Interview with Ambika Satkunanathan: Black July 1983 

This is what they teach about the Tamil Genocide in Canada every year in month of May (3rd week ) in schools. (It's not in the textbook)

Ambika Satkunanathan: Very sorry 😢 for your pain n suffering. Sad to hear Black July.

How can I conduct ambika madam?Iam on critical condition.

What the Singalese masses needs to get it is... without rule of law, freedom of speech and due process, you dont have a country! Some are complaining about LTTE, ltte is a creation of the majority Sinhala Buddhist nationalist, from 1958. All along for 60 years it was the symptom that was treated, not the root cause. What the previous generations sowed this generation is reaping, SAME GOES TO BOTH COMMUNITIES. If both communities cannot respect their differences, then its best to go apart for some time and see which one supersedes the other, and then start colonizing economically again, like what India is trying with AKD.

Agree that it was a black mark in our history which the govt of the time could have minimised had it been more vigilant and active but it would be honest for these so called experts on transnational justice etc if they acknowledged the role the LTTE played in all this. Reconciliation for example - a much harangued word- is between whom and whom, for example? I am just tired of rhetoric. We need to move on and get a life. We have all been touched by war in some ways and some, in many ways. We know what the LTTE did. None of what she says can whitewash their gruesome deeds. Who speaks for the innocent people targeted by suicide bombers? Does anyone go around the World speaking for them and their families numbering thousands? No one but only 1983 riots are highlighted and revisited over and over again. Enough.

I'd like to make my late father's famous comment to obviously engineered lopsided videos of this nature. He'd just retired from the SLAF in 82ish after a quarter century or so of military service commanding the SLAF civil and general engineering directorates as the DCE, but, i must add illegally or unconventionaly, he dons his SLAF uniform again on that black day of july 83 and for about a week more. Our entire family is Sinhalese not even a Tamilian intermarriage in the extended family. The business of been Sinhalese and the SLAF uniform + the green colored canvass topped Mitsubishi 4dr that he'd commandeered from somewhere allowed him to move about the chaos with some impunity. He spent the entirety of that black day and the next 7-10 days shuttling Tamil families to safety. Many personally to the katunayake airport others to consolidated locations of safety from which they moved on to jaffna. To this kinda video he would say "not a bugger of you would be alive if some Sinhalese family/person didn't save your arsses." True. Muslims, also tamil speakers, would have nothing to do with saving Tamils lest these "pogrom" mobs turned on them as well. It was the overwhelming ordinary Sinhalese majority that did save the tamils. This Sakunnanandan woman very conveniently doesn't say, particularly which wall these ladders and tables were set against to jump in to the neighbours compound... she just calls them "the neighbour"... well in that time the bloody neighbour they felt would provide them safety was invariably a Sinhalese house. If she amd her family jumped the wall to another Tamil house that too would have been a targetted house, they most certainly couldn't have jumped on to the road and run along it, the organised "pogrom" gangs would have totalled them on the road (as many unfortunately were... i am a child witness to the tamil family car set on fire with the family inside at the cematary junction roundabout Colombo 7)... the sakunanandan family and ither Tamil families only solace and guaranteed saftey was to be sheltered in a Sinhalese house hold. Our house in addition to been Sinhalese was also known as the guwanhamudawe mahaththaya ge gedera (the Air Force officer's house) in the local township... so we had extra impunity than been just a known Sinhalese houshold... we sheltered not just tamil neighbours but totally unknown Tamil families 25-30 pax, a night/day... admittedly utterly scared and distraught sitting on their haunches on the floor of our living room and guest rooms but knowing their lives were safe and not hungry eating food we shared with them. Some of the Tamil ladies would help mom in the cooking and strangely amidst the chaos and fear i remember the food the Tamil aunty's cooked as been unusual and tasty. This doesn't seem to ever get shared by the current generation of Tamils they pretend that the bloody fairy godmother saved their arses. As this Sakunanandan woman admits her memories too were child memories... most of her parent's generation remained grateful to their Sinhalese friends that saved them, but the sakunanandanan woman generation conveniently leaves out the fact as my father would say with commanding military certainty "not a bugger of you would be alive if some Sinhalese family didn't save your arses!" This fact is utterly ignored, intentionally lopsidedly by these speakers to gain political mileage of vested interests... listen to actual Tamil young citizens like Arun Siddharthan have to say and the truth will be out.

The primary cause of Black July was the death of 13 Sri Lankan Army soldiers in an ambush by the Liberation Tigers of Eelam, a Tamil armed organization.