President Chandrika Kumaratunga establishes the ‘Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence’, to look at the ethnic violence that took place between 1981-1984, with “special reference to the period of July 1983″. The Commission reports in September 2002.

Headed by former Chief Justice, Suppiah Sharvandana, the Commission’s mandate was to “inquire into the nature, cause and extent of the gross violation of human rights, the destruction and damage to property committed as part of the ethnic violence which occurred from the beginning of 1981 to the end of 1984 with special reference to Black July 1983, including the circumstances which led to such violence”.

Sources
Report on the Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence
(1981 – 1984), Volume I; S. Sharvananda, S. S. Sahabandu, M. M. Zuhair;
September 2002; Scripting the Welikade Massacre Inquest and the Fate of Two Dissidents, Supplement to Special Report No.25, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) UTHR(J), 31 May 2007; Remembering Conflict, The Hindu, 20 July 2003.

Extracts from the report
“It is necessary to emphasise the difficulties of giving a complete picture of these events, firstly because no official records of any investigation are available; secondly, almost all reports were censored at the time from publications; and thirdly most of the victims are still living outside the country – some in South India, most of the others in Western countries. We have restricted these records to those who made representations, almost all of which were verified by a competent team of investigators appointed by the Commission and to he accounts of those who were able to give oral testimony before the Commission. We are in no position sitting as we do, nearly 19 years after these events of July 1983 to give a reasonably complete picture of the events of 1983.

“We regret to find that the government had failed to prosecute those involved in the crimes of the July 25th and 27th. The domestic inquiry initiated by the Head of Welikade Prison Mr Leo de Silva was not proceeded with. There is not evidence that investigations commenced by the Borella Police had been proceeded with, beyond the stage of the inquest. the efforts of the commission to trace the police records turned futile. It is the responsibility every government to ensure that perpetrators of crimes are punished and that no one acts with impunity or gets away without responsibility. The government of the day has failed to discharge these obligations.

“The question arises as to why the government failed to declare the curfew in the morning of Monday 25 July, when trouble had already broken out in several parts of Colombo, in addition to the troubles that had occurred in Borella, the previous evening? This was [a] question that Sarath Muttetuwegama MP raised in Parliament, for which no satisfactory response came from the government. … The government however declared the curfew only in the afternoon of 25th July, which came into effective operation late in the evening.

“Another important aspect concerns the role of the media. … There was a lot of disinformation, distortions, exaggerations, inflammatory bloating of events: they all led to an escalation of domestic violence. I would specifically refer to a newspaper that is no longer in print, that of the Dawasa Group. Much before “Black July” on 17th July 1983, there was a headline, “Uthure Thrasthawadaya madinna Thawath Thrasthawadayak” (“To counter Northern terrorism, there is going to emerge another terrorism”). It was a banner headline. The newspaper went on to the extent of stating that after the 22nd of July a very strong course of action will be taken to exterminate or to defeat terrorism. It significantly mentions the date, “after 22nd and 23rd”.

Recommendations

1. The President and the Prime Minister must give leadership to a new era of ethnic reconciliation and national unity;
2. The support and participation of the people of the country in the towns and the villages must be obtained and sustained by the country’s leaders for the above purpose;
3. Legislation similar to the South African, Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 32 of 1995, by enacted to establish the legal framework for sustaining the process of ethnic reconciliation and to provide for the elimination of all forms of racism and ethnic related discrimination;
4. The leadership, support and cooperation of religious leaders, the civil society, the mass media, the schools, the police and the armed forces be ensured in the process of reconciliation and national unity;
5. National unity and ethnic amity [must] be fostered with due regard and recognition for pluralism and diversity;
6. The establishment of just and fair governance that will eliminate all forms of racism and discrimination be promoted, with perpetrators of discrimination losing the right to hold public office for specified periods of time;
7. The media be made to recognise that sections from amongst them did contribute to the sustenance of ethnic misgivings and that they have a major responsibility to support and promote national unity and ethnic reconciliation;
8. The government must pay full compensation to the victims (or their dependents) on the basis of the Commission’s Recommendations;
9. An Investigations Division of officers with police powers functioning entirely under the direction of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to apprehend and prosecute persons holding public office acting in violation of fundamental rights with particular reference to ethnic related discrimination;
10. The HRC in all cases on its own, or upon complaints of unsatisfactory investigations by police relating to ethnic violations or issues, must take over and conduct investigations through its Investigations Division and ensure appropriate action;
11. The perpetrators of ethnic violence whether they be members of the public, the police, the armed forces or the public service by prosecuted whenever any ethnic violence occurs in the future;
12. Truth Commissions be appointed mandating to cover ethnic violence during the post-1984 period and to compensate all victims of ethnic violence and to achieve national unity and ethnic reconciliation.

Quotations

“I dare say much of the facts were not available to the Commission because of the long period that had ensued between ‘83 and the appointment of the Commission in the year 2001. … I am aware the Commissioners went into in great detail and took much trouble to investigate these complaints placed before them. And as you know they have been able to find evidence of what was nearly a 1,000 killings during that period and I believe 18,000 properties were destroyed, mainly by fire, and thousands of others were injured in incidents of violence. We suppose that there must have been many more incidents that have not been reported to the Commission, simply because there is nobody to report them anymore, either in this world or in this country,” President Chandrika Kumaratunga at the 21st Anniversary of ‘Black July’, Presidential Secretariat, Colombo, 23 July 2004.

“Where the Welikade massacres were concerned for instance [the Commission] did hardly any – if any – investigation of its own. It relied on me for practically everything and seemed more than happy with just our material. What it should have done is taken our material as a starting point and then followed up from there, with all its powers of investigation and summoning witnesses, which we didn’t have. For instance it could and should have tried to obtain the statements recorded by the police after the first massacre. The instructing attorneys in the 35 civil cases filed by dependents of victims called for these time and time again in preparation for the trials, but were met with evasion after evasion by the police. The cases never came to trial because they were eventually settled, with the state paying some compensation but without admitting liability. …  Welikade was only a small part of the Commission’s whole remit. In its report the Commission did pay CRM and me a handsome tribute, which was certainly gratifying, but we had really hoped that it would investigate further and uncover information which we had not already found out for ourselves,” Suriya Wickremasinghe, Civil Rights Movement, who had appeared before the Commission.

“[The] indications were clear enough that [the Commission] was not meant to be taken too seriously, and that it was really meant to serve a cosmetic purpose. The time frame of 1981 to 1984 was absurd as the State terrorism clearly began in 1977. However, the Commissioners ignored that time frame and went into the antecedents leading up to 1981. They were required to submit their report in January 2002 – that is, in no more than just six months. The report was in fact submitted in September 2002. It noted that the South African Truth Commission had a staff of 750 to assist it, the media gave it wide coverage, and there was something like national participation in what was seen as a process of reconciliation by establishing the truth. There was hardly any of that here. The report emphasized the need to set up new Commissions to continue the work of establishing the truth as part of a continuing process of reconciliation and nation-building. There has been none of that, and all that has happened is that President Kumaratunga issued a perfunctory apology over 1983. Clearly at the level of the State also there has been a resistance to establishing the full truth about what happened in 1983,”Izeth Hussain, 1983 July Anti – Tamil Violence – State Terrorism, transcurrents.com.

Sources
Report on the Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence (1981 – 1984), Volume I; S. Sharvananda, S. S. Sahabandu, M. M. Zuhair; September 2002; Scripting the Welikade Massacre Inquest and the Fate of Two Dissidents, Supplement to Special Report No.25, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) UTHR(J), 31 May 2007.

Related events
31 May 1981
24 July 1983
23 July 2004