The Incinerated Jaffna Library

(Mahizhi)

The violence unleashed on the Tamil people is a striking testament of a vicious and hostile enemy who has hardened their hearts to kindness and are willing to go to any length to destroy a race.
The massacre of people alone cannot be considered genocide. The forms of an ethnic conception continue to destroy the art and culture of the motherland, to destroy their places of worship, to expropriate the native motherland and to dehumanise Tamils, to annihilate their ancient historical evidence and to completely falsify their history. In this sense, the Jaffna Library burning that took place at midnight on May the 31st of 1981 was a tragic scar in Tamil history. The Jaffna library burning should also be seen as a war crime that could be recorded as the culmination of genocides.

The person who was instrumental in the formation of the Jaffna Library was ‘Chakkadathar’ Mr Sellappa from Atchuveli. The library, which he founded with a few books in his house on November the 11th of 1933, laid the foundation to become a public library in 1934 following a decision taken at a meeting at the Central College, Jaffna.

With the tireless work of social activists and the general public, and the generous help of foreign and local organisations, the Jaffna Public Library was relocated and a new building erected. The Jaffna Library (which has grown to possess one of the largest collection of books in South Asia with over 97,000 archives of rare manuscripts, available books, historical evidence, documents, journals, etc.) dating back to the 1800s, stands as a great testimony to the historical archeology of the Tamils to the world.

As a deliberate expression of a genocide, the Jaffna Library was set on fire by Sinhala government’s soldiers, the majority disguised as civilians who came in mobs on May the 31st of 1981. All available treasures were burned to ashes. All the Tamil hearts around the world were synonymous with the charred library. Despite the fact that the Sinhala Minister of that time Mr Gamini Dissanayake was the direct culprit in the burning of the library, no law has punished these state terrorists.

This is a genocidal war crime. A crime that must be brought before the law and punished. The Sinhala government must be held accountable for this war crime as well. Taking a look at a similar incident:

The Serbian army occupied the city of Serjevo in Bosnia and set fire to the Bosnian University Library on August 25-26th of 1992.

The library, which housed about two million books, antiques and pictures, was completely set on fire by Serbian government forces.

This heinous incident was added as the main source of the genocidal charge against the non-Serbian who was later put forward by Slobodan Milošević, the President of Serbia.

In particular, at the session of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), founded by the United Nations, on July the 8th of 2003, Harvard librarian Andras Riedlmayer recorded the testimony of Serbian forces from the Bosnian University Library.

At the same time, the library of the University of Bosnia, which was destroyed by fire, has been rehabilitated with the financial assistance of the European Union, and a ‘memorial stone related to the destruction of the library by Serbian forces’ has been opened at that gate.

The memorial stone is marked ‘Do not forget, remember and warn’.

There is no difference between the Jaffna library incident and the Bosnian library incident . In the face of a world that has accepted Serbs as war criminals, the Sinhala nation must also be imprisoned. We need justice. Let the history lessons of the world be a guide for us. We will stand upright as a united force.