Marking the 30 year anniversary of the Black July anti-Tamil pogrom, the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), said that it "was not an 'anti-Tamil riot' but the most naked act of Genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil nation", intended "not merely to cause death to the Tamils, it was also designed to ethnically cleanse Tamils from the Sinhala homeland and at the same time structurally undermine the self-sustaining economy of the Tamil nation".
In a statement to Tamils worldwide, marking the 30 year anniversary with remembrance events taking place Saturday, the TNPF added:
"Apologists of the Sri Lankan state are endeavouring to depict the events of July ’83 as a one-off incident that has never, and will never be repeated. But the reality is that with Black July, the armed struggle of the Tamils escalated and with such escalation, the acts of Genocide against the Tamils were cloaked in so-called counter insurgency actions. Mullivaikkal in May ’09 was merely the peak of the Genocide of the Tamil Nation that first caught the attention of the world through the events of Black July."
See here for full statement.
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