Current President Is a Genocidal Leader – Father Sathivel

23-Jul-2025

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The current President is also a genocidal killer, and his political party has a history of acting as a party to genocide, said Fr. M. Sathivel, a social justice activist and coordinator of the National Movement for the Release of Political Prisoners.

In a media statement, he alleged: "The Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist leadership eagerly awaited and then orchestrated Tamil genocide, directly deploying politicians, monks, thugs, and poor Sinhala masses against Tamils. Their celebration over Tamil suffering since Black July 1983 is not just an expression of brutality but the burial of justice, truth, and Buddhist values in a mass grave."

The United National Party (UNP), led by J.R. Jayewardene with a 6/5 parliamentary majority, suppressed the 1980 workers' strike—triggered by neoliberal policies—by initiating anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983. By militarizing Sinhala youth and marginalizing Tamil youth, they destabilized the country.

Outside the North and East, economic destruction targeted Tamils. Over 3,000 Tamils were brutally murdered—burnt alive, stabbed, and hacked in front of witnesses, including children and the elderly. This was done with state resources and the military.

Over the last 30 years, this same pattern continued in Tamil homelands. The peak was reached in 2009 at Mullivaikkal, yet Sinhala chauvinism remains unsatisfied, continuing its genocidal acts in new forms.

He invoked a parable of the Buddha asking a grieving woman to find mustard seeds from a home untouched by death. He compared it to the Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake being asked to find even a handful of rice from a Tamil village untouched by genocide—impossible, because all have been affected.

To Tamils, not only July 1983 but every government since independence, every constitution, and every constitutional amendment has been entrenched in racism. No justice will ever come from such regimes.

On the 42nd anniversary of Black July, he called upon the international community, the UN, and the Human Rights Council to recognize that the Sri Lankan state has committed genocide for over 75 years and should be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Justice for Tamils must include international intervention and political solutions.