The date traditionally fitted to the start of the civil war is 23 July 1983, when the Tigers killed 13 soldiers in an army patrol in Jaffna. For nearly a week thereafter, in what came to be known as the Black July riots, Sinhalese mobs visited retribution upon Tamils across the south of the country, killing more than three thousand men, women and children, unhindered—and sometimes even abetted—by the police. Cars were stopped on the road and, if they were found to contain Tamils, burned without hesitation. Property was looted. Even before the practice grew notorious in South Africa’s race
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