Portrait

In 1983:
The musical Annie is performed for the last time after 2,377 shows at the Uris Theatre on Broadway, New York City.

High ranking Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.

Björn Borg retires from tennis after winning 5 consecutive Wimbledon championships.

Six men walk underwater across the Sydney Harbor - 82.9 km in 48 hours.

Vanessa Lynn Williams becomes the first African-American to be crowned Miss America, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Pope John Paul II visits the man that tried to assassinate him, Mehmet Ali Ağca, in prison to forgive him.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating a federal holiday on the third Monday of every January to honor American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Michael Jackson’s world famous music video for “Thriller” is broadcast for the first time. It will become the most often repeated and famous music video of all time and increase his own popularity and the record sales of the album “Thriller”.

McDonald’s introduces the McNugget.

The Black July, a communal riot occurs in Sri Lanka. These anti Sri Lankan Tamil riots leaves over 1,000 Tamils massacred and millions of dollars worth of their property destroyed. This pogrom is the beginning of a deadly Sri Lankan civil war in Sri Lanka.

25 years ago, the lives of normal Sri Lankans turned upside down. 13 soldiers were killed in Jaffna, and in revenge, normal Sinhalese men united to create furious, violent mobs that destroyed, burned and killed. Houses went up in flames, people ran from their homes in fear, shops were looted, property destroyed, lives taken. The Sri Lankan people were always a hot, passionate people. But July 1983 will always serve as a reminder as to just how hot and just how passionate.

Every one of us knows at least one person affected by the riots of July 1983. They are poor people, who were forced to flee their homes, leave behind their humble belongings and never return. But they are also people that aren’t usually recognized as victims of these riots; they are people sitting in high ranking positions in big, corporate offices in Colombo today, who also suffered; who watched their homes burn to the ground, and returned to its charred, blackened remains to find that everything that had survived the mobs had been stolen by their neighbours. They are not only nameless, faceless people living in poverty in refugee camps; they are aunts, grandmothers, bosses, the family of a friend; people that you and I both know. And while there are the victims that we all know are victims, there are many victims that no one sees as victims; they hide behind a clever veneer of success and happiness.

25 years down the line, it has never happened again, and yet, violence still exists. And because it does not exist in such a grandiose, history-making scale, we tend to forget sometimes that it does, and that it is still very much real. A problem possibly bigger than even the war itself, corruption, looms over us and threatens to destroy everything.

While we must seek hope in the fact that it has never happened again, we must remind ourselves that even though it may not be making the headlines in international news, the people of Sri Lanka continue to live with a terrible reality. They are the brave, bold people that are witness every day to incredible injustice and suffering. And while our past is one that is painful to remember, our present is still miserable for many too.

May Black July never happen again. And as much as it may be difficult to remember, if we are to forget, then we are at the risk of it happening all over again.