Genocide '83 - Widespread attacks in Kandy, Badulla

INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA: Genocide '83

Wide spread attacks in Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya, Badulla and elsewhere...

The attacks were not confined to Colombo alone. They spread to Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya, Badulla, Bandarawela, Negombo, and many other areas where Tamils lived amongst a predominant Sinhala population.

"Violence also erupted in places such as Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya, Badulla and Bandarawela. On each of these occasions it followed a similar pattern. The incidents were started off by people coming in from outside the districts, lists were used to identify Tamil property and systematic attacks were made on it: the local people were then encouraged to follow with further depredations..." (Patricia Hyndman, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of New South Wales and Secretary, Lawasia Human Rights Standing Committee - Report on the Communal Violence in Sri Lanka, July 1983)

''(A British tourist) said: 'Last Wednesday a taxi driver took us into Negombo... and the whole town was smouldering. All the Tamil property in the centre of the town had been burnt down. The cigarette factory had gone up together with a cinema and a garage. There was smoke everywhere and the whole area was a burnt out mess. ..there was no sign of any Tamil anywhere. We were told that Tamils were being grabbed off buses by groups of people wielding iron bars. We also saw young Sinhalese stopping cars to siphon out the petrol so they could use it to start fires.'.. '' (London Times, 2 August 1983)

''...the looting burning and killing that began last week end in Colombo spread to the cities of Kandy and Gampola in the central hills... In Kandy, 62 miles northeast of Colombo, mobs burned and sacked at least 55 stores owned by members of the Tamil minority in attacks that began Tuesday night and continued Wednesday...'' (The Guardian, 28 July 1983)

"The town (Kandy), which lies at the centre of the tea and rubber plantations of the central highland area of Sri Lanka has witnessed rioting and fire bombing against Tamil owned homes and businesses for the past four nights. And the presence of the rows of burnt out shops and of the 6000 Tamils in five temporary camps shows that the communal terror which has been unleashed in Sri Lanka is much more widespread than at first reported. The testimony of similar outrages in the villages in the steep sided hills and dense green country around Kandy reinforces that impression...The Sinhala District Inspector General of Police for the central range said: 'We usually expect what we call the soda bottle effect in these things. A sudden foaming up and then going flat but that hasn't happened yet.'... Two unidentified bodies were fished from the artificial lake in the centre of Kandy and a third body was found on a railway line close to the town. The body, which had been cut and chopped, was evidently thrown from a train..." (The London Times, 30 July 1983)

"...News of the extent of the violence directed at the centre of Nuwara Eliya by Sinhala mobs was somehow contained by the town's remoteness... But no point in Colombo or the surrounding suburbs matches the mess... Whole blocks have been reduced to charred rubble. Only a handful of provision shops belonging to Sinhala traders remained... Remarkably, only sixteen people died in the inferno..." (London Daily Telegraph, 6 August 1983)

''Two weeks ago (Nuwara Eliya).. became the focal point for much of the communal violence that has engulfed the island... We had already been in Sri Lanka for 10 days... before the events of 29 July. We had started in Colombo; we then fled to Kandy to escape the violence; when it followed us there we moved to Nuwara Eliya. Yet subsequent reports confirmed that the damage done to Nuwara Eliya was at least the equal of anything experienced elsewhere.. By dusk on Friday 29 July, not one building in the central street was left standing; fire had spread to the hills too, engulfing shops, homes and buses...''(Peter Hartnell, New Statesman, 12 August 1983)

''In the relatively small town of Lunugala in the Badulla District, 67 houses, 35 business establishments and two vehicles belonging to Tamils were burnt. A leading businessman and a nun were murdered.. In Badulla itself, according to a report in Virakesari of 1 October 1983, quoting the government agent, 127 houses, 252 shops, four Hindu temples, four printing presses, two cinemas, one tavern, three Tamil schools, 79 vehicles and a rural bank were destroyed. There were 20 murders. In the nearby small town of Passara, in the sam district, 63 houses, 21 shops, 16 vehicles and printing press were burnt and destroyed. There were two murders...'' (N.Shanmugathasan,Sri Lanka: Racism and the Authoritarian State - Race and Class, Volume XXVI, A.Sivanandan and Hazel Waters, Institute of Race Relations, London)

''Holiday makers who returned to Dusseldorf said hundreds of Tamils had been murdered and even their hotel waiter told them proudly, 'we have killed several of them." A business consultant said a dozen houses had been burned down near the popular seaside resort of Bentota, among them the local chemist shop...''(Oslo Report dateline 29 July 1983 in Madras Hindu)

''Fearing adverse international reaction to photographs and TV footage depicting the aftermath of the violence, the authorities yesterday imposed strict censorship on all still and moving pictures.'' (London Daily Telegraph, 2 August 1983)

''...the latest incident to be reported took place (in Badulla).. The survivor's account was given by Mrs.Sivamany Ganesan, aged 36, a mother of three children who belonged to one of two Tamil families attacked. Mrs.Ganesan said that she was a weaving teacher, married to a used car salesman, living with her family atMuthieyangama Road, Badulla, a well to do street which included three Tamil homes. At about 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 27, a crowd gathered outside a bus depot 100 yards away, attacking passing vehicles. She said that her family telephoned the police to evacuate them but they did not come. The crowd then began to attack the home of a neighbour, Mr.Ramanathan, who had a shotgun and who fired a single round into the air through a window to try to frighten them away. The army then arrived.. and took up positions behind the crowd which began the attack again...
Mrs.Ganesan said that a son of Mr.Ramanathan, aged about 15, climbed onto the roof of their house... and was shot by a soldier from the street and fell to the ground. She fled to her aunt's house nearby with her children, hiding with them in the bathroom. She heard firing and then an explosion. They ran out of the bathroom to find that the house was on fire... On the main road in front of Mr.Ramanathan's house there was a pile of bodies including those of her husband, brother in law, father in law and her sister in law's husband... her husbands intestines (were) falling out and his head staved in... The Ramanathan menfolk had been hacked and beaten to death by the crowd she said... Diesel oil was then poured over three lorries, a van and a motorcycle parked around the house. A brand was lighted and handed to Mr.Ramanathan's daughter who was made to set... the vehicles on fire...'' (David Beresford reporting in the Guardian, 7 August 1983) ...continued....