United National Party (UNP) got involved to organize the pogrom[6]
Very soon mobs were looking for Tamil residents of the then capital city Colombo using the official electoral lists. Many rioters were also brought from outlying areas into Tamil commercial and ethnic neighborhoods in state-owned buses.
During most of the time of the riots, the Sinhalese-dominated police and military stood by doing nothing.
It was alleged that decisions were taken at the highest political level namely by the then president Junius Richard Jayawardene to teach a lesson to the minority Tamils. It was carried out by his hard-line and rightwing ministers such as Cyril Mathew and local thugs who
Tamils were killed, tens of thousands of houses were destroyed and a wave of Sri Lankan Tamils sought refugee in other countries.
The murder, rape and general destruction of property was well organized. Mobs armed with petrol were seen to stop passing motorists at critical street junctions and after ascertaining the ethnic identity of the driver and or passengers, setting alight the vehicle with the driver and the passenger trapped within the vehicle.
Mobs were seen stopping buses to identify Tamil passengers and subsequently these passengers were knifed or clubbed to death or burned alive.. One Norwegian tourist saw a mob set fire to a minibus with 20 people inside, killing them all.
Mobs were recorded moving from house to house and after looting the contents, killing the occupants if found and raping women where possible and then burning the houses down.
The estimates of casualties vary, the government stated just 250 Tamils were killed but various NGOs and international agencies estimate it from 1000 to 3000 people suspected of being Sri Lankan Tamils or Hill Country Tamils were believed have been killed in the riots. 53 political prisoners alone were killed in the Welikade prison massacre
More than 18,000 houses and numerous commercial establishments were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Tamils fled the country to India, Europe and Canada. Tens of thousands of Tamil youths joined the LTTE after seeing the cruelty of the Sri Lankan Government.
I’m a Singhalese myself. It is not fair to have ignited the Flame and to say it was the Tamils who started it all. The people of Sri Lanka are very nice and courteous it is the Government and the Buddhist Clergy who have the propaganda to kill the Tamils to have greater power over the country. To see more about this incident go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_July. There are killings even till this day.
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