2006 anti-Tamil riots in Trincomalee | |
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![]() Location of Sri Lanka | |
Location | Trincomalee District, Sri Lanka |
Date | 12–21 April 2006 |
Target | Tamil civilians |
Attack type | riots, arson, looting, assault, rape |
Weapons | knives, swords, clubs, fire, guns, grenades |
Deaths | 20+ |
Injured | 75 |
Perpetrators | Sri Lankan Navy, Sri Lankan Army, Sinhalese Home Guards, Sinhalese mobs |
Motive | Ethnic cleansing |
2006 anti-Tamil riots in Trincomalee were a series of organized violence against the Tamil population of the Trincomalee District in eastern Sri Lanka that followed a bomb blast on 12 April 2006. The violence was mainly carried out by Sinhalese mobs, Navy personnel and home guards with the overall complicity of the Sri Lankan security forces and police. By 20 April, the violence had left over 20 civilians dead, 75 injured, over 30 shops and 100 houses burned, and over 3,000 people displaced. [1] [2] [3]
Trincomalee District has long been an flashpoint of ethnic conflict with nearly equal proportion of the country's three major ethnic groups. [4] The state's policy of settling Sinhalese peasants in predominantly Tamil areas had reduced the Tamil population of the district from 64.8% in 1881 to 33.7% by 1981. This issue was a major bone of contention between the two communities, with Tamil leaders resisting what they saw as attempts by successive Sinhalese-led governments to alter the demography of the traditional homeland of the Tamil-speaking people, thus marginalizing them politically and culturally. [5] With the beginning of the Sri Lankan civil war, the Sri Lankan armed forces had launched a policy of forcibly displacing the Tamil population of the district in the mid-1980s, depopulating entire villages, to break the territorial contiguity of traditional homeland claimed by Tamil nationalists. [6]
The progressive Sinhalisation of the Trincomalee town and the resultant decline of Tamil influence also extended to its trading sector with decade-long efforts to drive the Tamils out of it. [7] It was in this context of insecurity felt by the local Tamils that the latest spate of communal unrest was sparked by the illegal erection of a Buddha statue behind the town's main market on 15 May 2005 by Sinhalese nationalist groups with the support of the Navy's Eastern Commander, Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera. [8] [9] This was opposed by the local Tamils as an act of provocation by Sinhalese Buddhists and the ensuing protests and violent incidents led to the security forces being reinforced in the area to protect the statue. The issue politically galvanized the Tamil voters and contributed to the victory of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in local elections. [7]
Another notable incident contributing the volatile atmosphere was the massacre of five Tamil students in the town on 2 January 2006 by the Special Task Force, with a warning that Tamils will be evicted from the eastern province. According to the UTHR, this was intended as the prelude to the revival of "Sinhalisation of the East" ideological project that was being pursued by the extremist elements increasingly dominating the Defence Ministry. [6] [10]
On 7 April 2006, Vanniyasingham Vigneswaran, a prominent Tamil political activist and a supporter of the LTTE, was assassinated by state-affiliated paramilitary forces. He had led the protests against the Buddha statue and spearheaded the TNA victory after campaigning on the issues of the statue and the massacre of students. Following Vigneswaran's funeral on the morning of 11 April, the LTTE was suspected to have carried out the claymore mine attacks on the security forces and police in the district on that evening and the following morning, killing and injuring dozens. [4]
As the Trincomalee town was buzzing with commercial activity in preparation for the upcoming Tamil and Sinhala New Year celebrations, a parcel bomb exploded at the vegetable market on Central Road around 3:50 pm. Six Sinhalese civilians and a soldier were killed. [4] Although the bomb was widely suspected to have been planted by the LTTE targeting security personnel, local Tamils felt that it was a setup by the security forces to attack Tamils and this was reportedly confirmed to a Tamil official by a Navy man. [11]
Soon after the explosion, some naval personnel stationed nearby came running to the blast site shooting at random, reportedly hitting some people. [4] A small crowd was also seen throwing stones and breaking vehicles on the premises of a large Tamil business establishment near the blast site. [11]
Later on, within 15 minutes of the blast, gangs of young Sinhalese men armed with knives, swords, clubs and guns arrived in trucks and auto-rickshaws. The gangs consisted of security personnel in civilian clothing, auxiliary home guards and thugs from an illegal settlement under Army patronage. What started out as a relatively minor mob violence now became an organized one on a large scale, with the mob joining the organized gangs. Numbering between 100 and 150, the gangs went on a rampage through the town's business area along the Central Road and North Coast Road, with Tamil businesses being the primary targets. Tamil shops were singled out and systematically looted and burned, reminiscent of the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983. The large Tamil business establishment, RR Marketing, was set on fire by the gangs; the owner and his employees were able to flee, and he had to start over for the fifth time since 1983. Overall, about 30 Tamil shops and 2 Muslim shops were burned. [4] [11]
Tamil civilians were also attacked, hacked to death and burned with gasoline. Several Tamil women were slashed with knives and swords, including a mother and her two-year-old child, with their faces, hands and breasts being mutilated. Reportedly six Tamil women were killed. Some Tamils were thrown into their burning shops. [4] The Navy was at the centre of the violence, actively participating, with a senior naval officer later admitting to the Navy's involvement in organizing the violence. [11] [12] Most witnesses claimed that the Navy was specially brutal toward civilians. [13] A Tamil youth who was shot at by a sailor but was missed as he was trying to get to his father's shop on Central Road witnessed the brutality of the naval personnel. The youth saw a sailor handing a man over to a sword-wielding thug telling him, "This is a Tamil, chop him". He also saw another sailor striking the head of a Tamil woman lying on the road injured from the market blast with the butt of his gun. [11]
The violence later spread to the outskirts of the town. [4] In Anpuvalipuram, a grenade was thrown at a Tamil shop and two Tamil shops were burned down, reported pro-rebel TamilNet citing civil sources. [14] In Linganagar, a petrol station was burned and a Tamil man standing in front of it was hacked to death; two Tamils travelling on a motorcycle were slashed and burned alive; [15] three burned bodies of Tamils were found inside a three-wheeler the next day, reported pro-rebel TamilNet citing medical sources. [16] Tamil youths were slashed in areas in Keniyadi and near Madathady junction. [15]
There was also a surge in sexual violence against Tamil women by the security forces. Four women who went to a shop that came under attack were abducted in a van and subsequently raped and robbed. A medical practitioner reported that Anpuvalipuram had a high prevalence of rape by the Navy and home guards, and mentioned an 18-year-old girl and two older women as among those who had come to consult him from there. [17]
While the violence raged for two hours, the security forces and the police stationed in the area remained spectators without intervening. The policemen were ordered by their Headquarters Inspector not to take action against the Sinhalese gangs. Further evidence of state complicity was reinforced by the fact that all attempts by the businesses to contact the top security officials by telephone went unanswered despite the assurance given to them earlier that year that they could be called in case of an emergency. [11]
A rumour was now floating around about an ethnic cleansing campaign at night. The plan was to drive the Tamils out of Trincomalee permanently and displace them in refugee camps. Fearing further violence, many Tamils fled their homes, seeking refuge in public buildings and places of worship. The violence was stopped only after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh telephoned Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and urged him to protect Tamil civilians, thus averting a bigger disaster. A curfew was finally imposed and the security forces dispersed the gangs but no arrests were made. [3]
Although the government and some media reports suggested that the violence was a spontaneous reaction to the bomb blast, a team of Colombo-based civil society groups after undertaking a fact-finding mission reported that there had been "an element of pre-planning". [2] Accordingly, journalist D.B.S. Jeyaraj stated: [3]
"this was no instance of angry mobs going berserk, but a case of cold-blooded calculation. It appears that a plan had been formulated to attack Tamils beforehand, and that the explosion was like a green-light signal."
Seven Tamil victims of the riots were identified; however, several charred bodies presumed to be Tamils went unidentified, some Tamil residents reported missing were feared dead and locals suspected that many Tamil corpses were disposed of by their killers. [4] One estimate suggested over 20 Tamil and Muslim civilians were killed [18] and another 19 people. [2] About 70 people, mostly Tamils, were injured and 50 needed hospital treatment. [4]
On 14 April, following the discovery of the dead body of a Sinhalese youth in Mihindapura who had gone missing the previous day, another bout of anti-Tamil riots erupted on the outskirts of the Trincomalee town. Sinhalese mobs in Mihindapura with the help of the Army went on a rampage, setting fire to about 15 Tamil houses in the village and then burned down over 40 houses in the neighbouring Tamil village of Nadesapuram, 50 Tamil houses in Kanniya and 4-5 houses in Andankulam. The office and other properties of the Trincomalee District Youth Development Aham, a humanitarian NGO, was burned down. Nadeswarar Hindu temple was also burned down and a 60-year-old Tamil woman Somasuntharam Maheswary was dragged out of the temple and hacked to death. Also among the killed were an Indian national and astrologer Venkadasamy Venkatraman (30); and an employee of the Trincomalee district secretariat Thannimalai Namasivayalingam (28). Tamil villagers in affected and surrounding areas fled their homes, seeking refuge in schools and places of worship. By 20 April, the violence had displaced 2673 persons (723 families) according to an official estimate. [11] [4] Other estimates put the figure at over 3000. [2] Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation made an urgent appeal for aid for total of 3306 internally displaced persons. [19]
Tamil families sheltered in the school Varothiayanagar Bharathi Vidiyalayam recounted their ordeal: [20]
"Our houses were burnt, properties were destroyed and we were attacked by thugs with knives and clubs while the State armed forces and police looked on. No one came to our rescue. We fled from our houses and sought refuge elsewhere to save our lives."
On 21 April, further anti-Tamil violence erupted in other areas of the district following a claymore mine explosion in Kiliveddy in which a Sinhalese home guard was killed. An armed Sinhalese mob went on a rampage, burning down 45 houses in the Tamil villages Menkamam and Bharathipuram. Several Tamil civilians were killed, including a 32-year-old labourer Jeyachandran and another youth who were shot and hacked to death. Several Tamil women were also raped. Hundreds of Tamil families fled their homes to seek shelter in temples and schools. [6] [21]
On 14 April 2006, the Parliamentary Group of the Tamil National Alliance issued a statement condemning violence, accusing the state of orchestrating the ethnic cleansing of the Tamil population of Trincomalee: [22]
"Like the July 1983 genocidal pogrom against the Tamils, the current violence against the Tamil speaking people has been unleashed in Trincomalee with the connivance of the SL Navy...The TNA considers that these continuous acts of State Terror are being unleashed on the Tamil speaking people, with the specific objective of terrorizing the Tamil speaking people into fleeing the Trincomalee District with the intention of ethnically cleansing the District of Tamils."
On 14 April 2006, the LTTE's district political head S. Elilan issued a warning of major escalation if the violence continued: [23]
"If the genocide attacks by State armed forces with the connivance of Sinhalese hoodlums continue in the Trincomalee district we would be forced to take steps to safeguard the lives and properties of innocent Tamil people in the district and that would lead to undesirable serious consequence on the current peace process."
On 15 April 2006, members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industries of Trincomalee District (CCITD) representing local businesses issued a statement during a conference accusing the security forces and the police of inaction every time their businesses had been targeted in rioting since 1977. They demanded compensation for the losses suffered and an assurance that pre-planned attacks on their businesses will not occur. [24]
As the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE resumed, Trincomalee town alone had had the highest rate of killing of civilians by state-linked forces by the start of 2007 and majority of the civilians killed in the district as a whole during this period were Tamils with perpetrators being overwhelmingly linked to the state. Tamil business community in particular continued to be the targets of attacks in Trincomalee. [6] A prominent Tamil businessman and philanthropist Thambirajah Mayuran was murdered in his premises on 5 August 2006 by naval personnel in a plot hatched by a local Sinhalese chauvinist group to eliminate leading members of the Tamil community with the intention to demoralize it. [25]
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
Black July 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.
The 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom and riots in Ceylon, also known as the 58 riots, refer to the first island-wide ethnic riots and pogrom to target the minority Tamils in the Dominion of Ceylon after it became an independent dominion from Britain in 1948. The riots lasted from 22 May until 29 May 1958 although sporadic disturbances happened even after the declaration of emergency on 27 May 1958. The estimates of the murders range, based on recovered bodies, from 158 to 1,500. Although most of the victims were Tamils, Sinhalese and their property were also affected by retaliatory attacks by Tamil mobs throughout the Batticaloa and Jaffna districts. As the first full-scale race riot in the country in over forty years, the events of 1958 shattered the trust the communities had in one another and led to further polarisation.
Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonization schemes is the government program of settling mostly Sinhalese farmers from the densely populated wet zone into the sparsely populated areas of the dry zone. This has taken place since the 1950s near tanks and reservoirs being built in major irrigation and hydro-power programs such as the Mahaweli project.
2006 Trincomalee massacre of students or "Trinco 5" was the murder of five Tamil schoolboys by the Special Task Force (STF) in Trincomalee town on 2 January 2006. The case has received considerable international attention and is regarded as an emblematic case of impunity since no one has been held accountable for the crimes.
The 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka followed the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalistic Tamil United Liberation Front won a plurality of minority Sri Lankan Tamil votes. In the elections, the party stood for secession. An official government estimate put the death toll at 125, whereas other sources estimate that around 300 Tamils were killed by Sinhalese mobs. Human rights groups, such as the UTHR-J, accused the newly elected UNP-led government of orchestrating the violence.
The Kumudini or Kumuthini boat massacre happened on 15 May 1985, when at least 23 minority Sri Lankan Tamil adults and children on a ferry boat named Kumudini sailing from the island of Delft to the island of Nainathivu were killed by Sri Lankan Navy personnel.
The Kent and Dollar Farm massacres were the first massacres of Sinhalese civilians carried out by the LTTE during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The massacres took place on 30 November 1984, in two tiny farming villages in the Mullaitivu district in north-eastern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government labeled this as an attack on civilians by the LTTE.
The Pottuvil Massacre was the killing of 10 Muslim labourers who had gone to repair the bund of Rattal Tank in Pottuvil in the southern part of the Ampara District on 17 September 2006. The victims were all men aged between 18–35 whose bodies were found hacked to death the next morning. The massacre was widely believed to have been carried out by the Special Task Force (STF).
Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.
Weli Oya,(Sinhala: වැලිඔය, romanized: Weli Oya) is a Sinhalese colony area in Mullaithivu District, Sri Lanka formerly known as Manal Aru. Weli Oya has been affected by the Sri Lankan civil war and government Sinhala colonization programs.
The 1985 Trincomalee massacres refers to a series of mass murder of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese home guards in Trincomalee District, Sri Lanka. In a succession of events that spanned over two months, hundreds of Tamil civilians were massacred and thousands were driven out by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese mobs in order to colonize the area. Almost every Tamil settlement in the district was destroyed during this well-orchestrated campaign to drive out the local Tamil population. Several Tamil women were also raped. In September 1985, the entire Tamil population of Trincomalee town was displaced to forests and refugee camps in an attack that wiped out the town, including the destruction of 12 temples and a mosque. Since August 16, over 50,000 Tamils who were forced to flee the town ended up in refugee camps in the Jaffna and Batticaloa districts.
The Manal Aru massacres of 1984 refers to a series of massacres of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military across numerous traditional Tamil villages in the Manal Aru region which spans across the Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts. The motive behind the massacres was to drive out the local Tamil population from their villages, in order to replace them with thousands of Sinhala settlers.
The 1987 Eastern Province massacres were a series of massacres of the Sinhalese population in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka by Tamil mobs and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Though they began spontaneously, they became more organized, with the LTTE leading the violence. Over 200 Sinhalese were killed by mob and militant violence, and over 20,000 fled the Eastern Province. The violence has been described as having had the appearance of a pogrom, with the objective of removing Sinhalese from the Eastern Province.
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.
The 1983 anti Tamil pogrom in Trincomalee was organised violence by Sinhalese mobs and security forces, which targeted the Tamil population of Trincomalee between June and July 1983.