The Secretary General of the Tamil United Liberation Front and Leader of the Opposition, Appapillai Amirthalingam wrote to Sri Lanka President J.R.Jayawardene on 10th August, 1983. The text of the letter read:
His Excellency J.R. Jayawardene Esqr.
President, Colombo.
Your Excellency,
Since Your Excellency was elected to power in July, 1977 I have had occasion to write several letters to place before you various problems affecting the Tamil people. My colleagues and I have met Your Excellency and your ministers on numerous occasions to discuss matters concerning our people. I wish to thank Your Excellency for the unfailing courtesy of your replies to my letters and the cordiality of the talks we had during the last six years. As this may perhaps be the last letter I write as Leader of the Opposition (which office I got quite by fortuitous circumstances) I hope you will pardon the length of this letter and my releasing it to the press (the almighty censor willing).
1977 - 1983
The first letter I wrote to Your Excellency was in August,1977 pleading for action to maintain law and order and to safeguard the lives and property of the Tamil people who were the victims of planned violence started by the Sinhala police in Jaffna on 16th August, 1977 and carried out with ruthless efficiency by Sinhala hoodlums resulting in the death of about 300 Tamils, injury to over 10,000 people, raping of about 200 Tamil women, destruction and looting of property belonging to Tamils worth about a billion rupees and the driving out of their homes and evacuation to the north and east of about 50,000 Tamil people.
There can be no more eloquent testimony to the utter failure of the Government to solve this problem than the fact that I am writing this letter, after six years in the wake of violence and destruction against the person and property of Tamil people more brutal and more complete than in the past. Over 100,000 Tamil people have been displaced and driven to refugee camps, their houses having been completely destroyed.
The destruction and plunder of property belonging to Tamils will run into several billion rupees. The loss of life will exceed two thousand, though it is not yet possible to fix the number with any certainty as every family arriving in the north and east are coming with tales of cruel killing and burning of men, women and children by Sinhala mobs and armed forces.
There appears to be one significant difference between the situation in 1977 and in 1983.
In 1977 the armed forces were fairly disciplined but as Your Excellency is reported to have told the New Delhi correspondent of the B.B.C. “the recent riots revealed a serious lack of discipline in the armed forces and there is strong anti-Tamil feeling among the troops and in some cases they actually encouraged rioting”. (All India Radio news bulletin, 8.8.83 morning). I will go further and say the armed forces were directly involved in the killing, looting and destruction of Tamils and their property in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Colombo and other places.
The demand for a Separate State
It has become the stock excuse for all the violence against Tamils to say that it is due to the demand for a separate state. How then does one account for the violence against Tamils in Colombo, Amparai and other places in 1956 June? What was the excuse for Emergency ‘58 and the Island wide holocaust against Tamils in 1958? It will be admitted that there was no question of any demand for a separate state at that time. The demand for a separate state is in fact the result of grievances of the Tamil people, accumulated over quarter of a century, including repeated communal riots in the Sinhala provinces in the fifties followed by police and Army violence in the northern and eastern provinces in the sixties and seventies.
Your Excellency’s United National Party itself in its 1977 Election manifesto identified the grievances of the Tamil speaking people over Language, Education, Colonisation, Employment and Economic development as having driven some of them to demand a separate state. Having diagnosed the disease correctly the Government failed to give the correct treatment. Even where certain medicines were prescribed they remained as prescriptions and were never administered to the patient. Is it any surprise that the condition has deteriorated over the last six years of Your Excellency’s Government?
Language rights of Tamils
Ministers of your Government have repeatedly said that this Government had granted the language rights of the Tamils and that we should be grateful for it. In 1958 Mr. Bandaranayake passed the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) act which embodies the main principles of all subsequent legislation on Tamil language rights. But neither he nor the succeeding S.L.F.P. Government cared to implement the act which remained a dead letter. On 6th January, 1966 Your Excellency moved in Parliament the Tamil Language (special provisions) regulations in accordance with the Dudley Senanayake Chelvanayagam pact, on which the Tamil Federal Party supported the U.N.P. to form the Government in 1965. But those regulations also were never implemented by the U.N.P. Government or the United Front Government that followed. The refusal of that Government to include those regulations in the 1972 constitution and the walk out by Tamil members including Mr. K.W. Devanayagam of the U.N.P. from the constituent assembly are matters of history.
Your Government included certain rights of the Tamil language in the 1978 constitution. Though these fall short of the official status the Tamil speaking people were agitating for, we welcomed the improvement in the status accorded to Tamil as a National language. The Government has failed to implement the Tamil language provisions and your ministers are busy finding excuses for their non implementation over the last five years. Even elementary rights like correspondence in Tamil are not observed. Can any one blame the Tamil people, who have been struggling for their language rights for the last twenty seven years, if they refuse to be satisfied with mere paper rights for their language? So much for the oft-repeated and much vaunted language rights for which the T.U.L.F. is charged with being ungrateful.
District Development Councils
The second major concession made to the Tamils by this Government is said to be the establishment of District Development Councils as instruments of devolution of power. In the face of strong opposition from our own ranks, the T.U.L.F. accepted the District Development Councils.
Your Excellency started this exercise in July, 1979 and what have we achieved in the matter of actual devolution during the last four years? On the eve of the elections to the D.D.C. in 1981 your Government’s Sinhala police mutinied in Jaffna and burnt half of Jaffna town including the head quarters of the T.U.L.F., the house of the M.P. for Jaffna and the Jaffna public library with its invaluable collection of 97,000 books.
Two of your ministers were in Jaffna supervising operations including the arrest of T.U.L.F. members of Parliament and the nefarious things done in connection with the elections on 4th June, 1981. In spite of all these we entered the District Development Councils. After two years it cannot be denied that the Government has failed to make them function effectively. The attitude and actions of the Government in this matter reveal a want of earnestness and lack of a sense of urgency in implementing even meager concessions made to the Tamil people.
The hand of friendship
Ministers and the Government controlled press have repeatedly charged the T.U.L.F. with failing to grasp the hand of friendship proffered by Your Excellency. Whenever we were invited for discussions with the Government, even when the Tamil people had been the victims of violence instigated by your own party men as in 1981, we responded and participated. Whatever the T.U.L.F. agreed to do was unfailingly carried out by us. We cannot be blamed for certain happenings which were beyond our control. We are not the Government responsible for law and order in our areas. But can Your Excellency say that the Government has carried out the matters it agreed to do in the Inter Party Committee talks that went on for thirteen months. I may mention some of the matters:
1. District Development Councils - nothing done to make them effective as agreed.
2. Posting a majority of Tamil speaking policemen in Tamil areas -
Carried out in Jaffna District but not done in any of the other Tamil districts as promised. Most of the trouble we had in Trincomalee and Vavuniya in June and July could have been avoided if this was implemented.
3. Recruitment of more Tamils into the police and the armed forces so as to make these services function in a non - partisan way in times of ethnic tensions. - This promise has not been kept by the Government.
4. Compensation for victims of Police violence in 1981 May - June has been only partially paid. It has not been paid to victims in Chunnakam and Kankesanturai as agreed to at the Inter Party Committee. Only two million out of the ten million rupees awarded by the Lionel Fernando Commission to the burnt Jaffna Public Library has been paid from the President’s Fund.
5. Though prosecutions were initiated against some of the Policemen responsible for killing and arson in Chunnakam and Kankesanturai in May - June 1981 none of them were arrested and produced at the Mallakam magistrate’s Court and now these cases have been transferred to Colombo where the victims dare not appear and testify.
6. Home guards were not established as promised though names were sent up and cleared by the police.
7. Agreements reached about the Punnaikudah housing scheme and the Keviliyamadu village in the Batticaloa District have not been implemented up to date. I wrote a letter to Your Excellency regarding these two matters last month.
8. The Government has not removed the illegally erected Buddha Statue at Vavuniya junction though Your Excellency gave the order to remove it at the very first meeting of the Inter Party Committee in August, 1981. If the Government is so absolutely powerless in removing an irritant to the Tamil people illegally erected by certain Sinhala public servants, can the Tamil people expect justice where Sinhala chauvinism dictates otherwise?
9. The promises made by the Government with regard to employment of Tamils in the public sector were not kept. The circulars issued and countermanded by the Secretary to the Ministry of Plan Implementation regarding employment in the Tamil Districts are too sordid to discuss at length here.
10. The agreement to limit the Executive Committees in Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitivu to three members so as not to make the majority in these D.D.C’ s minority in the executive Committees and the subsequent appointment of a U.N.P. member to the executive Committee in Vavuniya, the resignation of this member when the failure to comply with the law was pointed out and the later nomination of the same man again is a good example of the way the Government promises are kept.
I mentioned above a few of the matters which were agreed upon at the Inter Party Committee in order to show why we regarded bilateral talks between the T.U.L.F and the Government as a futile exercise. The Prime Minister asked us in Parliament why we did not attend the all party conference summoned by Your Excellency. When other parties had not responded to the invitation the all party conference would have been only a continuation of the Inter Party meeting we had for more than a year and with what result I have shown above. I was constrained to reply to the Prime Minister in Parliament that we did not think any useful purpose will be served by bilateral talks between us and the Government when ninety percent of the matters agreed upon in earlier talks were never implemented.
Violence against the Tamil people and the sixth amendment
Incidents of army men shooting and killing people in Jaffna and some youths killing some service personnel or some civilian has been going on for a few years. However much we may deprecate this situation it had become part of the reality in Jaffna.
Assaults by members of the armed forces on pedestrians, cyclists or motor cyclists with iron rods or long poles they carried in their trucks and jeeps, or injury to person or damage to windscreen or glasses of motor vehicles or even window panes of houses by being pelted with stones from army and navy vehicles have been almost daily occurrences in Jaffna. Many people who complained to us preferred not to make complaints to the police for fear of reprisals.
On the afternoon of the 29th July my own car was pelted with a stone from a passing navy vehicle and my windscreen was smashed. I complained to the Naval Commander at Karainagar who promised to look into it.
In this background of continual harassment, assault and humiliation of the people by armed forces behaving like an army of occupation is it surprising if youths who attack these service personnel tend to be looked upon as heroes. One has to live in this atmosphere of interminable harassment to understand this attitude. This routine is upset periodically when some serviceman is shot. Reprisals against innocent civilians follow immediately.
As happened at Kantharmadam in Jaffna on the 18th of May, and at Vavuniya on the 1st of June all houses, shops and business places in the vicinity are attacked, looted and burnt and innocent people are beaten up and killed. The usual excuse is that some members of the armed forces had mutinied and gone on a rampage.
Prior to 1981 it was the Sinhala police that behaved in this manner. After the police force in Jaffna was made majority Tamil there was no trouble from the police now it is the Army and the Navy in Jaffna; The army, the air force and the police in Vavuniya; the police, the army, the navy and the air force - all combined in Trincomalee; and the army in Mannar that attack the people.
In Mannar I saw with my own eyes the car of the D.D.C. Chairman smashed and his driver and clerk beaten up by army men from the Thalladi camp on 25th July.
Have the Tamil people no right to freedom from these attacks on their person and property by the police and the armed forces? Is not the Government bound to pay heed to the feelings of these innocent victims?
Your Excellency in your broadcast to the nation on the T.V. and the radio, at the height of attacks on Tamils by Sinhala mobs and armed forces, stated that you had to pay heed to the demand and national feeling of the Sinhala people and therefore you were introducing the sixth amendment to the constitution. The voice of the Tamil people crying for justice and the right to live and safeguard their hard-earned property goes unheeded. At a time when murder, arson and plunder are being perpetrated against the Tamil people the Government surrenders to the aspirations of the marauding mobs and enacts the sixth amendment.
I would most humbly submit to Your Excellency that this is a further outrage on our people and their right to peacefully agitate for their political rights and freedom. This amendment embodies the justice of the lynch mob where you further punish and humiliate the victim and not the criminal; the oppressed and not the oppressor.
The events of the last two months: Trincomalee
Violence against Tamil people did not break out suddenly as a result of the killing of thirteen soldiers in Jaffna on the night of the 23rd July. It actually started on a planned basis with the attack on Mansion Hotel in Trincomalee on the 3rd of June.
The police and the army who searched these premises before the attack by the market Sinhala hoodlums definitely stand implicated in this attack. They not only failed to stop the attack and destruction of this hotel but even failed to take action to arrest the perpetrators of the crime. The violence that was started on the 3rd of June went on with ebbs and flows for over two months till about two days ago. Twenty seven Tamils have been killed during this period as against one Sinhalese.
As the Government itself admitted about one hundred and fifty Navy personnel went on a rampage and destroyed about two hundred Tamil business places and houses in Trincomalee town in six hours on the night of the 26th July.
With the assistance of the police and army about two hundred houses of Tamils were burnt in the Trincomalee District and 1,500 persons who were rendered homeless had to seek shelter as refugees in school buildings. As if the loss and the suffering they had already undergone were not sufficient the Commander of the Navy forcibly put about six hundred of these refugees into buses at one o’clock on the night of the 24th July and took them to unknown destinations.
When I brought this matter to Your Excellency’s notice the next morning you said that you were informed they had volunteered to go back to the estates. You will be surprised to learn that a good number of them were voters in Trincomalee most of whom had permit lands and some private lands in Trincomalee. The fate of these persons in the present spate of violence in the plantation districts is not known. This action of the Navy is typical of the racially motivated and partisan conduct of the armed forces in the present crisis.
How can you expect the Tamil people to have confidence on these forces to protect them and their properties from Sinhala killers and looters. There seems to be a calculated move to drive the Tamils out of Trincomalee by terrorising them. The visit of Mr. Jayaweera of the Ministry of Industries to Trincomalee and the discussions he had with the police and service personnel at the height of the disturbances have created fear in the minds of the Tamil people that a powerful section of the Government is involved in this diabolical plot against the Tamil people of Trincomalee.
In the course of the last two months over ten Hindu temples in the Trincomalee district have been destroyed. The Navy personnel who ran riot on the 26th of July had set fire to the Chariot of the Sivan Temple, broken the Nandhi and had desecrated the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. It will not be out of place to mention here that in the riots directed against Tamil people in 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983 Hindu temples have been targets of attack. In 1977 eighteen Hindu Temples including the one at the Peradeniya University were destroyed. Reports by refugees from the plantation areas indicate that a number of Hindu temples in the plantation areas like the one at Bandarawella have been destroyed last week. In this situation the speeches of Government party members about the veneration in which they hold the Hindu temples sound hypocritical.
Massacre by the armed forces in Jaffna.
According to the figures available now over 50 innocent persons have been killed by the army in Jaffna during the last few weeks. In the Tinnevely and Kantharmadam areas about twenty people including University lecturers, engineers, students and even housewives have been shot in their homes and beds.
The detachment of the army stationed at Mathagal had taken charge of a private mini-bus on the morning of the 24th and gone on a rampage spraying bullets on people walking on the roads, travelling in buses and in shops and markets. They had killed about thirteen persons including students, C.T.B. Employees, an accountant and traders.
It is the feelings of these trigger-happy killers that the Government feels obliged to pay heed to. In the eyes of the Government their killing innocent Tamils does not seem to be a serious matter. But if any of these killers are killed it becomes a very serious matter. I wish to ask Your Excellency in all earnestness what action has the Government taken to stop this killing by the armed forces? They have got used to killing Tamils with impunity.
In several instances where innocent persons were killed in Jaffna and where courts have returned homicide verdicts no action has been taken against the offenders. Are not the lives of Tamils entitled to the protection of the law? The armed forces are indulging in killing and maiming people; robbing and destroying their property. I have received complaints from people at Palay and Kankesanturai that even their goats are shot and removed by the army. They dare not protest. Are we wrong in demanding that these armed forces be removed from our areas?
Misconduct of the armed forces in Vavuniya.
There have been many incidents of violence in which the armed forces were involved in Vavuniya and Mankulam areas during the last few weeks. I have an affidavit sworn by one Velu Subramaniam, a labourer of Thatchankulam stating how his wife was raped by two air-force men on the night of the 30th July and how they wanted the daughter to be made available to them the next day. A lorry belonging to the Puloly M.P.C.S. in Jaffna was returning from Anuradhapura transporting kerosene and diesel which were in short supply in Jaffna, on the night of the 25th July. The lorry was set on fire and totally destroyed at Nochchinimodai, a few miles to the north of Vavuniya and the four occupants were killed and the decomposed bodies were discovered a few miles away. Villagers whom I have questioned have said that this was the work of Airforce men. Private buses and lorries plying between Colombo and Jaffna have been attacked and seriously damaged and passengers and occupants injured several times during the last three months by the army men stationed at Mankulam. I complained to the Prime Minister regarding the matter during Your Excellency’s absence from the Island.
The police and members of the armed forces have now started systematically harassing and intimidating the Tamil refugees from the plantation areas who have settled down in Vavuniya after the 1977 riots. Tamil women working in the fields have been taken into army trucks and dumped in the police station. Where can these people go when the Tamils all over the plantation districts are being attacked and driven to refugee camps? The action of the Naval Commander in forcibly removing Tamil refugees from Trincomalee to the estates and the harassment by the police and armed forces of the refugees long settled in Vavuniya make one think whether all these are part of a plan to drive the Tamils out of even Vavuniya.
Violence in the rest of the Country
Reports I have had from Tamil refugees who have been the victims of violence in Colombo and other districts including the plantation areas indicate a definite pattern in the attack. In most places the attackers had come in C.T.B. buses. On the coast line in Colombo the train had been stopped at several places to enable the looters to get down and attack each lane at Wellawatte and other places. The police and the armed forces had given all assistance and encouragement to the looters and arsonists. They shared the spoils in the looting and had shouted “Jayawewa” while passing mobs in action.
Where ever Tamils resisted the looters had withdrawn. But the armed forces had entered those areas and shot and killed the Tamils who resisted the attack. I have definite reports that this happened in the Sea Street area in Colombo.
Several of the so called looters who were reported to have been shot and killed by the armed forces on 29th July were Tamils who were trying to safeguard their property or were fleeing from the pursuing mobs.
It is in this situation where the armed forces were seriously wanting in discipline and were motivated by “strong antiTamil feeling” which made them encourage rioting that we appealed to Your Excellency to safeguard the lives and property of our people from the mutinous and anti-Tamil armed forces and the hysteric mobs by getting the assistance of the United Nations or of friendly countries. I cannot understand how Your Excellency expects troops with “strong anti-Tamil feelings” to protect the Tamils.
When it is admitted by Your Excellency that the armed forces actually encouraged rioting, I am surprised at your reported statement to the Prime Minister of India that the Sri Lanka armed forces are capable of dealing with the situation. They cannot be running with the hare and hunting with the hound.
The Government has failed in the elementary duty of safeguarding the lives and property of innocent Tamils, (most of whom living outside the Northern and Eastern provinces had supported the U.N.P.) and thereby forfeited the moral right to rule them. I am sorry I have to say this to Your Excellency, particularly because of your broadcast to the nation.
The Tamil people do not believe that the left parties had any hand in the attack on them. They regard the attempt to implicate the Communist Party and the reference to certain dark forces by the Minister of State, as being calculated only to win the sympathy and support of the Western powers . This is, in their view, only an attempt to draw a “red’ herring across the trail.
The attack on the Tamil people is pure ethnic violence planned well ahead and executed with ruthlessness by forces close to the Government - the same forces that attacked the strikers in July, 1980; attacked Prof. Saratchandra and others at the meeting at the Buddhist congress hall and demonstrated before the houses of the judges. These forces include the armed forces for whom Mr. Cyril Mathew always holds a brief in Parliament.
The attack on the private residence of the T.U.L.F. President and the Official residence of the Leader of the Opposition:
One of the first houses to be attacked in the early hours of the morning of the 25th was the private residence of Mr. Sivasithamparam, M.P. for Nallur and President of the T.U.L.F. Police authorities were alerted at the highest level of the impending attack. But no attempt was made to stop it. His car was burnt, house was looted and completely burnt and his wife and daughter had to scale a wall to save their lives. Security personnel arrived on the scene several hours later.
There was an attack on the house of Mr. Murugian of Upali associates on the 25th of July. Operations appear to have been directed by certain important personages of the U.N.P. Some of those men had entered my official residence which adjoins that house and robbed the belongings of the members of my staff who were living there. They jumped over the parapet wall and went into “Sravasti” for safety. They were chased away by the employees. Fortunately for them. Mr. Nihal Seniviratne, The Secretary General of Parliament sent them to the refugee camps.
The police officers who escorted them had been abusing me in the vilest of language and had sworn to cut me to pieces if I went to Colombo. These are the custodians of the law who are enlisted in the duty of protecting Tamil members of Parliament. I realised how correct Your Excellency and the Prime Minister were in advising me not to travel to Colombo and that you could not give me protection. Your subsequent offer to provide transport and security for us to attend Parliament must have been for purely political reasons and for the consumption of the world when a bill so intimately affecting the members of the T.U.L.F. was being rushed through Parliament.
The massacre in the Welikade Prison
The blackest episode in the dark fortnight following the 23rd July was the massacre of the political prisoners at the Welikade prison. The Government cannot absolve itself of its responsibility particularly when it had happened a second time. The judicial inquiry was held without anybody to watch the interests of the victims.
There are several relevant questions which go unanswered. How did the Sinhala prisoners get out of their cells? How did the prisoners get the lethal weapons like axes, iron rods, knives and clubs into their hands? If they had overpowered the prison officials why were not the firearms available to them used on the violent prisoners? When a few days later some Tamil prisoners in Jaffna tried to escape four of them were shot dead.
When on the second occasion eighteen Tamil prisoners were killed the army had only fired tear gas shells to disperse the killers. The lives of the Sinhala prisoners are no doubt precious. But does not the same rule apply to Tamil prisoners? I was shocked when some Tamil refugees told me that a responsible Minister had stated in the refugee camp that the Sinhalese people were pacified only after the massacre at Welikade prison. The Tamil people are driven to the irresistible conclusion that prison authorities and army personnel were involved in the deliberate murder of those 53 Tamil political prisoners.
Relief and rehabilitation measures.
In these circumstances Your Excellency will not be surprised if the Tamil people look askance at the relief and rehabilitation measures announced by the Government. The move to vest all affected property in the Government looks to them a method of expropriating what the looters have not taken.
The announcement regarding relief to workers who lost their employment is making the Tamil people think that the prime concern of the Government is the employment of Sinhala workers who have lost their earnings as a result of the destruction of factories where they were working. The reported departure of the International Red Cross representatives who were here to assist in rehabilitation work created further doubt regarding the way the whole matter is being handled. The Government should dispel these fears and announce their plans to rehabilitate Tamil refugees who have lost their homes and means of livelihood and cannot go back to their former places. It will be cruel to compel them to go back to the same place again. Top priority should be given to the case of these people who have no houses to go to and who will have to languish in refugee camps unless immediate arrangements are made to settle them in safe areas.
The Solution
The Tamil people are being attacked and killed; their homes are being burnt and destroyed; their business places are looted and burnt; they are driven to refugee camps in their tens of thousands and are transported to the north and east by sea and by air. Tamil prisoners are being killed by Sinhala prisoners. Tamil University students are being chased out by Sinhala students.
In the wake of these intolerable sufferings and hardships to which the Tamil people have been subjected Your Excellency’s Government has enacted the Sixth amendment to the constitution to proscribe our party and to drive the elected representatives of the Tamils out of Parliament. We consider this amendment a further outrage on our people and their right to peacefully agitate for their political rights and freedom. Your Excellency will agree that as a self-respecting people we cannot allow these measures to stifle our voice and our will to resist oppression. This amendment is only seeking to legitimise through a legal device the conviction of the Sinhala mobs that the Tamils have no political freedom, no right to property or right to life. This is the “demand and National feeling of the Sinhala people” to which the Government has bowed.
The Tamil people from all over the Island are being driven into ghettoes in the North and East by the Sinhala mobs. Even there, they are being harassed, humiliated and killed by the Sinhala armed forces. The T.U.L.F. has, through democratic and non violent means, been trying to win the freedom and fundamental rights of the oppressed Tamil nation. I assure Your Excellency that we will continue to strive through all non violent means to liberate our people from this horrible oppression.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
A.Amirthalingam
Leader of the Opposition and
Secretary General, T.U.L.F.
...continued...
