{"id":89433,"date":"2019-05-27T23:47:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T05:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=89433"},"modified":"2021-09-22T16:43:09","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T23:43:09","slug":"the-jaffna-public-library-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/27\/the-jaffna-public-library-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"THE JAFFNA PUBLIC LIBRARY Part 2 (Revised)"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

2nd revision\n20.9.21<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night of\n31 May 1981, while Jaffna slept, this library was set on fire.There\nwas a run up to this. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) decided to\ncontest the District Development Council (DDC) elections to be held on June 4,\n1981. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 31,\n1981, the TULF held a massive election rally near the Nachchimaar Amman Temple in\nJaffna.  Two unidentified gunmen shot at\nthe police and fled the scene, killing three Sinhala  policemen. The two hundred police personnel\npresent rioted and burnt boutiques, shops, houses, cars and \u2018commercial\nestablishments\u2019. These attacks were the worst that the people of Jaffna had\nexperienced so far, reported the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night police and paramilitaries began a pogrom<\/a>\nthat lasted for three days, said Wikipedia. The head office of TULF<\/a>\nparty was destroyed. The Jaffna MP V. Yogeswaran<\/a>‘s\nresidence was also destroyed. Four people were pulled from their homes and\nkilled at random. Many business establishments, a Hindu temple<\/a>  and the office of the Eelanaadu,<\/em> a\nlocal newspaper, were also destroyed. Statues of Tamil<\/a>\ncultural and religious figures were destroyed or defaced, said Wikipedia <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night\nof June 1, 1981, the Jaffna public Library was burned. The burning of the\nlibrary lasted the entire night. Yogendra Duraiswamy, then GA, Jaffna,\nrequested the Navy base in Karainagar and the Municipality for bowsers of water\nto extinguish the fire. He found that the Municipal Office was closed and the\nwater tower locked. The city was virtually deserted. Although the Navy\u2019s\nbrowser arrived at the scene, its capacity was inadequate to douse the roaring\nfire. No one had dared to come out that night. None of the TULF politicians\nwere present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is only after\nit was burned down that Jaffna Public Library rose to world attention. This\notherwise obscure library suddenly became a great library. The world was told\nof the magnificent collection it once held and how Jaffna was grieving about\nthe burning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was\ngenuine grief as well. That night one of our distinguished teachers at St\nPatrick\u2019s College, and a well-respected linguist, Rev. Dr. H. S. David died of\na heart attack on being informed of the terrible tragedy, reported\nSantiapillai. Fr. T.M.F. Long who worked so tirelessly and contributed so much\nto establish the Jaffna Library reacted with intense grief and suffered a heart\nattack and died a broken man in Australia, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One would\nexpect that the chief  librarian of the\nJaffna public library, who would have been safely asleep while the library was\nburning, would have been interviewed \nlater  and asked what valuable\nresources the library had held. But he does not appear once in the story. He\nhas not been interviewed. We do not even know his name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The library\nburned down but the national newspapers did not report the incident. In Tamil\nNadu, newspapers did not report the burning for several days. The Hindu noted\non 6 June 1981 that a public library with its entire collection of books has\nbeen burnt\u201d, and on 13 June it quoted Amirthalingam saying that the library had\nheld 95,000 volumes, some of which were rare and centuries old\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UNP\ngovernment of J.R.Jayewardene did not hold an inquiry to establish\nresponsibility either.   To date, no one\nhas been indicted for the crime.  Since\nthere was no inquiry, there was much speculation as to \u2018who done it.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following\nassortment have been charged, each separately, with burning the Jaffna public\nlibrary:  Cyril Mathew, Gamini\nDissanayake, Police, Army, LTTE,   UNP\ngovernment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The library was burned by police and thugs\nbrought into Jaffna mostly from Kurunegala, by Ministers Cyril Mathew and\nGamini Dissanayake to help to rig the Jaffna DDC elections and to commit such\nviolence as deemed necessary, said Devanesan Nesiah, among others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.B. Wijekoon\nsquashed this.  He said he was the only\nGovernment minister in Jaffna on that day and others like Minister Gamini\nDissanayake whose names have been mentioned in connection with the Jaffna\nlibrary burning, arrived only after the incident took place. Wijekoon had seen\nthe library burning <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The burning\nwas not pre-planned said U.B. Wijekoon, then District Minister for Jaffna. To\nthe best of my knowledge, It was a spontaneous act, carried out by policemen\nstationed there on election duty\u201d, Wijekoon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were\nabout 500-600 policemen who had come on duty to Jaffna. In the unrest\nleading to the DDC elections, three policemen on duty at an election rally of\nthe TULF had been shot dead. That same night several boutiques in Jaffna town\nwere set on fire, and the following day the library was set on fire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tassie Seneviratne, Former Senior Superintendent of\nPolice,   supports this. A police\nsergeant who was attached to the Jaffna Police Station told me, some years\nlater, that he poured petrol from a barrel and ignited the fire with a match\nstick, said Tassie. This police\nsergeant had regretted this ha years later and had confessed to Tassie as well\nas another DIG.   Tassie had not asked\nwho else had been involved. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police officer K.Krisnadasan \nwriting in 2015, says it was the army, not the police. He was on duty\nthat day in Jaffna. \u2018About 7.00 \u2013 7.30 pm from the station\npremises we noticed heavy smoke emerging from the Jaffna Public Library\nbuilding and we knew that the library building had been set on fire. DIG\ninstructed me to take a Police party and rush to the library immediately.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then promptly rushed with a police party\ncomprising of 2 Sub Inspectors and about 10 Constables on foot as the library\nbuilding is only about 250 yards from the Police Station. As we approached\nwithin a few yards from the library building, I noticed about 20 Army personnel\nin uniform inside the building. They were pulling down the books from the\nshelves and throwing them into the fire. <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On seeing the police party one officer came\nout followed by a few other army personnel pointing their AK47 rifles towards\nus and shouted in a rough tone in Sinhala and ordered us to get back to the\nPolice Station. The police party then received instructions from the DIG to\nreturn. After we came back to the Police Station, we saw the whole building\ngoing up in flames. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 After\nmy return to the Police Station, I made an entry in the Register\/Investigation Book regarding\nwhat I had seen. DIG\/NR too made an entry in the Officers\u2019 Visiting Book.  The DIG tried his best to contact the Army\ntop brass who were in Jaffna, to inform of the situation, but to no avail. It\nwas not advisable for the police to take any further action. What I have\nreported is what I saw. I only visited the scene after the fire has started to\nengulf the building,\n<\/em>concluded Krisnadasan.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that the army, instead of setting\nfire to the library and leaving the place, as any sensible arsonist would have\ndone, stayed on happily to make a bonfire of the books and confront anybody who\ncame. The fire would have been visible miles away. When the police appeared the\narmy came and stood before them boldly and chased them away.  We often see scenes like this in films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The culprit,\nothers said, is not any of the above, but the government of Sri Lanka .That is\nwhy the government did not appoint a commission of inquiry. In 2001, a Daily News<\/em>  editorial said  that the burning of the library was done by goonsquads let loose by the\ngovernment  Minister Champika\nRanawaka  said when visiting Jaffna on\n2010, said it was the work of \u2018goondas\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Rajapaksa\nis quoted as having said “The UNP is responsible for large scale riots and\nmassacres against the Tamils in 1983, vote rigging at the DC elections and the\nburning of the Jaffna library”.  The\nembassy of USA said in a statement issued on 12.3.2016 that the library was set ablaze<\/a> by Sri\nLankan state security forces and state sponsored mobs in 1981. In 2016, Prime\nMinister Ranil Wickremasinghe apologized in Parliament for the burning of the\nJaffna library during UNP government of 1981. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government should appoint a commission to\ngo into the truth about burning of the Jaffna Public Library, by appointing a\nhigh level judicial panel even at this late stage, said Krisnadasan, writing\nfrom Australia in 2015. The truth will never be discovered unless the various\nstories are independently examined. It is not too late to revisit the scene\nindependently and objectively, and establish the facts, taking into account the\nversions of all concerned, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The burning of\nthe Jaffna public library was excellent propaganda for the Tamil Separatist\nMovement. They made full use of it. The burnt out shell of the library is\npreserved for tourists and visitors to see. It is next to the new Jaffna Public\nLibrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca\nKnuth, Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Hawaii\nfeatured the Jaffna Public library in her book Burning Books and Leveling\nLibraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction\u201d<\/em> (2006).<\/em> She attended\nthe IFLA annual conference 2006 at Seoul, and made a presentation on the\nsubject. Here are three of her utterances, taken from the abstract of her\nspeech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n