"To us all towns are one, all men our kin. |
INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA: Genocide '83 A plan presupposes objectives A plan presupposes objectives and the objectives of the July '83 violence against the Tamil people were clear. The plan served to destroy the economic base of the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. The property damage was estimated at around 300 million dollars. Many Tamils were driven back to their traditional homelands in the North and the East, but without their possessions, without their hard earned savings and with no way of eking out a living. Some left Sri Lanka and sought to survive abroad - afraid for their lives in the land of their birth and at the same time, often, unwanted and rejected by the alien environment in which they sought asylum. The plan served to maintain tension at a level which discouraged Tamils from returning to the island and encouraged them to somehow get away so that their wives and children may be safe. The plan served to make those Tamils who were compelled to remain in Sri Lanka more pliable and willing to serve their Sinhala master in order that they may survive. In short, the plan served to further the subjugation of the Tamil people and bend them to the will of a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of an unitary Sinhala Buddhist state. The Washington Post in New York was constrained to comment editorially on 4 August 1983:
The Guardian added in London on 9 August 1983:
But Cabinet Minister Gamini Dissanayake who was also President of the UNP controlled Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union with a membership among plantation Tamils saw the situation in a different light. He put it bluntly to his Tamil members and without ceremony in a widely reported speech on 5 September 1983:
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