CAMPACC: Campaign Against Criminalising Communities

• 1: Home
• 2: About Campacc
  • 2.1: Aims and objectives
  • 2.2: Statements about anti-terror laws
    • 2.2.1: CAMPACC statement: Anti-terrorism laws: unjust powers serving the politics of fear (2008)
    • 2.2.2: CAMPACC statement: Creating Terrorist Suspects (2005)
    • 2.2.3: CAMPACC statement: The "war on terror" at home: We're all targets of the state (2003)
• 3: News & events
• 4: Campaigns
  • 4.1: Campaigning on legislation
    • 4.1.2: Oppose the Counter Terrorism Act 2008
  • 4.2: Terror bans
    • 4.2.1: 'Terrorist lists' seminar series 2009
    • 4.2.2: 'Terrorist lists' seminar series 2008
    • 4.2.3: 'Terrorist' lists project with Statewatch
    • 4.2.4: Communities targeted for harassment and prosecutions
    • 4.2.5: Charities accounts frozen or denied
  • 4.3: Detainees and control orders
    • 4.3.5: Letters from detainees
  • 4.4: Everyday harassment
  • 4.5: Torture & rendition
  • 4.6: Right to protest & free expression
  • 4.7: CAMPACC conferences
  • 4.8: Self-determination
• 5: Resources
  • 5.1: Legislation, rulings & CAMPACC responses
    • 5.1.4: Proscribed groups
  • 5.2: Publications & campaign materials to buy
    • 5.2.1: CAMPACC t-shirts
    • 5.2.2: Taxi To The Darkside
    • 5.2.3: Big Brother
    • 5.2.4: A Permanent State of Terror?
    • 5.2.5: Listen to the Refugee's Story
  • 5.3: CAMPACC statements, press releases...
  • 5.4: CAMPACC articles, reports...
  • 5.5: Useful articles
  • 5.6: Film & audio
• 6: You can help
  • 6.1: Become a supporter
  • 6.2: Volunteer
  • 6.3: Donate
  • 6.4: Sign up for emails
• 7: Links
• 8: Contact us
• 10: Together Against Prevent

31-07-2018

In the week beginning 23rd of July 2018, Sri Lankan Tamils across the world marked the thirty-fifth year of the horrors of the anti-Tamil pogrom of Black July 1983 (Kaṟuppu Yūlai). By all account what happened was a horrific bloodbath when Tamils were killed by Sinhala mobs in Colombo and across the country. Saleh Mamon, 31 July 2018

In the western press and elsewhere these atrocities are often presented as race riots. But according to A.Sivanandan who left Colombo after an attack on his family home during the widespread pogrom in 1958, there have been no race riots in Sri Lanka since independence. What there has been a series of increasingly virulent pogroms against the Tamil people by the Sinhala state.

The turning point was the 1956 election, when Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, launched a new party, Sri Lankan Freedom Party(SLFP), with a racist platform of Sinhala-Buddhist first to win the majority of Sinhalese Buddhist vote and on winning a landslide,swiftly legislated to make Sinhala the official language and Buddhism the state religion. This attacked Tamil livelihoods and achievement because English education had been a passport for social mobility into the professions and administrative services. Peaceful protests were crushed by the police; any attempts at reconciliation were suppressed by the Sinhalese reaction. This set off a vicious political race to the bottom when the defeated United National Party (UNP) adopted the same platform in competing for power.

Read more here.