Black July (Tamil: கறுப்பு யூலை, romanized: Kaṟuppu Yūlai; Sinhala: කළු ජූලිය, romanized: Kalu Juliya) was an anti-Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 July 1983, which killed 13 soldiers. Although initially orchestrated by members of the ruling UNP, the pogrom soon escalated into mass violence with significant public participation.
On the night of 24 July 1983, anti-Tamil rioting started in the capital city of Colombo and then spread to other parts of the country. Over seven days, mainly Sinhalese mobs attacked, burned, looted, and killed Tamil civilians. The looting, arson and killings later spread to include all Indians, with the Indian High Commission being attacked and the Indian Overseas Bank being completely destroyed. Estimates of the death toll range between 400 and 3,000, and 150,000 people became homeless. According to Tamil Centre for Human Rights (TCHR), the total number of Tamils killed in the Black July pogrom was 5,638.
Around 18,000 homes and 5,000 shops were destroyed. The economic cost of the riots was estimated to be $300 million. The pogrom was organised to destroy the economic base of the Tamils, with every Tamil owned shop and establishment being plundered and set alight. The NGO International Commission of Jurists described the violence of the pogrom as having "amounted to acts of genocide" in a report published in December 1983.
The pogrom led to the dramatic growth of Tamil militant groups which went from having 20-30 members each to thousands of youths joining their ranks. Prior to this very few Tamils were willing to join the armed struggle. Black July is generally seen as the start of the Sri Lankan civil war between the Tamil militants and the government of Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Tamils fled to other countries in the ensuing years, with July becoming a period of remembrance for the diaspora around the world. To date no one has been held accountable for any of the crimes committed during the pogrom.
During the period of British colonial rule, Sri Lankan Tamils from the Jaffna Peninsula benefited greatly from educational facilities established by American missionaries. The bulk of missionary schools were located in the Northern Province as well as the south western areas of the island. As a result, the colonial administration recruited many English-speaking Tamils to the civil service and other professions on a merit basis. Tamils came to be overrepresented in the clerical services, professions and universities. By 1946, 33% of clerical jobs in Ceylon were held by Sri Lankan Tamils, although they were 11% of the country's population. After independence, Sinhalese leaders promoted Sinhalese nationalism to appeal to the majority voters and directed hostility against the Tamil minority who were seen as privileged despite the majority of them being no better off.
In 1956, the Official Language Act, commonly known as the Sinhala Only Act, was introduced which made Sinhala the only official language of Sri Lanka with no parity for Tamil. The policy turned out to be "severely discriminatory" and placed the Tamil-speaking population at a "serious disadvantage". Protests against the Sinhala-only policy by Tamils and by the nation's leftist parties were met with mob violence that eventually escalated into the riots of 1958.
Throughout the 1960s, protests, and state repression in response, created further animosity. In 1972, the policy of standardization, which restricted Tamils' entry into universities, strained the already tenuous political relationship between the elites of the Tamil and Sinhalese communities. The quota affecting political representation became another cause for contention between Sinhalese and Tamil people. There was also a series of anti-Tamil pogroms in 1977, following the United National Party's (UNP) coming to power, which further increased hostility. In the 1970s, Tamil militant groups began taking form with notable incidents such as the assassination of Alfred Duraiappah, the Mayor of Jaffna, in 1975 and the killing of Inspector Bastianpillai and his police team in 1978. In 1981, the renowned Jaffna Public Library was burnt down by a violent Sinhalese mob. Until 1983, there had been similar incidents of low-level violence between the government and the mushrooming Tamil militant groups. There were many murders, disappearances, and cases of torture attributed to the Sri Lankan security forces, and several killings of policemen by Tamil militant groups.
Between May and June 1983, UNP-affiliated Sinhalese students conducted a series of attacks against Tamil students and staff at Peradeniya University in the south to evict Tamils from the campus. Organised violence by Sinhalese mobs and security forces also commenced against Tamils in Trincomalee between June and July 1983. At least 27 Tamils, including women and children, were killed in the ensuing violence, with hundreds of Tamil homes and properties being destroyed. By mid-1983, the UNP government had adopted a hardline approach to eliminating Tamil militancy in the north. Announcing this policy, President Jayewardene stated the following in an interview with The Daily Telegraph on 12 July 1983, which has been seen as evidence of the state's complicity in the later riot:
I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna (Tamil) people now. Now we cannot think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us. The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here... really, if I starve the Tamils, Sinhala people will be happy....
On 17 July 1983, a pro-government Dawasa Group newspaper released a headline stating in Sinhala: "To counter Northern Terrorism, there is going to emerge another Terrorism". It specifically stated that after 22nd and 23rd July "a very strong course of action" would be taken to eliminate "terrorism". On 18 July, the government extended the emergency regulations country-wide which allowed disposal of dead bodies without inquest and on the 20th imposed press censorship on all matters concerning "terrorism".
On 23 July 1983 at around 11:30 pm, the rebel group LTTE ambushed the Four Four Bravo military patrol in Thirunelveli, near Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. A roadside bomb was detonated beneath a jeep that was leading the convoy, injuring at least two soldiers on board. Soldiers travelling in the truck behind the jeep then dismounted to help their fellow soldiers. Subsequently, they were ambushed by a group of LTTE fighters who fired at them with automatic weapons and hurled grenades. In the ensuing clash, one officer and twelve soldiers were killed, with two more fatally wounded, for a total of fifteen dead. A number of the rebels were also killed. Col. Kittu, a regional commander of the LTTE, would later admit to planning and carrying out the ambush. This attack has been described as retaliation for the killing of one of the LTTE's founding members, Charles Anthony, by Sri Lankan Army and for the alleged abduction and rape of three Tamil schoolgirls in Jaffna by the Army. Around midnight, following the news of the attack, the Army began to move all their Tamil officers from Colombo and Panagoda to a camp in Ampara, in an isolated area not affected by the subsequent riots.
In response to the ambush, truckloads of Sri Lankan soldiers left the Palaly camp at 4:30 AM, smashing all the shops on the way to Thirunelveli. Over 60 Tamil civilians in Jaffna were subsequently massacred by the rampaging army in revenge. Whereas the prior killing of soldiers was reported instantly in the local Sri Lankan media, this subsequent massacre of civilians was not reported and remained unknown to the Sinhalese public.
The Army—including its commander, Tissa Weeratunga—decided that the soldiers' funerals should not be held in Jaffna because of the high likelihood of disturbances at multiple locations. The decision was made to hold the funerals, with full military honours, at Kanatte Cemetery, Colombo's main burial ground, instead. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa, fearing violence, was against holding the funeral in Colombo, but was overruled by President J. R. Jayewardene. The president, the prime minister, and the rest of the cabinet were to attend the funeral, which was to take place at 5 pm on 24 July. This arrangement went against the standard procedure of handing over fallen soldiers to their families for burial in their home villages.