Victims of Black July and Easter Sunday await justice

As the month of July 2025 draws to a close, it is a good time to reminisce on the events of July 1983, which led to the coining of the term ‘Black July’ in our country. Black July marked a week-long attack on the Tamil people of our country, by Sinhalese mobs encouraged to attack the community by the government of the time.

The attacks were brutal, planned and supported by the police and armed forces who remained indifferent to the mayhem being unleashed on unarmed and innocent Tamil civilians. The ‘cause’ behind these despicable acts was the ambush and killing of 13 army personnel by the LTTE. In retaliation, the military killed around 60 civilian Tamils including a busload of Tamils travelling from Colombo to Jaffna that day.

Subsequently, mobs often led by government politicians and even Ministers of state, systematically targeted Tamil households and businesses in Colombo and elsewhere in the country. Looting, burning, destroying properties, and inflicting violence on Tamils civilians in all parts of the country was the order of the day.

No serious enquiry was initiated into the killings committed on  July 23rd or those which continued for a week. Nor has anyone been held responsible for the killing of Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada prison during that horror-filled week.

What was perhaps the bitterest pill to swallow,  was when the President of the country –JR Jayawardene –- went on record saying Tamils needed to be taught a lesson.

Even today, over 40 years after the events of Black July, that week’s death toll remains uncertain. While government claimed around 300 were killed, credible estimates put the figure at around 3,000 or more, which included the planned, cold-blooded killing of Tamil political prisoners in the Welikada prison.

The state-sponsored attack on the Tamil community, is looked on as the watershed moment which saw the commencement of the nearly three-decade long ethnic war.

No names of ‘master minds’ behind the killings of July 1983 have been revealed as yet. Nearly 70,000 or more Tamil civilians were killed during this 3-decade-long civil war yet. The economic damage to the Tamil community has not been estimated either, or compensated. 

However, much water has flowed under the bridge since those dark days. The war ended in May 2009 and the northern and eastern provincial councils have been controlled by regional Tamil political parties. Unfortunately, rather than finding solutions to the pressing problems of the affected people, these political parties wasted time and energy on fighting among themselves.

Not surprisingly at the presidential, general and local government elections in 2023 and 2024, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party scored historic victories in the Tamil-dominated northern province of Jaffna. The President’s National People’s Power (NPP) emerged as the largest single party in the cultural capital of the minority Tamils.

The traditional parties were deeply divided and the victory for the NPP in Jaffna marked the first win by a southern party in the region. Since gaining independence in 1948, no other southern party has politically dominated the north.

After its electoral victory in the north, the NPP-led regime has begun taking up particular demands of the northern people. One of the main demands has been that of the ‘Mothers Front’ demanding information on forcibly disappeared persons. The most recent excavations at the Chemmani mass grave sites has revealed up to 90 bodies.

This a good beginning. But the victims of Black July still cry for justice. Around 3,000 or more innocent civilian Tamils died as a result of the then government-sponsored attacks. The masterminds behind those attacks have not been revealed. Neither have rabble rousers and killers been officially named. 

Until the crimes committed during Black July are inquired into, and those behind it exposed and punished, our country will continue to be vilified both here and at various international fora. As a country, we need to bring closure to this dark period in our history.

We as a country have not exposed the criminals behind Black July even after forty years. The investigations into the Easter Sunday killings too, are yet to be concluded satisfactorily. It is time these grave crimes were brought to closure and our country’s name redeemed.