posted July 28, 2000 12:34 AM            

SOME SPECIFIC INCIDENTS SUFFERED BY INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES DURING THE WEEK OF VIOLENCE:

At about 1 a.m. in the early morning of July 24th, members of a Sri Lankan Tamil family consisting of husband and wife and two small children, were awoken by banging and a lot of noise outside the door of the flat where they stayed at weekends. The flat was in an area of Colombo not far from the cemetery where the violence had begun. The husband went to the door to find a large angry mob outside armed with axes, knives, bottles, iron bars, indeed an assortment of weapons, though one thing upon which he did comment was the number of new shining knives which the people were brandishing. Immediately upon his opening the door the crowd demanded to know whether he was a Tamil or a Sinhalese. He did not reply directly to this question but replied in Sinhalese (in which he was fluent) telling the crowd the name of the location where he currently worked and had worked for the past twenty years. This was a sinhalese town and the place where the family home was situated.

The leaders of the mob, upon hearing him speak, assumed that he was Sinhalese and ceased their menacing behaviuor. The crowd then began gradually to leave and move down the stairs. However, as this was happening, a woman, whome the family did not know, stepped forward with a piece of paper in her hands and shouted, "They are Tamils". Immediately the crowd turned, became very threatening, and pushed into the flat. Some people began to destroy things within the flat, and fridge, stove and kitched equipment were thrown out of the window. Other members of the mob brandished weapons as this was being done.

Tbe family's two small children were petrified and fled to hide under one of the beds. No attempt to resist was made. Parents and children were very frightened, and the parents felt that any sign of resistance or any false move on their part could cause a loss of temper or loss of control and result in blood shed. Finally the husband asked permission to take his wife and children out of the flat, and they were allowed to leave.>

Their two children have been extremely badly frightened by these experiences. The seven year old son did not stop shaking for hours after the family's escape from the flat, and he began shaking again on the following day. This shaking continued for several hours. When he was asked what sort of house he would like to live in the most important aspect to him was that all houses should have strong iron bars and heavy locks on all doors and windows.

Incident B:

The following events are reported to have heppened to 5 families living close to each other in Karallapona, near Colmbo. Their houses were attacked and burned on July 26th. All 5 families then moved into a camp for displaced persons. In the camp the sanitary conditions were so bad that the men decided to go back to their houses to see if they could wash there. While they were doing this a crowd collected at their houses and all 5 men were hacked to death and burnt. All of them had been senior government executives. At the time no one knew why the men failed to return to the camps. Their wives and families left the camps to travel by ship to Jaffna still not knowing the fate of their husbands, but this is the report which now has been transmitted to them.

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