Cold Open

It’s 2:00 A.M. on July 24th, 1983, on a country road on the Jaffna Peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.

A young man and two friends cycle through the dark night. The air is warm and still, and their wheels whisper over the road as they talk and joke.

The three men are Tamils, part of a minority ethnic group that makes up around a fifth of the Sri Lankan population. There have long been tensions between the Tamils and the national government, which is dominated by the Sinhalese ethnic majority. But up here, on the Jaffna Peninsula, the local population is overwhelmingly Tamil, and the three young men feel at ease as they ride through the night.

But then they hear the sound of an engine idling up ahead. Squinting, the young man can just make out the shape of a minivan stopping at the junction ahead.

He frowns in annoyance. The minivan’s headlights are off, and he’s lucky he heard it; otherwise, there could have been an accident.

The three men slow down to cross the junction. But as they do, the minivan’s headlights suddenly switch on.

The young man pulls on the brakes and turns his head away from the blinding light, and when he looks back, he can see men emerging from the van, wearing military uniforms.

And pulling out their rifles.

The young man calls out a warning to his friends and starts pedaling away.

But gunfire cracks through the night.

The cyclist feels something strike his chest. He gasps for breath, but keeps going. He tells himself not to stop, not to look back. He can feel blood dripping down his chest, onto his knees and feet as he pedals. But he dare not stop.

He doesn’t know what’s happened to his friends. He can’t see them. He can’t go looking for them. All he can do is keep riding. And hope the soldiers don’t give chase.

This young cyclist and his two friends survive their encounter with the government soldiers.

But many other Tamils won’t be so lucky. All across Sri Lanka, families will wake to the sounds of flames and gunfire. Hundreds will be killed, and thousands more displaced in a week of violence that will later become known as “Black July.” The divisions in Sri Lanka have deep roots. But the gulf between its people will only widen after the horrors that began on July 24th, 1983.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is July 24th, 1983: Sri Lanka’s Black July.

Act One: Bloody Revenge

It’s late on July 23rd, 1983, on the Jaffna Peninsula, a few hours before Sinhalese soldiers try to kill three Tamil cyclists.

On a dark roadside, Lieutenant Sellakili watches as his men carefully unload landmines from the back of a truck. Sellakili is a commander in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Tigers are a militant separatist group that’s been fighting against the Sri Lankan government for the past seven years. They began with political assassinations and targeted, small-scale attacks, but now they are taking the fight to the Sri Lankan army itself.

Sellakili’s men check the road is clear and then carry the landmines over to a worksite. New telephone cables are being installed, and workmen have dug up the asphalt in several places. They left hours ago, though, so the fighters drag the safety barriers out of the way, then carefully lower the explosives into the holes.

In the darkness, the landmines are totally invisible.

Sellakili’s men then trail a wire from the explosives to a detonator hidden nearby. One of them will stay there, while Sellakili and the rest of his fighters replace the safety barriers and retreat into the dense forest.

Hiding there among the trees, they ready two machine guns and aim them at the road. Scanning the darkness, Sellakili calls for silence. Everyone is still. There’s just the chirping of insects and a distant animal call. Until, from somewhere in the distance, comes the low rumble of engines, and headlights cresting the horizon.

It’s a Sri Lankan Army patrol, and it’s heading straight for Sellakili’s ambush. His men brace themselves. The lead jeep slows down to pass the worksite, and as it drives past the landmines, they detonate, and a giant explosion lights up the night.

Sellakili then gives the signal to his men to open fire. The Tamil separatists are fighting what they see as persecution by the Sinhalese majority. Ever since Sri Lanka gained its independence from Britain in 1948, there’s been a powerful section of society that has wanted to rid the country of its Tamil minority.

Their bitter resentment stems in part from the colonial era. When the British arrived in Sri Lanka at the end of the 18th century, they found the island was divided between two very different peoples. The Tamils dominated the north and east and the Sinhalese the south and west. But the British had no interest in their rivalries or cultural differences. Once they took control of the entire island, they ruled Sri Lanka as a single entity.

But in the eyes of many Sinhalese, the colonial administration favored the Tamils. So, once the British left, some wanted the Tamils to go too, and they set about making life unpleasant for them. In 1956, the Sinhala Only Act was passed. This made Sinhala the sole official language of Sri Lanka. And more discrimination soon followed. Many Indian Tamils had been brought to the island by the British to work on plantations, and new laws were introduced targeting this minority. By the mid-1960s, almost a million of them had been stripped of their citizenship and made officially stateless. Hundreds of thousands of them were eventually forced to leave.

In the face of this growing oppression, the Tamils began to fight back. But the rise of groups like the Liberation Tigers has provoked an even greater crackdown by the authorities. Now the violence is spiraling, with no end in sight.

And this most recent ambush by the Liberation Tigers isn’t helping. Soon after the attack, Sri Lankan Army Brigadier Lyle Balthazaar arrives on the scene. He finds thirteen soldiers dead, and two more are seriously wounded.

Many of those killed are young men just out of training—Balthazaar knew them all. But he takes some comfort knowing that they did not give up their lives easily. They fought back, and in the firefight that followed, they even managed to kill the notorious Tamil commander, Lieutenant Sellakili.

That’s not enough for Balthazaar’s men, though. They still want revenge. And with the militants having disappeared into the jungle, they turn their rage on the local civilian population.

They target anyone they see on the roads. They shoot at three young cyclists. They run over a security guard who was on his way to work. And they spray bullets at random passing vehicles. Later in the day, the soldiers then descend on the small town of Tirunelveli and go from door to door, executing civilians in their homes. In total, over 50 people are killed, and many more are wounded.

But the bloodshed will not be limited to the north. Riots will soon break out all over Sri Lanka, from its largest city of Colombo to the smallest rural districts. And, with the violence apparently encouraged by the authorities, it won’t just be armed soldiers committing atrocities. This time, it will be ordinary citizens with blood on their hands.

Act Two: No Protection

It’s July 27th, 1983, on a bus in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, three days after violence erupted in the country. Chandraguptha Thenuwara holds onto his pencil and paper and braces himself against the side of the bus as it swings around a corner.

The road straightens out, and Chandraguptha dares to put his pencil back to the page. With a few precise strokes, he sketches the profile of the young man sitting across from him. When he’s this focused on his work, the 23-year-old artist feels like he’s in a different world. But then the bus driver suddenly brakes, and Chandraguptha’s pencil skids over the page. He looks up as the door to the bus opens and two uniformed men climb on board. The previous hum of conversation among the passengers immediately fades. Chandraguptha slides his paper away and lowers his eyes.

The two men then march down the aisle, examining the faces of each passenger for a few seconds before moving on to the next, searching for Tamils.

After the ambush on the army patrol in Jaffna, the bodies of the dead soldiers weren’t handed over to their loved ones for a traditional burial. Instead, the Sri Lankan government declared the men would be laid to rest with full military honors in the national cemetery in Colombo. The president and his cabinet were set to attend, and thousands gathered to pay their respects. But when the bodies were delayed, the crowd grew restless. They began calling for the dead men to be delivered to their families. And with unrest brewing, the government decided to cancel the funeral. They made an announcement that when the bodies did finally arrive, they would be handed over to the grieving families after all.

This dispersed the mourners. But emotions were still running high, and a section of the crowd started taking out their anger and frustration on the local Tamil population. And once this violence began, it quickly spread. Thousands took to the streets in Colombo, and days later, towns and cities across Sri Lanka are still burning.

Sinhalese mobs move through the streets, armed with lists of Tamil-owned houses and businesses. When they find them, they set the buildings alight with gasoline, not caring whether men, women or children are inside.

These fires have brought plenty of police officers, firefighters and army soldiers to the streets. But they do nothing to help. In some places, they just fail to intervene. In others, security personnel join the violence themselves.

So sitting in his seat on the bus, Chandraguptha is tense; he isn’t scared for himself. He’s Sinhalese, just like the men in uniform.

But the young man he’s been sketching looks Tamil. The soldiers stop in front of the man and demand he say a few words in Sinhalese—words that are notoriously difficult for Tamils to pronounce. But the young passenger is so afraid that he can barely speak at all. That’s confirmation enough for the men in uniform. The soldiers pull him roughly to his feet, then shove him down the aisle and off the bus.

No one intervenes. There’s nothing Chandraguptha can do. And as the bus moves off again, the passengers remain silent. Chandraguptha cranes his neck, looking out the window for the passenger he was drawing. But on the street behind, a large and angry crowd has already gathered, and the young Tamil is nowhere to be seen. Chandraguptha can only imagine what must have happened to him, and he feels sick to his stomach at what's being done.

The anti-Tamil pogroms continue for an entire week. In this “Black July,” Tamil civilians young and old are murdered in cold blood. Only a minority of Sinhalese actually join the carnage—others watch on in horror, or do whatever they can to help, offering their neighbors sanctuary and protecting them from the roving mobs. But the death toll still runs into the thousands.

As unrest tears the country apart, the President of Sri Lanka will stay silent for days. And when he finally does speak, his words will do little to quell the flames of hatred. Instead, he will lay the blame for the riots solely on the Tamil people—stoking yet more division in Sri Lanka that will soon lead to outright civil war.

Act Three: Hollow Words

It’s July 28th, 1983, in the Presidential Palace in Colombo, Sri Lanka, four days after the beginning of the Black July pogroms.

From the safety of his residence, the 76-year-old President of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, prepares to address the nation. He sits at a desk in front of a television camera and rereads his notes one last time. Then the producer counts him in, and Jayewardene begins.

This is the first time he's spoken publicly since the violence began. And although thousands of Tamil families are grieving their lost loved ones, Jayewardene doesn’t try to ease tensions or promise justice for those killed. Instead, he blames the victims. The president claims it is Tamil separatism that has brought about the chaos spreading throughout Sri Lanka. And his government will respond decisively.

He intends to introduce a constitutional amendment to strip civic rights from anyone who advocates an independent Tamil state. So still reeling from the physical violence of the recent riots, the Tamil people now face a new legal onslaught as well.

And as the years go by, the rift in Sri Lankan society will only widen. Tens of thousands of Tamils will leave their homes in cities like Colombo and head north, hoping to find sanctuary in the Tamil -majority regions of Sri Lanka. Others will be radicalized by the atrocities they witnessed and join the militias fighting the government. This separatist guerrilla campaign will turn into a full-fledged civil war. And it will last for 26 years.

Only in May 2009 will the conflict come to an end with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Systemic discrimination against the Tamil people will continue. And no senior officials in the Sri Lankan government will ever be held accountable for the Black July massacres that began on July 24th, 1983.

Outro

Next on History Daily. July 27th, 1890. After years of struggles with his mental health, Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in the chest.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.