The best laid plans of government men …
Ten years after Black July, Ivan sets out the official toll of the 1983 riots and records what K. Ganeshalingam, UNP Treasurer and Cyril Mathew’s friend, told him one evening: that the government’s main leaders planned the violence to turn rising Sinhala anger away from themselves, and that UNP men committed election offences in Jaffna in 1981. He explains why he kept the account back for two years.