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Frequently Answered Questions

  • When was the Jaffna Public Library burned?
    On midnight 31st May 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, was set ablaze. It was burnt down during days of mob violence between May 31 - June 2, 1981.
  • What led to the burning of the Jaffna Library?
    Officers of the Sri Lankan police force, who were taken to Jaffna by two senior Sri Lankan cabinet ministers, Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake, to observe and disrupt a rally organized by the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) got into a confrontation which led to the death of three police officers.
  • Why was the Jaffna library targeted?
    The library has emotional significance for all of the island's Tamil minority as their cultural capital resided in the library, which housed close to 100,000 Tamil books, such as the Yalpanam Vaipavama was a rare book that held the history of Jaffna, that was literally irreplaceable, being the only copies in existence which burned to ashes.
  • What was the impact on Tamils due to the burning of the library?
    This was an act of cultural genocide, Tamils lost their identity. The library was free to the public and was filled with the rich knowledge of unique and irreplaceable books about their heritage, ayurvedic medicine and many more. Anything about the history of Tamils was destroyed so they can annihilate the Tamils.
  • How many books were burned?
    Over 95,000 unique and irreplaceable Tamil palm leaves (ola), manuscripts, parchments, books, magazines and newspapers, were destroyed during the burning
  • Who ordered the attack on the library?
    They were a larger group of a hundred officers of the Sri Lankan police force, who were taken to Jaffna by two senior Sri Lankan cabinet ministers, Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake.
  • Has the Sri Lankan government acknowledged what they did?
    In December 2016, an ‘apology’ for the burning was sanctioned, by the current Sri Lankan Prime Minister at the time Ranil Wickremesinghe.
  • What is the objective of this Jaffna Library Burning website?
    The objective of this website is to memorialize this incident and to educate others about the atrocities that Tamils endured.
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