Jaffna Library burned down
The burning down of the library of Jaffna ( Tamil : யாழ் பொது நூலகம் எரிப்பு Yāḻ potu nūlakam erippu ,) occurred on the night of May 31 to June 1, 1981. The central library of the city of Jaffna in Sri Lanka was destroyed by arson .
The fire marked a major event at the start of Sri Lanka's civil war . Since independence in 1948, tensions between the Sinhalese majority population and the Sri Lankan Tamil minority had increased from decade to decade. The Sinhalese-dominated governments had pursued a policy of discrimination and repression against the Tamils, which resulted in the position of the Tamils becoming aggravated and radicalized. The politically dominant party of the Tamils, the Tamil United Liberation Front , demanded in the Vaddukoddai Resolution 1976 the establishment of an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka. In the run-up to the 1981 regional elections, the TULF held an election rally in Jaffna, at which three Sinhala police officers were shot, two of whom were fatally injured. After that, a Sinhalese mob broke out, against which the police did not take sufficient action or even took part. The TULF party office was set on fire, as were Tamil press buildings. Tamil shops and homes were ransacked, and four Tamils were murdered. On the night of May 31st to June 1st, 1981, the library was also set on fire and burned down completely.
In the year it was destroyed, the library was considered the largest and best-stocked library in South Asia . Among the nearly 100,000 works destroyed were palm leaf manuscripts and works and manuscripts by the Tamil author Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy , and many other eminent Tamil writers and intellectuals. The Tamil community in Sri Lanka was proud to see it as an important archive and symbol of Tamil culture. The destruction was perceived by the Tamils as an attempt to destroy their culture. Many Sinhalese politicians played down the events, in the sense that only a few drunken police officers rioted.
The event is considered to be one of the most devastating examples of book burnings in the 20th century . To date, no charges have been made, and none of the parties involved have ever been held accountable.
A few weeks after the fire, civil war openly broke out on July 23, 1983 when the LTTE attacked a Sri Lankan army patrol near Thirunelveli.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Rebecca Knuth: Destroying a Symbol: Checkered History of Sri Lanka's Jaffna Public Library. (pdf) June 27, 2006, accessed on June 1, 2019 (contribution to the World Library and Information Congress in Seoul from August 20–24, 2006).
- ↑ Jayantha Seneviratne: The reconstruction of the Jaffna library. January 30, 2002, archived from the original on December 24, 2005 ; accessed on May 31, 2019 (English).
- ^ Burning Memories Documentary on Jaffna Library .