Burning of Jaffna Library - The Riot and The Burning

The Riot and The Burning

On Sunday May 31, 1981, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), a regionally popular democratic party, held a rally in which three majority Sinhalese policeman were shot and two killed.Political situation

That night police and paramilitaries began a pogrom that lasted for three days. The head office of TULF party was destroyed. The office of the Eelanaadu, a local newspaper, was also destroyed. Statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures were destroyed or defaced.

Four people were pulled from their homes and killed at random. Many business establishments and a local Hindu temple were also deliberately destroyed.

On the night of May 31, according to many eyewitnesses, police and government-sponsored paramilitias set fire to the Jaffna public library and destroyed it completely. Over 97,000 volumes of books along with numerous culturally important and irreplaceable manuscripts were destroyed. Among the destroyed items were scrolls of historical value and the works and manuscripts of philosopher, artist and author Ananda Coomaraswamy and prominent intellectual Prof. Dr. Isaac Thambiah. The destroyed articles included memoirs and works of writers and dramatists who made a significant contribution toward the sustenance of the Tamil culture and those of locally reputed physicians and politicians.

Nancy Murray wrote in a journal article in 1984 that several high-ranking security officers and two cabinet ministers were present in the town of Jaffna, when uniformed security men and plainclothes mob carried out organized acts of destruction. After 20 years the government-owned Daily News newspaper, in an editorial in 2001, termed the 1981 event as an act by goon squads let loose by the then government.