Although ethnic tensions preceded this event, known as Black July, by decades, it is often considered the beginning of the Sri Lankan civil war.īlack July lives on through communal memory, of course, but also in photographs. What happened in Colombo echoed all over the country, and many Tamils fled, some leaving Sri Lanka forever. The death toll is estimated to have been in the thousands, although no official number was ever announced. The violence raged for days before then-President J.R. Tamils were murdered or displaced, Tamil houses and offices burned. The night after the ambush, mobs from the country’s Sinhalese majority targeted and attacked Tamils-members of the country’s largest ethnic minority group-in Colombo.
The violence followed the deaths of 13 Sinhalese Sri Lankan Army soldiers at the hands of Tamil militants in the city of Jaffna. In July 1983, Sri Lanka’s capital of Colombo erupted in anti-Tamil pogroms effectively sanctioned by the state.
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