Col R Hariharan
Sri Lanka Perspectives July 2025 | South Asia Security Trends, August 2025 | https://www.security-
The month of July is remembered in Sri Lanka for many eventful things that changed the course of history. But two events - the Black July Pogrom carried out on July 23, 1983 and the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA) signed between President JR Jayawardane and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on July 29, 1987, stand out among them. Both the events have a ‘Cause and Effect’ relationship as Tamil refugees fleeing the Black July Pogrom in thousands to Tamil Nadu resulted in India taking serious interest in Sri Lanka Tamils identity struggle that led to ISLA. Their quest to save Tamil identity, language and traditional habitation, resulted in ISLA. It still continues to be the core of Tami politics in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka Tamil refugee’s plight also gained the Tamil cause a perpetual place in Tamil Nadu politics, till the LTTE mindlessly assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi four years later. Now, it has been reduced to influence only around ten percent of the voters in Tamil Nadu.
The Black July pogrom carried out by Sinhala goons with official connivance marked the transition of Tamil minority’s political struggle to get their equitable rights to armed insurgency for Eelam, a separate homeland. Sinhala mobs egged on by their leaders torched Tamil houses and business in Colombo and elsewhere. At least 150,000 Tamils were rendered homeless and as many as 200,000 of them fled the island nation. Over a time, 800,000 Sri Lankan Tamils settled abroad in Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora had a profound impact on Tamil communities globally to sustain the political and armed struggle for Eelam, a separate homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils. Diminishing number of diaspora Tamil organisations using the name of Velupillai Prabhakaran and the symbols of LTTTE, still carry the torch for Eelam. However, Eelam cause seems to have lost the magic to mainstream Tamil population after two generations of them sacrificed everything in the Eelam wars.
Though the Eelam War ended a decade and a half ago, it has scarred three generations of Sri Lankan Tamils, Sinhalas and Muslims. It still continues to influence internal politics, and to a lesser extent Sri Lanka’s international politics. It continues to colour Sri Lanka’s relations with India, which has an influential Tamil population.
The ISLA enabled Tamil minority to gain limited autonomy with the creation of provincial councils after 13th Amendment to the constitution was passed in November 1987. The Amendment gave powers of self-governance to the Councils on education, agriculture, health and housing. However, powers over land and policing were not devolved to the Councils. Tamils have been insisting on devolving these powers and successive Sri Lanka governments have tried to avoid it by using various political strategies. This has created a crisis of confidence among Tamils, whenever the question of a solution for ethnic reconciliation is raised. Successive Indian prime ministers including PM Narendra Modi have been raising this issue in their official meetings with their Sri Lankan counterparts.
Sri Lanka probably lost around 300,000 people of all hues (including around 170,000 civilians “disappeared” according to International Truth and Justice Project) in two and half decades of civil war. Successive Sri Lanka governments, particularly after the LTTE’s defeat in 2009, have been grappling with political fallout of the ethnic war both internally as well as externally.
Tamil minorities at home are still aggrieved over unaccounted deaths and disappearances, every time a mass grave is unearthed. Chemmani, the latest mass grave, has yielded more than 90 skeletons. As Pitsanna Shanmugathas writes in www.jurist.org “The grim findings at Chemmani have reignited global attention on one of the world’s most severe cases of unresolved enforced disappearances.” He cites the International Commission of Justice (ICJ) statement of July 27 to confer Sri Lanka the dubious distinction having “one of the highest numbers of cases of unresolved enforced disappearance worldwide, with estimates ranging between 60,000 and 100,000 individual cases” during the civil war. This will add to Sri Lanka’s lack of international accountability for war crimes raised at the UNHRC, hanging like an albatross around the neck of successive governments.
The Chemmani mass grave and ISLA brings back memories of Neelakandan Tiruchelvam, civil rights lawyer, another July martyr. He was murdered by the LTTE on June 29, 1999 for his work along with GL Peiris for President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s 1995 constitutional reform. The devolution plan, known as GL-Neelan Package (also known as the New Deal) was released in August 1995. It went beyond the 13th Amendment. Political schism within Sinhala and Tamil politicians watered down the recommendations.
Neelan, the brilliant constitutional lawyer and TULF parliamentarian, spoke in parliament as soon as Chemmani witness Rajapakse indicated the mass burial at Chemmani. In his speech on July 22, 1998 on the need to properly investigate the mass grave allegations, he gave a blueprint for the investigation. This is valid for investigating all the 19 mass graves in the country. The mass burials pose technical problems greater than exhumation of individual graves. As Shanmugadas points out in his article “Citing the UN Model Protocol, he[Neelan] stressed that a burial recovery should be handled with the same exacting care given to a crime-scene search” and that “disinterment by untrained persons should be prohibited.” He suggested that the work be supervised by a “consulting anthropologist” to prevent the loss of valuable information and the risk of generating false data.
Neelan outlined the three UN-recommended phases of investigation: the collection of “antemortem data” from relatives and witnesses; the “archaeological phase” involving professional excavation and careful documentation of remains; and the “laboratory phase” focusing on analysis through X-rays, trauma identification, and possible DNA testing. We hope, Sri Lanka government investigating the Chemmani mass grave is following Neelan’s suggestion so that the investigation carries greater credibility.
Recalling Sri Lanka’s July martyrs will not be complete without mentioning the assassination of Appapillai Amirthalingam, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and leader of the opposition from 1977 to 1983, on July 13, 1989. A week earlier, I had personally warned him of LTTE plot to assassinate him. He invited me to visit his house to check the security arrangement. On the fateful day a week later, I was scheduled to meet him at 4 PM, he asked me to postpone it, as he can meet me during the reception the Indian High Commission was holding in Taj Samudra. We never met because he was gunned down at his home by LTTE gunmen. That is another story.
[Col R Hariharan VSM, a retired MI specialist on South Asia and terrorism, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90. He is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies. Email: haridirect@gmail.com, Website: https://col.
