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Why do all long-distance bus companies (Greyhound) act like dinosaurs? For example: poor back-end systems, bad customer support, and difficult refunds.
Because they are dinosaurs. (Not just Greyhound, but all of them.) They hit a series of extinction-level events some thirty to fifty years ago, and the few (including Greyhound) that weren’t killed off were left for dead.And today, the motorcoach industry is so overripe for disruption as a result, that it can't even be considered a 'mature industry' when you think about it.They’re like daily newspapers and hotel franchising companies: they’re what I’d call ‘post-mature’ industries. Everything about them, and their operating model, is so past its prime, so no-longer-workable, and has accumulated layer upon layer of brokenness along the way, that, if — in this case — you wanted to own a nationwide motorcoach carrier, you’d be better off starting one from scratch and getting it right this time around than you would be if you could buy out Greyhound.One way or another, you’d be starting over from scratch, anyway. With a new carrier, you’d be limited to your investment costs. With Greyhound, you’d have to buy it at the current owners’ valuation, then completely gut it — wiping out the value of it in the process — and rebuild it from scratch, effectively paying for it twice (at least), but with a lot of uncertainty as to what value you’d be able to place on the end result.We looked at a hypothetical buyout of Choice Hotels three years ago, and arrived at the same conclusion. No matter how you ran the numbers, first you’d have to buy enough of the stock to get control of the company and its system. Then in order to fix its problems, you’d have to kick more than half of its franchised hotels out of the system — but what would the company then be worth, once you do? And afterward, can you get that many new hotels built, and franchisees signed, to replace them? And meanwhile, over the several years that it would take to do that, where are Choice’s now-existing customers going to go? And will you be able to get them to come back afterward? You’d be better off to just start a new hotel chain, from scratch.It’s like the municipal sanitary sewer system in Tegucigalpa, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch: engineers who went over it as part of an aid program after the hurricane concluded that it was in such bad shape to begin with, even before the storm, that the only way to proceed would be to just junk the entire system and start over.What happened to Greyhound and these other dinosaurs, you ask?The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and associated legislation.I hate to say it, because I don't like assuming the presence of racism in events or occurrences where it is possible that an undesirable event or occurrence may be due to some other cause (some people do do that, and it annoys me), but that seems to be one of three watershed events that would account for it.Whether or not in response, specifically, the simple fact at the time was that the industry had a lot of Southern good-old-boys running it, and it was also at this time that bus travel went from being regarded as a respectable, economical personal travel alternative, to a means of 'hauling' the underclass -- both black and white.The management of many of the carriers anticipated white flight. You won’t be able to get nice folks to choose to take the bus anymore, someone apparently figured, so don’t even try. You had the kind of people running the carriers who assumed that decent white people wouldn’t want to ride on a bus on which the seating wasn’t segregated, and who didn’t know how to distinguish between good black folks and ‘undesirable’ blacks.So, they resigned themselves to the idea that their function in the future would be transportation for the underclass, of whatever race. Instead of promoting family travel and an economical way to get there for college students, single ladies, and retirees, and keeping up their rolling stock and facilities at a level conducive to that kind of customer base as they had always done before; they just planned on taking whoever they could get as passengers, and ‘hauling’ them . . .Even in more recent years, people who take the bus are regarded as losers in life, and no one takes the bus if they have any other way to get there.And when management views its own customer base that way, when you see your own customers as a bunch of animals who deserve no better, bad things happen.They let their terminals run down accordingly. Even when they build a brand new one (often with some public investment, in many places nowadays), they let it start running completely to crap as soon as it opens.The Richmond, Va., terminal, when it was built around 1998, was absolutely impressive. It was clean, there was a nice restaurant with a good selection, and the food was good and was fairly priced. Its one drawback was that it’s comparatively isolated: it’s not within walking distance of anything except the ballpark across the Boulevard from it — as far as location goes, someone was out to get it out of downtown, that’s what they achieved, and they let it go at that.(Indeed, most of the people who travel through there are transferring passengers. If you take a Greyhound to the Northeast from anywhere in the southeastern quadrant of the United States — and maybe some points west of Texas — you’re going to change buses in Richmond; and board one that will take you straight to Washington, D. C., if that’s where you’re going. Or straight to Baltimore. Or straight to Philadelphia. Or straight to New York, with a rest stop in Baltimore, or straight to Boston, etc. . . . And traveling from any of those Northeastern cities, you go straight to Richmond, and your connection there, to get to anywhere in the Southeast.)Still, Greyhound could come back with terminals like this — if they’d only keep them up.But within two years, the Richmond terminal was filthy, it was as nasty as any bus terminal anywhere, the food was ‘captive audience’ quality at ‘captive audience’ pricing, with not nearly as much to pick from. The one time in my life I got into trouble and tossed into jail for a couple of days, it was cleaner, nicer and while the portions were small, the food wasn’t any worse. And you had undesirables hanging out — winos, panhandlers, homeless people — despite the Richmond terminal’s isolated location within the city: just the kind of people that people avoid taking the bus to avoid being around; but these are people who are taken for granted, even by Greyhound, as the sort of people who hang around bus terminals. Where do they bring these people in from? I know most of them can’t afford a Greyhound ticket. They couldn’t have walked there from anywhere that was within walking distance (the ballpark is across the Boulevard, there’s a convenience store a quarter mile away, and the rest is industrial sites — it’s relatively isolated for an urban bus terminal), you’d have to have something waiting there for you in order to have it be worth the hike. Does the city round them up and dump them there? Walk out the front doors, and there is a line of taxis whose drivers solicit aggressively. Well . . . if you don’t have a ride coming, you have to get away from that voodoo hellhole somehow.What’s even more pathetic than public investment in privately-owned bus terminals (often done with good intention, to encourage public transportation; but sometimes to get them moved to a place where they’d be less of a nuisance, as was probably the case in Richmond)? How about when the city wants to run you out of town, as the city of Riverside, California decided to do with Greyhound? It actually happened: they considered bus riders a potential nuisance. (Frankly, it’s the same as with cheap motels: you don’t have problems on the coaches themselves as frequently as you might wonder; high-profile incidents involving crazies who should be more easily spotted at the terminal notwithstanding. It’s usually the local people who are permitted to hang out at the terminal.) But let’s face it — when the host of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno refers to your bus company as “a bad neighborhood on wheels”, your reputation as a carrier is probably less than stellar.They let their coaches deteriorate — for as long as they owned them. Nowadays, they no longer own them, they lease them, because that’s how ‘disposable’ they’ve become. But when they did own them, they had no shame around how junky they’d let them get and still run them. When I was a teenager back in the seventies, a driver admitted to me that “they keep them and run them until they’ve worn them out ten times” . . . And this was during the good days of Carolina Trailways, and Seashore . . .The industry became ripe for divestment. The goal became, and has been ever since, don’t have any more money invested in this than you have to, and have it continue to run. It’ll run forever and give you a halfway decent income if you keep your costs down, but you don’t want any capital tied up in it.Everywhere they ever had any capital tied up in it, they’ve worked at getting that money out.Two events would occur in the late '70's and early '80's to make large scale divestment, without completely liquidating the company and giving up the income from it altogether, doable. Both were well-intended and an opportunity, but they just did not work well together in the hands of stockholders and management looking for ways to get their capital out and reduce their investment in it.Deregulation.Regulation was getting to be a bit much by the late seventies: if you owned a coach line, the Interstate Commerce Commission had to approve your routes, stops, schedules and fares at the Federal level. Abuse certainly occurred. ICC operating authority, once obtained, was viewed as property: authority to operate on a certain route could be sold between private parties or companies. Some people even acquired operating authority on certain routes, even though they owned no coaches (of course, claiming they’d get some, although they had no intention of actually doing so), and leased it to a bus company (well . . . that’s how they went about getting the coaches). And because you are a common carrier if you own scheduled bus lines, and your license to operate was given to you as a result by a governmental finding — that you asked for — that the service you had in mind to offer is essential to the ‘public convenience and necessity’, it was hard to talk the ICC into letting you discontinue an unprofitable run.For Greyhound and the other established carriers, this kept stability in place — their routes were protected from competition, and the fares that they were permitted to charge assured that most of them would be very profitable — but it also locked in some very bad market responsiveness. They saw a lot of opportunity to be had for themselves if the regulations went away, and they could be free to eat a few competitors’ lunch, oblivious to the idea that new competitors might spring out of the woodwork and want to do the same to them. (Or even swoop down from the sky and do it, as the newly-deregulated, low-cost start-up airlines would do to the bus carriers.) And of course, they could cut some runs: if you weren't going to have but eight people on board for most of the trip, why tie up a 50-passenger coach that, purchased new, cost today’s equivalent of $500,000?They got their wish. Unfortunately, right at the same time, so did the airlines. Routes, stops, schedules and fares would thenceforth be regulated, if at all, at the state level. Once airlines started expanding, and especially as new low-cost carriers all but started popping up out of the ground, you could fly for not much more money than you could take a bus.This caused some disruption and uncertainty, while it lasted. For years, Greyhound had it too good for too long, and didn't mind sharing: the union-represented drivers were paid very well, and you had a professional class of drivers. Now, the unprofitable runs were gone, but so were the high profit margins on the more profitable runs.In late 1983, Greyhound -- in response to the lower margins it had to accept with the new competition from the airlines -- asked the drivers to take a small cut. (From $27 per hour to $25. In 1983 dollars. I know lots of people who wish they could make $25 per hour today.) The union wouldn't go along. They went on strike when the contract ran out, and the strike didn't succeed: Greyhound started cutting runs, and hiring non-union drivers, and ultimately broke the union.The emergence of new financing models.Equipment leasing: Back in the day, carriers had to buy and own their coaches. Equipment leasing, as an ownership model, began to occur in the late seventies.If you owned a bus line and wanted to put a few new coaches on the road, then for not much more than it would take to make the payments if you financed them, you could have the coaches painted in your livery, and you would not have to worry about selling them off when the lease term ran out. When you wore them out or the maintenance and repair costs on them started getting too high, you could just turn them back in and get new ones. Henceforth, Greyhound wouldn't own its coaches: insurance companies and doctors and lawyers with loose money in search of a passive investment would own them, and Greyhound would just pay the rent and operate them on its lines.If you own a bus line, the deal has its advantages. You didn't have to run ten-year-old coaches on your more marginal runs. Since newer coaches are more reliable, not nearly as badly worn, and aren’t so frequently in need of repair, you could eliminate a lot of jobs for mechanics who you’d otherwise need to coax another two years out of a fifteen-year-old diesel engine. And if you wanted to expand and your company had a good track record, the upfront cost of acquiring new coaches was much lower.But there's a flipside: you have to pay the lease on the coaches. You have to make the payments every month, no matter how few or how many people ride the bus. This made the breakeven point for many runs much, much higher, and further disincentivized continuing the runs that were more marginal.Leveraged buyouts: This caused Carolina Trailways and Seashore Trailways, the two Trailways carriers that dominated where I grew up, and for which I used to work back in the day, to die a miserable, painful death that was sickening to watch (When you hit the link, scroll down to read the history: the guy who built this website — a blog that was written in HTML back in the days before WordPress — and researched and wrote all the material on it doesn’t organize it very well).I worked for them at a time when their corporate owners, North American Philips, seemed to be committed to some serious reinvestment. Carolina built a nice new terminal in Raleigh to replace the ugly, old, badly designed art-deco barn next to Raleigh’s City Hall: the city wanted to knock the old terminal down and expand the City Hall. Seashore replaced their old terminal in Jacksonville, N. C. — located on a rowdy stretch of what was at the time the city’s infamous Court Street — with a nice facility that had been acquired by the local electric co-op and adapted for use as a bus terminal, complete with overpriced restaurant. They invested in some new MCI coaches, and Seashore acquired its Trailways affiliation.But in the end, it turned out that North American Philips was just shining it up in hopes of finding a buyer.It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d found a buyer that wanted to run a bus company, but the people that ended up with the two companies promptly recovered their investment and then some by stripping and selling off everything of value, then holding the combined company (they merged the two of them) together with shoestring and baling wire until they were able to get Greyhound to buy it from them.Greyhound itself was acquired by a former Continental Trailways executive, in a deal so badly overleveraged that, even if he had been able to fill every seat on every coach, every run, he still would have not been able to pay the debt on it. He had made the deal to buy it hoping to quickly take it public in an IPO. What he hadn’t considered adequately in advance of making his move is, hey, Greyhound is leasing its coaches instead of buying them nowadays, so all of its assets are gone except for some terminals in questionable downtown locations that are hard to put a value on and may take you some time to sell at a decent price. No one is going to touch this stock with a ten-foot pole at a price that will bring you enough money to get you out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into.Needless to say, this gentleman had to eventually get his debt restructured — and did such a good job of refinancing that he was able to acquire his former company Continental Trailways in a leveraged buyout, as well, and merge the two. The combined company was itself overleveraged (albeit by only 200% instead of 300% as Greyhound was prior to the Continental acquisition), had problems with the drivers unions, and ended up in bankruptcy a few years later.This killed Trailways as a brand, or at least left it to a fate worse than death. Continental Trailways — officially, “Trailways, Inc.” — was the single largest member of the Trailways consortium, larger than all the other Trailways members combined. When Continental was merged into Greyhound, nothing was left of Trailways as a carrier except for some regional member carriers scattered around the country. These surviving member carriers changed the bylaws of the National Trailways Bus System to insure that never again would a Trailways carrier become that dominant, and that ‘too big to fail’ and be able to do that much damage if they went out of business, left the Trailways system, or were acquired — but in doing so, they made entry into the Trailways system so onerous for new carriers that it isn’t worth doing. They effectively insured that Trailways as a brand would survive only in fragmented, disconnected pieces, and can never again be the nationwide carrier that it once was.Trailways is now pretty much a network of charter carriers: less than a dozen of its current 50–60 member carriers have scheduled runs anymore (New York Trailways/Adirondack Trailways in New York state, and Burlington Trailways in the upper Midwest, are the biggest ones: Susquehanna Trailways, which operates along the I-80 corridor between State College, Pa. and Port Authority, is the only other one of any size.). Nearly all the rest that have scheduled service at all are local feeder lines for Greyhound.After a few more corporate owners (one of which took it into bankruptcy again), Greyhound is now owned by a British company that seems intent on restoring some respectability to it: they’ve upgraded the coaches as they replace them, and now have leather seats and free wi-fi. And they’re innovating a bit: they are now partnered with Peter Pan on BoltBus, which keeps overhead low by offering only reserved, curbside service, and a yield-managed pricing model (book it online at just the right time, and you can get your ticket for a dollar).Deregulation, low margins, and debt incurred through leveraged buyouts, has kept Greyhound cash-strapped through most of the last 30–40 years, and there has been very little reinvestment in that time. Upgrading the coaches is easy, if you’re leasing the coaches: all you have to do is rewrite the specs, and they calculate that into the lease payments. The terminals and stations are still . . . bus terminals. Port Authority in New York City, for example, was back in the day considered a typical, nasty, big city terminal that no one liked. Now, it’s about average — even though its condition hasn’t improved that much over the years, and even though it still has some problems. If anything, it has more to offer than most.Greyhound’s problem nowadays is that it doesn’t seem to want to have any money invested in anything. They continue selling off existing, dedicated bus terminals that they own, and placing their company owned (or leased) facilities in smaller locations (e.g., Raleigh), and using overburdened agency stops that draw complaints (e.g., Virginia Beach).Availability of their coaches is spread thin: the last time I took a Greyhound, it broke down in Durham (N. C.), the Durham ticket agent put us all in taxis to the Greyhound terminal in Raleigh to make our connection — which turned out to be another broken-down bus. They had to send another bus up from Fayetteville to replace that one and take us to New Bern after a six-hour wait — where the driver managed to get lost and not be able to find the station there. Not the kind of thing that has me in any hurry to take another Greyhound trip.The union is gone, the pay isn’t nearly that good anymore, and Greyhound will hire anyone who has — or can get — a CDL to drive a coach. That means anyone. On a trip to North Carolina from New York City some years ago, we pulled into Richmond and the bus made an unexpected stop prior to pulling into the terminal and unloading us . . . several blocks from the terminal. The driver got off and went into the store. I was wondering if there was some sort of problem, and thinking it had to be pretty bad if we couldn’t make it the remaining mile and a half to the terminal to deal with it. But there was no problem. The driver re-emerged from the store a few minutes later with a couple cartons of cigarettes. He made a personal stop, on our time, to buy some low-tax Virginia smokes to take back to New York with him.And that’s before we even go there about the one a few years back, out West, who had some sort of mental breakdown, and refused to travel further, quitting her job in some hick town in Utah and leaving a busload of passengers stranded. Twice. On the same run. The first time she did it, the local cops intervened and made her get back on the bus and continue the trip. In the next town, she abandoned the bus and its passengers, and vanished completely.Or the one earlier this year who pulled off into a rest area on I-80 in Pennsylvania, and checked into a motel next door to take a nap, leaving the coach -- full of passengers who had no idea what was going on -- just sit there. Availability of drivers is spread pretty thin, too, and safety issues have been raised over drivers exceeding their allowed hours, working irregular shifts, and not getting enough rest.Ninety percent of automobile drivers rate their driving skills as ‘above average’. And you’re asking people to take the bus instead, while you hire drivers who do things like THAT?But when your customer base is made up of losers in life who have no choices, and deserve no better . . .FirstGroup may be sincere in its desire to turn it around someday, but lots of days can come and go between now and then and in the meanwhile, Greyhound is run by people who don’t give a shit. They’ve long ago reduced the entire company -- the entire industry — to something its users have to use because they have no choice, there are enough of those people that their customer base is assured. Anyone else that might consider taking a bus isn’t going to put up with it, so they’re not making the investment in drawing any other customers. Want to fix it? You’ve got coaches and terminals across the country, and you’ve only got this much money to work with, and that’s all you’ll have each year, if even that much, for however long it takes — where do you start?Greyhound is a post-mature company. Seth Godin used to say the same thing, over and again, about American Airlines until they got bought out: the things about American Airlines that made American a post-mature company are probably the reason it couldn’t hope to continue on its own and had to end up in bankruptcy and be bought out. (And in looking through his material for just one of his blog posts on the subject that would serve as typical and succinct to explain just why Seth felt that way about AMR, two things happened: 1) I just gave up and linked the Google search instead, and 2) I came across this little gem for the first time, and no, despite the fact that Seth is one of my favorite bloggers and the marketing expert I respect most, I swear I don’t recall ever having seen it before I wrote what I’ve written here, that you’ve read thus far.)That’s probably why Greyhound launched BoltBus — of course, competition from Chinatown buses and curbside carriers might have been a factor, and they wanted to have their hat in the ring on that business model; but I’d bet that even Greyhound gets it that they may just have to junk Greyhound and start over.What’s going to happen next?I haven’t completed costing it out, but it’s truly amazing how little the initial investment it would take to completely disrupt Greyhound and the other major carriers.Here’s how I’d go about it:Start in a small geographical region, work outward: Our initial, Winston-Salem, N. C. base, would be capable of functioning as a self-contained regional carrier. Adding a second one in Greenville, N. C. (from which, by itself, we could cover all of the same routes as the now-defunct, Seashore Transportation Company did for several decades) would give us statewide coverage.Additional bases - each the base of a service area having a 200-mile radius - would give us a corresponding increase in coverage. Each additional base also allows a synergy in terms of allowing every station within the operating area of each base to sell tickets to any location within the operating area of any other.Not only does adding bases expand our service area (e.g., Bethlehem, Pa. and Macon, Ga., in the next map), but adding bases within our existing service area (e.g., Charlotte in the next map) allows us to offer more direct runs with fewer connections, simplify our operations at the nearby bases, and add to our driver base (hiring drivers in Charlotte and having them based there would allow us to make do with fewer drivers at the nearby Winston-Salem and Columbia bases).Once we have a base in Bethlehem, a station in Savannah, and stations in most major cities in between, we can offer express runs up and down the entire East Coast that only stop in major cities.From there, it's a simple matter of expanding westward with new bases, and new coaches. (It’s scalable. We will have to buy the first several coaches that we operate, but once we show that we can generate the cash flow consistently, expansion is a simple matter of hiring and training new drivers, establishing the bases and depot stops, and leasing more coaches.)There's no need to 'beat' Greyhound. As we expand, we'll simply render them irrelevant.Smaller coaches: These would give us the flexibility to serve communities that cannot be served profitably by a full-sized coach. Because these smaller coaches are not restroom equipped, we take care to schedule a rest stop every two hours or so en route. I’d bet, however, that communities who’ve been without scheduled Greyhound or Trailways service for ten to thirty years now, would be happy they’re getting a bus at all.The average number of people who are, at any given moment, on board a Greyhound bus is 27 — and that's when you calculate into the average runs in crowded Northeast areas where the bus stays pretty full. So, why tie up a half million in capital for a full-size coach, when you can put that many on board one of these for $72,000?For more heavily-traveled runs, you might want to have a 36-passenger coach available. With a lav — these coaches (the way I submitted the specs) are for longer, busier runs and would come restroom equipped. Still, the investment required to put two Greyhound full-sized coaches on the road would give us five of these to work with:Not quite what you’re used to seeing as prevailing industry standard now. (Or is it? Can you tell the difference by looking? Besides no leather?)But . . . if your typical passenger load is 27 passengers, I have it on pretty good authority that 36 seats isn’t, historically, an altogether bad size for a coach. Basic arithmetic has a little to do with it of course; but anyone my age or older might recall the sixties, when those ubiquitous General Motors 36-passenger coaches like you see below were the backbone of both Greyhound’s and Trailways’ fleets . . . (Both of these are GMC PD-4104’s, built between the early ‘50’s into the early ‘60’s. I think more of that model were produced than any other coach model ever made, before or since. Back then, that size was quite normal.)Be anal about stations and terminals, and the stuff that happens around them: If I appear to have thought about this for some time, and seem to have much of the business plan written up for it already . . . well, yes, I have. I came up with the idea for a bus company nearly twenty years ago; and was inspired to do just that, in the sort of place where some guys go for a different kind of inspiration altogether: a porn shop.That was literally where the Greyhound/Peter Pan station in New Britain, Connecticut was located: a cigar store with a section in the back, quite visible to waiting bus passengers, devoted to pornography; complete with the occasional porn pervert browsing through the material on display. My car was in the shop one week when I was living in Connecticut, and I had to catch a bus into Boston, so I was kind of stuck with it. I recall thinking, I don’t want to be around this shit — and while I'm going on a tear with it, let's look at a few other things I don't want to be around that you see all the time in even 'average' bus stations. Filth and dirt. Overpriced, low-quality food, if there's any food at all. Homeless people hanging out. Panhandlers. Creeps loitering in and around the restrooms. Uncomfortable seating. Location in bad areas of town. All the things that everyone hates about bus terminals, but that even motorcoach operators seem to think is quite normal, that 'goes with the turf', about bus terminals. And it seems to get worse and worse. And now, this . . .And I started making notes and outlining some ideas during the ride to Boston that very day.New Britain, Connecticut: How not to do it.We would only contract with reputable businesses for our agency stops, and insist as part of our agency agreement that they maintain their facilities in accordance with our standards. If you want your establishment to be one of them, it will be listed on TripAdvisor, and we do read your reviews. We’d regularly inspect our agency stops to insure that they are clean, comfortable, have reasonable accommodations for waiting passengers, and are managed in alignment with the way we operate our own stations and terminals.This goes for public facilities (the city-owned bus terminal in Winston-Salem, N. C., was in the news this past week because of a bedbug infestation), and shared Greyhound facilities, too. I’ve seen what Greyhound will let them get away with, and they can be the worst offenders.Not the sort of thing I want to see at my bus terminal.Good security is a non-negotiable. Passengers are absolutely entitled to a safe, comfortable wait, and you don’t see homeless people, panhandlers, or people who have no reason to be there loitering about. If I wouldn't want my fourteen-year-old niece waiting alone for a bus at your location, your location is not going to be a depot stop for my bus company.Good security is not negotiable — and this isn’t what I call good security. If your ticket window requires bulletproof glass, you’re probably selling tickets to people I don’t want as passengers. If that’s what it takes to achieve security in the part of town you’re in, you’re in the wrong part of town.I want it done right. I’m just weird that way. It’s clean, it’s comfortable, it doesn’t smell bad, you don’t mind being there, there is food and refreshments available, and it isn’t too badly overpriced . . .Bottom line: we would rather simply have a roadside or street stop, and provide only curbside service in a town, than to have a bad depot or station. At least, everyone knows to not expect too much from having to wait on the side of the road.Family-friendly: One thing you might pick up on in our advertising is how all of our advertising pics show families? Mommies and daddies taking a trip with the kids, like they do in Europe? Many of us just take it for granted that bus travel is for people who have no other way to get there, and that you're not likely to meet anyone worth knowing if you do have to take the bus for some reason.For this bus company, we'd be resurrecting our own twist on the old "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" blue ocean strategy from the sixties, that opened up a vastly larger market for motorcycles than previously existed among just the Harley riders and their hellraiser wannabes, when Honda motorcycles first made their appearance in the U. S.(Besides, we remember when bus travel wasn't just for the riff-raff . . . Maybe I’m getting old, but I come from a time when people remembered what it was like to actually like buses and bus travel. Lots of people still would, if you gave them half a chance. ‘Blogs’ didn’t make their appearance until about ten years ago, yet the web abounds with websites and bulletin boards and user groups made up of people who are into the history of buses.)And our buses, and terminals, must be pretty convenient, safe and comfortable, if families and nice old folks — people who have a choice and would find another way to get there if our fleet and facilities were run down and nasty — choose to use them.The old Southern good-ol’-boys who used to run the carriers in the sixties, and who were so traumatized by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, are all gone, retired or died off by now; but even today the mindset, even by more well-meaning, ‘liberal’ politicians, officials, and bus company executives, is that the bus is for people who don’t have cars.Let’s rethink that: The bus is for everyone. Even people who have a choice — especially people who have a choice. Now, what can we do to have them CHOOSE taking the bus?Instead of wandering the mall, how can we talk some of these retired folks into taking a day trip to the zoo? (Of course, putting the North Carolina Zoological Park on the schedule might help . . .)What kind of attractions are there in Boone that we can perhaps work with so that we can sell day trips there: get some people on a nearly empty outbound bus in the morning, who’d come home on an otherwise nearly empty inbound bus in the evening?I’d put one or two hotel sales people to work on this one.The airport is your friend, not your competitor: Making a point to offer scheduled service to large airports on our lines opens up an opportunity for a businessman in, say, Alamance County, to get to Raleigh-Durham International Airport for his flight.Service to airports opens up another opportunity. As we contemplated service to Newport News, Virginia and were stuck for an appropriate station location, it dawned on us: Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport is one of the few airports of its size, in any city the size of Newport News, that is located right in the middle of the city that it serves. And more to the point, the success and perhaps even survival of Newport News-Williamsburg International depends upon its ability to compete with Norfolk International Airport, which is not that far away. Why not just plan on putting the terminal there if they’ll let us?The airport is our friend, not our competitor. No one who can afford to fly to L. A. or Houston from the east coast is going to take the bus. And if you're not going that far away (say, between Newport News and Norfolk), the bus makes so much more sense.So, we consider not only large airports like Raleigh-Durham, Piedmont-Triad, Charlotte, Atlanta, and the Washington airports as we plan our routes; but also the smaller regional airports, such as Fayetteville Regional, Jacksonville (N. C.), and Richmond. For the opportunity to shag air passengers away from Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg should be willing to offer us much better terms and facilities than, say, the bus deck at Union Station in Washington, D. C. ($30,000 per year per 'slip', and I'll buy you dinner if you can prove to me that Greyhound pays that much).To solidify our market position in this area, we will be offering reduced rates from all airports to outlying, larger cities.Greyhound can fuss all they want about ‘competition’ from low-cost airlines. But Southwest Airlines doesn’t fly to North Wilkesboro, or Quakertown, or Waterbury . . .From us, you get the scenic tour: One thing about taking the bus that used to drive people nuts - even in the heyday of buses, at the height of their popularity - is that the bus stopped in every little hick town, which slowed down the trip and made getting where you wanted to go take longer.We can't avoid that: this company was developed and designed to serve smaller communities that Greyhound considers not worth having.So we're going to try and turn that into a selling point, create a new context for it, suggest an alternate way of looking at it. From us, you get the scenic tour. (Note the pics of small town Americana -- within the areas that we serve -- located here and there around our website.)I originally contemplated it as a Trailways carrier, but despite the access to the rich history and Trailways' place in 20th century Americana which we would love to have as part of our own, doing so doesn't appear to be workable.(Trailways now requires of new members — which they don’t recruit very diligently, and seem to not care too much if they never add another one —that your bus company has been in business for at least five years prior to applying for Trailways affiliation. By the time we’ve been in business for five years, we’re going to have so much invested in any brand we use in the meanwhile, that we’re not going to want to give that up, change all the livery and the signage and the website and the promotional material, paint all of the coaches red, and go Trailways. Nor do I like the requirement that if we expand scheduled service into a geographical area, we have to first obtain the consent of any Trailways carrier in that area — most of whom are charter carriers and should have no say in scheduled services. And if a carrier, even a Trailways carrier, who offers scheduled services wants to have his crappy operation protected from competition; well, that’s why Satan invented state utility commissions who regulate competition between motor carriers that operate within the state, and those carriers’ political connections on those commissions. I’m not signing up for something that requires me to suck up yet another layer of such regulation.)Still, anticipation of our market position as a would-be Trailways carrier while it lasted as part of the plan; with Trailways’ historic, Mom-and-apple-pie small town roots, opened up some added appreciation of this particular market position.Don’t be Greyhound-dependent: We'll work with Greyhound, and endeavor to maintain a positive relationship with them wherever possible. We're not going to get sucked into a stand-up fight with them where we can avoid it. It is to the much greater benefit of both us and Greyhound that we work together, and play and get along well together.Greyhound is famous for its ‘running dog’ mascot. We plan to use a black cat.But even if we don’t, the harm will be limited to slowing us down for a few years -- after which, we'll catch up to and surpass Greyhound with a vengeance.We contract our own stations, terminals and depots; and avoid sharing facilities with Greyhound unless: 1) the facilities meet our standards. and 2) we control the ticket counter - or at least don't stand to be hurt badly by Greyhound or a third-party agency engaging in favoritism toward Greyhound or another carrier against us in ticket sales from that location. (Most of our passengers - and ticket sales - to and from places where we’d use Greyhound as an agent, travel to and from smaller cities and towns not served by Greyhound. So if you approach a Greyhound ticket counter in one of those places, and want to purchase a ticket to a town served only by us, guess which carrier Greyhound is going to sell you a ticket on?)We’d have no "pooling" agreements with Greyhound, and do not intend to enter into any. Could we ask as part of such a deal that Greyhound not expand its service or not add any more runs to the area in competition with us? No - that would be illegal under federal antitrust law (unless the Surface Transportation Board okayed it): we'd just have to trust them, and rely upon a built-in disincentive in investing their money, equipment and resources into a line that would produce revenue that would have to be shared with us. With such an agreement in place, could we expand our service within the areas affected by the pooling agreement? Yes -- but why should we make the investment of funds, coaches, drivers and other resources, only to have Greyhound collect a percentage of the revenue even if they choose not to match the investment? Besides, the whole scheme smacks of the dystopian "Railroad Unification Plan" and the "Steel Unification Plan" in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Several companies that have gone into pooling agreements with Greyhound -- for example, Carolina Trailways, Seashore Transportation -- have since disappeared, and so have many of their runs.Eight mid-size coaches to start out, at about seventy-five grand a pop? . . . one convenience store (which would be a revenue source in itself), with a rear loading area, to use as a central base terminal? . . . It’s doable.There’s an opportunity in it. Right now, gas in the U. S. is cheap, by contrast to some recent years. And regardless of the price of gas in the U. S., we pay less for it than any other country on earth except Venezuela. Even Canadians pay three to four times as much. How long can that last? Eventually, U. S. gas prices are going to have to get in line with the others. We need to have some more public transportation options at the ready when that time comes.Much of the investment involved would be getting your ducks in a row in advance, just doing the work setting it up. The burn rate for the first year is more of a source of concern to me than the capital outlay . . .Your only competitors are people who don’t want to have any money invested in anything. They’ve already squeezed everything they can out of it, and can’t squeeze it any further without crushing it completely. They feel that doing so won’t expand their customer base significantly. But it’s been the late sixties since they’ve really tried. And since the customer base they’re left with has nowhere else to go — well, they’re not going to be easy to work with about personal needs, and individual attention, and refunds where appropriate.Greyhound and the other carriers have no idea just how vulnerable that they — and their entire business model — are.
What problems do motorcycle bikers face during long distance rides?
My old friend Morten grabbed an opportunity to work out of Paris for 5 weeks, left the wife and kids behind in rural Denmark, and headed off to the land of champagne and croissants.It was while he was there that he suggested that I “popped down” to Paris to see him for the weekend. I was feeling particular confident that day, so I immediately accepted, and decided to make it a bit of a challenge: I would go, from London to Paris and back, in a weekend, on my beloved Honda CBR600F.It didn’t seem all that insurmountable at the time, after all it’s only about a hundred miles from East London to Folkestone, then a cosy 35 minutes on the EuroTunnel to Calais in northern France, followed by a measly 200 miles to Paris. I loosely estimated that the trip would take about 4 hours, give and take. It would be a piece of cake!Except, it wasn’t.I started packing for the trip Friday night. Obviously, as I was going on the motorbike, I would have limited storage space. That was not a problem in itself; I knew that I would have no immediate need for tuxedo’s, curling irons or golf clubs. I have a fairly large tank bag for the bike. As the name suggests, this bag goes on the fuel tank, between me and the handlebars and is fixed to the bike with eight big ass magnets, which, according to the instruction booklet, will keep the bag in place up and until a maximum speed of 140 mph. So, I knew that I could not exceed 140 mph on this trip. The idea of said tank bag losing its grip on the tank, and flying into my chest at 140+ mph filled me with the kind of dread that you would normally only associate with a Britney Spears CD.The very same booklet also promised that the tank bag would be waterproof, and since it had kept its promise on the few London runs where I had been unlucky enough to get caught out by a drizzle, I felt that this bag would be ideal.So, I stuffed a pair of walking shoes, a pair of jeans and a particularly awesome button-up shirt inside the bag, filled the three side pockets with keys, fresh breath mints and stuffed my bike documents and my passport under the hand written map on top.I left London Saturday morning at 4.30am and headed for Folkestone. Had I checked the weather forecast, I would have known that it was -2 degrees Celsius and that it would be blowing a gale. So, when I finally arrived in Folkestone, I was feeling what most bikers would describe as “fairly cold”.Upon checking in at EuroTunnel, the lavish train service which transport cars, trucks and the like between Britain and France through, as the name suggests, a tunnel under the English Channel, the young man, who, in my opinion would have benefited greatly from 9thgrade level tuition, looked at me and asked “is your vehicle powered by LPG?”, which, quite frankly, is something you would expect George W Bush to ask, but certainly not a front line employee at Britain’s largest border control. Although I was not at all in the mood to debate the construction premise for motorcycles with a child, who clearly had more pimples than brain cells, I simply looked at him and told him that it is not possible to power a sports bike on LPG, as there would be nowhere to fit the extra fuel tank, and also, the power loss from this particular fuel source would mean that it would not be possible to ride the machine as Honda had intended. He then looked at me as if I had addressed him in Ancient Greek and asked me “is your vehicle powered by LPG?”I consider myself to be a fairly tolerant person. I believe that everyone should have a fair chance in life and most mistakes should be ignored or even encouraged, but I am sure Dante has got a special sub-level in hell for idiots of this magnitude.That, and the 45 minute delay at the Eurotunnel, which I had to face standing next to the bike in the queue, took my mood down a few notches.Now, while in a car, the Eurotunnel is actually quite comfortable as you can lean your seat back, put on a CD of your choice (unfortunately, EuroTunnel does not yet impose a ban on either Britney Spears herself or Britney Spears related releases, but since they ban just about everything else, it shouldn’t take long.) and dream your way under the English channel. Since the train is predominantly used by cars and trucks, which all are equipped with their own seats, there are no extra seats available on board. Therefore, the only option for bikers is to stand for the whole 35 minutes. So, after about 90 minutes of storm riding, 15 minutes of pure undiluted idiocy and 45 minutes of standing in the freezing rain, I was invited to STAND! on the train for 35 minutes.However, I would not allow the circumstances to break my spirits, after all, I was about to embark on my first pan-European ride! Just a few more minutes and the train would dock in Calais, and after a quick fuel stop, I would be on the A16, straight to Paris.Only, I wouldn’t.The first thing I saw when the doors on the train opened to allow the cars to disembark was the hail falling from the sky. It looked like a fairly small hail storm from inside the train and I deduced in record time that I would be able to out-run it in a matter of minutes.Just next to the terminal is a gas station, where I popped in and filled the bike. This took less than three minutes. When I stepped out of the little shop where you pay for your fuel, the hail storm had intensified to a degree where it actually hurt when the hail hit you, the noise when it hit my helmet was beyond description and the wind sounded like Whitney Houston while sober. Within minutes, I couldn’t see the road and the wind picked up so I couldn’t go much faster than 50 mph, leaning into the wind as I rode. This is more than a little dangerous, because you rely on the wind to be fairly constant, which, of course, it isn’t.After 20 minutes, the road had completely disappeared and I decided to pack it in and return to Britain. By now, I was soaked to the skin, slightly disorientated from the cold and not a little upset that my trip had been ruined.As I came in to Calais, I headed for the train terminal, hoping I could use my return ticket to get back. I only had to cross one final roundabout and it would be a one minute ride to the ticket booth. By now, everything was white on white and I had to ride with my visor open, in order to see where I was going, which, at 15 mph was nearly impossible. I was halfway through the roundabout when my front wheel lost it’s already weak grip on the slippery road, and now things happened really quickly.I felt the front wheel slip, and knew I was going down.However, it still came as a complete surprise when my hip smashed into the ground, immediately followed by 250 kilos of motorbike, which pinned my leg to the ground. The road was covered in an icy half frozen mesh of melting hails, not entirely unlike slush-ice but vastly inferior in taste, and I slid across the roundabout, still attached to the bike at my hip.The van behind me, which was driving far too close for this kind of weather, just managed to steer around me with locked wheels, honking his horn for dramatic effect. One would have imagined he would have stopped to help me get up, but that was clearly not going to happen. Van drivers in France are clearly very busy people. And they seem to suffer badly from Tourette’s. There should be a support group, but who’s got the time?So, there I was, minutes from the terminal, on the ground with the bike on top of me, completely soaked in icy water, with as much feeling in my hip as a stroke victim. It took a while to get the bike up, it kept sliding on the icy road. I had to push it to the kerb, and force it upright by bracing it against my thigh.Not easy with frozen hands and a mangled hip!I left the bike there for two hours, and limped to the café nearby, to weigh my options. Maybe I could find a way to continue to Paris? It looked pretty grim, hail was still falling heavily, it was very windy, I was soaked to the skin, not to mention freezing cold and I didn’t know if I would even be able to start the bike, never mind ride 200 miles to Paris, and 300 miles back.I eventually decided that I had now gotten this far, and I would really like to see Paris and its sights.Those three important facts, and the fact that Morten would piss himself laughing if I bailed, just after getting off the train, made me determined to make it to Paris. So I sloshed back to the bike, did a quick check (which consisted of looking at the front tyre for three minutes) and deduced that the machine was perfectly fit for the rest of the trip.I quickly out-rode the nasty weather, and found myself on a beautiful route with valleys and hints of mountains, not to mention plenty of sunshine, and thus decided that I could make up for some of the lost time by pushing up the speed a bit. I eventually found myself doing a fairly comfortable cruising speed of 120 mph, but after a short while the next obstacle presented ifself with a devilish leer: in a matter of seconds, the horizon changed from beautiful landscape, which made me ponder a quick little picnic, foie gras-filled croissants and pink champagne, maybe a little jazz or even a mime, and a particularly well-chosen novel, into something that resembled Mitt Romney’s conscience in a physical shape, something so outrageously hateful and bitter, it would make Dr. Mengele seem like your average GP (or MD, for our American readers) a phenomenon so utterly stark and foreboding that it beggars belief that it can be described with one word: Snow.Now, snow in itself is rarely a cause for alarm. It can be fairly pleasant, on a cool December evening, while on vacation in a little wooden cottage, not too far from the local shop, where you go for a late afternoon stroll with your partner and comment on how beautiful the trees are with red-brown leaves and how lovely a sneaky glass of cognac would be, before dinner. In that scenario, a little light snow falling gently from the sky simply adds to the already romance-laden atmosphere.But not on a French motorway, while frantically trying to balance two wheels on more snow than you could poke a stick at (And, mind you, I would quite happily poke a stick at an enormous pile of the stuff!) while feverishly bringing down my speed from 120 mph to something that would give me at least an academic chance of survival, should I manage to lose my balance – again. It goes without saying that any use of brakes would have sent me flying through the air, and given my luck for the day, very likely into the path of a forty ton truck, with an Eastern European driver drunk on a combination of cheap Polish vodka and self-loathing, who would then brake and veer so hard that the prostitutes in the back of the cab would suffer whiplash as they roll off the sheepskin in front of the unkempt bed. So I rolled off the throttle, and deftly steered the bike onto the hard shoulder, thinking that I would be safe from the trucks and cars which, unlike me, were perfectly well equipped to fare in mountainous conditions. One slight oversight, though. The snow on the motorway lanes had been packed by cars, so even though it was falling fast, it was not very porous. On the hard shoulder, the snow was untouched like a republican’s daughter, and I immediately sank into it, whilst still moving at about 60 mph. This time I decided that a hint of rear brake would be an advantage, so I gently applied my now frozen right foot to the brake pedal. Well, I say gently. Being frozen solid from the waist down, I really had no idea as to how much force I was applying, which not surprisingly resulted in the rear wheel locking and the bike doing a long skid, before swiftly swinging around in a half circle and bringing me to a sudden stop, which was nice, albeit I was facing oncoming traffic, which was unpleasant.I found myself at the outer fringe of hysteria when I casually glanced at the dash board, and realised that I had ridden 96 miles since my last fuel stop. This was a cause for considerable anxiety, as my bike’s range is about 100 miles, give and take, I was on a French motorway and I had no idea when the next opportunity to fill up would be. I did, however, vaguely remember having passed a garage a few minutes before. I noticed the miasma of colours in the logo on the truck-sized sign, and thought it looked rather idiotic.Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was my general lack of respect of the Highway Code. Or maybe it was the fact that I was already pointing the wrong way on the motorway. I can’t say for sure. But, after a moment of blue sky thinking, I decided that the best course of action would be to ride AGAINST the traffic, on the hard shoulder, with cars and trucks roaring past me in the snow, and make my way back to the garage, whose PR manager had recently given up mescaline. So, I set off – slowly – with both feet on the ground, like a rookie, and went about the task of getting back to the junction. Surely the French Highway Patrol had more important things to deal with than a British tourist, whose crime essentially was that he forgot to buy a pot of gasoline.They didn’t.The French gendarmerie has a reputation of being rather unpleasant. Having a decent, caring human being seek employment with the police anywhere in the world would be, I’d imagine, about as rare as a gun-rack on a Volvo. Huge was my surprise when the little Peugeot police car pulled in front of me, and the officer actually asked me if there was a problem with the bike. I expected him to want to go through all my documents for the bike and my licence (the one I gave him was a fake, from Bangkok, in case he was going to confiscate it) but he didn’t even look at it and he let me pass! Against the traffic, on a busy motorway, in piss-poor weather! Viva la France!I made it back to the garage, had enough coffee to keep a bear out of hibernation, and a well-earned break.When I approached Paris, I knew I had a plethora of choices in terms of motorways, so I had written down a list of junctions to look out for as I left the A16 and went ahead on the N184. However, the rain and snow had crept under the cover of my tank bag, and left something that looked like a child’s attempt at calligraphy, but that wasn’t really a big deal. I had made sure that my satnav was fully charged, and already loaded with Morten’s address as my last destination. All I had to do was to turn the machine on, put it under the plastic cover of the tank bag, and follow the instructions. Pretty clever if I may say so myself.Not so clever was the decision to keep said satnav device under the plastic cover of the tank bag throughout my journey. On a general basis, satnavs built for car usage are not made to withstand the elements, and will rebel against being exposed to hail, snow and rain. Their rebellion consists mostly of a strict refusal to operate, no matter how much you scream at them. The one I brought with me was of the make TOMTOM, but given it’s stubborn refusal to help me, a more proper name for the device would have been DONKEY, or maybe CHENEY. Chances are George Bush used a tomtom satnav when he was looking for Bin Laden, but we will never know that for certain as his administration was a bit waffled, to say the least. Either way, my satnav had died the gruesome death of drowning, which made it as useful as a screen door on a submarine, and seeing it lying there in a pool of ice cold water, I did feel a bit sorry for it. But only for a while, then pity turned to anger, and before I knew it, I had hurled the thing into the path of a truck.This left me in something of a pickle. I now did not have any maps, no satnav, nor did I have Morten’s address with me. And after I caused a fair bit of drama with my phone provider over my bill while in NYC, I can no longer utilise the machine’s ability to access the internet while abroad. So, I did what any real man would do; I made an educated guess.I didn’t know exactly where Morten’s house was, but I was very aware of being quite far off track as I passed the Gare du Nord roughly an hour later.After riding about for more than an hour, I had to bite the bullet and ring Morten and have him guide me across Paris while on the phone. Luckily I have a Bluetooth system in my helmet, so I can ride and talk at the same time. But, riding in Paris is hairy at the best of times. I had arrived at rush hour Saturday afternoon, and traffic was fierce and very aggressive.I finally managed to get to Morten’s house at 6pm Saturday afternoon, more than 13 hours after I left London, completely frozen, tired beyond belief, but I made it. Against all odds, I had ridden between two major European capitals, and I’m not afraid to say that I felt rather good about myself.After giving an absolutely dreadful weather pattern the proverbial finger all day(!) Saturday, I spent a cosy evening with Morten in his rather posh Parisian flat. The cowhide-covered bar in the lounge, the horsehide adorning the master bedroom floor, rattan wall paper, plenty of 1970’s objects d’art and an unmistakable air of bohemian superiority made a perfect foundation for a bachelor pad, which would not have failed to impress the majority of cocaine-fueled skanks which can be casually collected from posh Paris night clubs such as the “Barrio Latino” or “Le Rex”, but which did indeed make for a strange, if not dubious choice in long-term habitation for a professor in his early forties.I would have been delighted to test this thesis, but, having just spent 13 hours punishing myself to an extend best described as self-flagellation on the motorbike, it was painfully obvious that the one piece of my anatomy which would facilitate the extended reciprocal interest of said skanks was also the one muscle in my body which was by now utterly beyond command.As we had limited time at our disposal Sunday, we decided to have an early start, to take on as much of Paris as possible.Thus, we made our way to the Musee des arts asiatiques Guimet exhibiton at the Guimet museum, close to Trocadero. The museum is currently exhibiting artifacts which has been proudly stolen in South East Asia by the French in recent times, an exercise in brute force not entirely dissimilar to that which made the Scandinavian Vikings famous a mere millennium earlier, although in terms of elegance and logistics it was clear that Harald Bluetooth would have benefited greatly from an apprenticeship in modern day French warfare structuring.I was, obviously, particularly interested in the pieces from Cambodia, given my personal relationship with the South East Asian country that, governed by a psychopath of biblical proportions, suffered an unspeakable fate in the 1970’s, the very decade which lent its charm to the decorating of the aforementioned bachelor pad. There were many beautiful pieces from Cambodia present in the museum, and I could happily have spent all day there, but, alas, there were many other sights to behold in Paris.No matter how often I go to Paris (which is fairly often) I never tire of the view of the Eiffel Tower, particularly on a sunny day. Against all odds, this Sunday was fairly warm and so sunny that it would have been painful to be there without sun glasses. This was a dramatic contrast to the hellish experience the day before and I relished every moment of it.Morten and I walked for hours through Paris, and I spent some of the time marvelling at the total chaos, which is Parisian traffic. London traffic is very aggressive at the best of times. Even a Sunday morning ride through the City of Westminster can be a daunting affair, and it would be unwise for an untrained rider to take on the sheer craziness of the boroughs of Brixton or Walthamstow, but Paris is altogether a totally different kettle of fish. Cars are changing lanes, even though the lanes they are merging into are seemingly full, indicators are clearly a luxury which the Parisian motorist deem totally unnecessary and waiting for the green light at an intersection is considered a complete waste of time. Coming in to Paris Saturday afternoon, I noticed a few big sports bikes filtering at very high speed, and they seemed to be completely at ease in an environment best described as hostile.In short Parisian drivers make Manhattan seem like an idyllic little village. Enough said.Eventually, the afternoon came to an end, and it was time for me to make my way back to London.After studying the map of the roads taking me to the motorway, I set off in my still dripping wet gear at 5pm, and had good weather for so long that I started to think that I would have an entirely uneventful return journey. Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law was still very much in effect and after about an hour of travelling at 100 mph, I stopped to stretch my legs and I thought briefly of the snow and the snow-derived drama from the day before. But, despite the sun having set about an hour earlier, the weather was surprising mild and, more importantly, completely void of down-pour. It was while preparing to continue that a British car sped unto the forecourt of the petrol station and a flustered woman jumped out and screamed DO ANYONE SPEAK ANY ENGLISH??? And I thought for a moment that a real catastrophe was about to present itself. Perhaps a child in the car had suffered a cardiac arrest or maybe her husband had been abducted by Islamist freedom fighters, or, even worse, maybe she had loaded a Britney Spears CD in the car stereo and it was now stuck on repeat.However, the cause for her dramatic entrance was fairly pedestrian; she had spent the past hour finding the way back to Calais, and she was looking for someone who could guide her and her husband in the right direction. I offered to ride in front of their car to guide them unto the motorway, and they followed me off the forecourt, unto the motorway approach ramp. It was a 30 second trip before I came to the fork in the approach ramp, one road turning sharply to the right was clearly signposted Paris, whereas the road to the left, which was effectively continuing in a straight line, was equally clearly signposted Calais. Both signs were massive, about the size of a small car and bathed in an amount of light that reminded me of Checkpoint Charlie on a bad day, and I immediately started looking for tell-tale signs of land mines.How anyone, even a hysterical female, who should clearly have gotten the bus or even better, stayed at home and baked a cake, could possibly get lost there is beyond me, as there was absolutely no other way out of this petrol station. One road going in, and one road going out. A blind man on a penny-farthing would have felt rather comfortable with this excessive amount of guidance, although he might have been a tad intimidated by the deceptive straight-forwardness of the operation, especially if he was German and made the same Checkpoint Charlie analogy as I did.The rain started an hour later, when signs for Calais became more regular and unlike Saturday, it started as a drizzle and I began to believe that I was in luck, that I would get home relatively dry and relatively warm. I say relatively warm because I left Paris in wet protective clothes and boots, so I knew the ride wouldn’t be comparable to a summer day in Sussex, but there is still a massive difference between being a bit damp, and being out-and-out soaked to the skin.Unfortunately, such academic ponderings swiftly became entirely superfluous as the rain started to intensify, slowly, over a period of about 20 minutes, after which it was as bad as it had been the day before. Although this was unpleasant, it also had a distinct positive side, which I tried to spin as much as I could; I was getting closer to the coast, which meant I was getting fairly close to the EuroTunnel and thus was just about able to convince myself that I was as good as home.The positive spin on this new development lasted only a few minutes, though, as the rain was much colder than the day before and came at an unfortunate angle, hitting me in the face and creeping under my now firmly closed visor. Minutes later I rode into what I first thought were thick smoke. Visibility dropped to mere inches and I had to bring the bike to a complete stop. Luckily there wasn’t any snow to battle on the hard shoulder, but that was at least partly due to the fact that the hard shoulder was defacto non-existant.Within seconds, my glasses and my visor, as well as both my mirrors was completely covered in fog, and I had to dig into my tank bag and find my alcoholic wipes to clear everything up. To be able to work the zip on the bag, I took my gloves off and put them between me and the tankbag in order for them to stay put and not blow away, thinking that I could cheat the wind to think that there was nothing there for it to consume.But the wind works in mysterious ways. As a truck the size of a small village roared past me, I almost lost my balance, partly from the surprise element of the noise, but also from the gust of wind caused by being passed by a wall of steel at high speed. As I tipped the bike to the side to counteract the sudden wind, my gloves dropped to the ground, and I had to leave the bike on its stand and get off and look for them.Traffic was fairly heavy, with plenty of big trucks rushing to get to the ferries in Calais, and I watched my only pair of gloves tumble their way across the motorway, repeatedly being run over. It took quite a while before I could muster the courage to venture onto the tarmac and collect my now thoroughly wet gloves. They were now so drenched that I had great difficulty getting them back on my hands, and when I finally managed to get myself ready to carry on I realised that my anti-fog wipes had completely watched off my gear, and I was in the same situation as before I stopped, except I now had wet, and very cold, gloves.To add insult to injury, I realised immediately after setting off that the lining which normally fits under my jacket sleeves had now been bent out of shape and allowed water to trickle into the gloves, leaving my already cold, wet hand even more cold and wet. This was not helped by the fact that I had to ride at about 40 mph for the next 100 miles, which meant that a one hour ride in normal conditions now took two and a half hours.When I arrived at the EuroTunnel terminal, I had to queue for almost an hour to get to passport control, which is staffed predominantly by people who failed the psychological and mathematical test used to gauge suitability for front line workers at McDonalds, and thus it is within the realm of possibilities that their interpersonal skills are somewhat below par.It is clear, of course that these people have had their working conditions worsened considerably as their modus operandi has changed from glancing at the passport cover and yelling “yeah, next!” to every passing individual who decide to impede on their lives by wilfully crossing into another country with absolute disregard to these overworked people’s comfort eating pattern, to accept said passport, place it in the scanner before them, press the button, waiting for the machine to go BEEP!, then yell “yeah, next!”. It’s not hard for an educated person to fathom how being subjected to this level of stress and pressure can shorten a person’s lifespan considerably.It is, however, also fairly reasonable, as a customer, no less, to expect to be treated as an honest individual, as opposed to a people trafficking eastern European derelict. Anyone with half a brain could suss out that it was practically almost impossible for me to hide a nearly adult female in my A4 sized tank bag, unless she was a highly skilled contortionist with detachable breast implants.Even if my insurance document clearly state that I am allowed to carry a pillion.While riding, I had to concentrate and therefore didn’t feel the cold as acutely as when I was sitting in a queue, bored out of my mind, waiting to get through the checkpoint. While now sitting on the stationary bike, I left the engine running to provide heating for the handlebars, but it wasn’t enough to keep my hands from shaking like a Parkinson’s patient and I found it almost impossible to hold a cigarette.When I finally made my way to the little window, I realised that I had bigger problems than my general discomfort. The woman, or, more precisely – the thing previously known as a woman – sitting behind the bullet proof glass clearly disliked me on sight and refused initially to address me in English. As my linguistic knowledge of French won’t even allow me to request sexual favours from a prostitute, I had to ask her three times to communicate with me in the Queen’s English, after which she sighed audibly and demanded to see my passport, in a tone that told me that she was less than amused.When I reached forward to open the zipper on the tank bag, I realised that I hadn’t closed it properly when I stopped to clean my glasses on the motorway, and all the contents of said bag was now swimming in ice cold rain water. The clothes would be fine, of course, after being washed, my keys didn’t seem to have rusted at all, but my crocodile skin wallet and my passport looked a little worse for wear.My passport had gotten so wet that when I closed my hand around it, it immediately dissolved and the writing on most of the pages resembled a Rorschach test. I had no choice but to hand the sodden pile of cardboard to the woman, who refused to touch it, but merely looked at me with the very definition of flat eyes and said: What is that? I started to explain that it was in fact the sad remains of my passport, but the cold and the accumulated fatigue had left me in a state where I could hardly put a coherent sentence together, so all I could muster was “erm….book”, which, and I must stress that I judge this exclusively on the facial expression of the woman/thing in the little cage in front of me, did little to warm her towards me.Without a word, she got up and left the cage. I knew that this development was not an immediate advantage, in fact, the last time I had a border control person walk out on me was in Australia and that ended with me being arrested and spending hours in a holding cell, admittedly for addressing the officer in the most degrading terms I could think of at the time. Although I was cold and miserable, I would much rather be cold on the train to England than in a French holding cell, even if there would be a slight opportunity of getting a tepid cup of grimy coffee and access to a toilet. Without having any solid foundation for this claim, I choose to believe that I would not be presented with a 5 course Michelin dinner, followed by a movie of my choice, nor would I be entertained by a mime or a French dominatrix. Thus, I would consider being held by the anti-terror corps a complete waste of an evening. Eventually she returned, gestured for me to pick up the lump of cardboard and angrily waved me off.Now all I had to do was join the boarding queue and I would finally be on my way home.When I got on the train, I simply had to sit down. Because the bike is alarmed, even the slightest touch will start an avalanche of noise and I’m sure someone on the train would be more than a little miffed if subjected to that for 35 minutes, so I decided to sit at the little curb that marks the pedestrian area on either side of the parked cars.I was cold and tired, and I learned when I took my heavy, drenched jacket off that my t-shirt, woollen thermo-shirt and my woollen roll-neck jumper were all completely soaked. Since everything in the tank bag was equally wet, I would not be able to change into anything dry so I simply sat, leant against the wall and looked forward to get home to my bedAfter what seemed like seconds, a security attendant was hovering over me, explaining that it was forbidden to sit in the pedestrian area due to health and safety. I did find this somewhat incredulous and asked him to elaborate, but he decided instead to advise me that I would be at risk of prosecution if I didn’t stand the entire time the train was moving. I noted at this stage that I was at the very end of the carriage, the emergency exit was at the middle of the carriage, and there was no way I would be blocking the way for anyone, no matter what catastrophe we were to suffer. Given that I was too tired to argue such pedantic, idiotic rules with a plebeian utterly without the capacity for independent, rational thought, I simply ignored him and closed my eyes for a moment, until I heard him walk away, muttering in French.The road from Folkestone to London, the M20, is notorious for nasty weather. When I went to Belgium last year in the big Mercedes, I could hardly drive on the M20 because of the relentless rain and strong winds. I was therefore filled with trepidation when I rolled off the train and noticed that the road was wet. It didn’t look too ferocious though, and in a moment of naivety I reckoned that it might stay that way until I got home.It didn’t.Shortly after leaving Folkestone, while I was fighting the trucks for supremacy on the motorway, the heavens broke and the rain forced me to slow down to about 40 mph. Only rarely did I manage to grit my teeth and spank the poor bike into near triple digits for the rest of the journey.As I approached South London, I seriously considered leaving the bike and jump in a taxi, but somehow I found that last creed of energy, pushed on and finally made it home just after 10pm.I’ve never pushed myself this far before. Not in Australia where I walked barefoot in tall grass with poisonous snakes everywhere. Not in Cambodia where I got blood poisoning in the middle of nowhere. Not when I drove a battered old van back and forth between London and Glasgow for 35 hours. This is the roughest trip I’ve had. I did it alone, and on my motor bike. And I know, whatever I get myself into in the future, I will be able to deal with it.Now I am looking for my next challenge…
What was the Tamil genocide in 2009?
The Tamil genocide didn’t just commence in 2009, it was systematic throughout Sri Lanka’s post colonial rule, under the Sinhala Buddhist dominated government. 2009 was just the peak of the genocide.Short AnswerThe Sri Lankan government, lead by the Sinhala Buddhist majority, attempted to alienate the Tamil population politically and economically. They implemented a series of anti-Tamil legislation, hoping to deteriorate the influence of Tamils on the island. They condoned and acted complicit in anti-Tamil riots and violently suppressed peaceful Tamil demonstrations. The demand for equality, neglected by the state, fuelled the ambition for a separate Tamil state. The lack of respect for peaceful protests inevitably engulfed support for an armed struggle. During the war, the SLA pioneered the use of rape, torture, kidnapping, indiscriminate firing, shelling and bombings against Tamil civilians.In total, an estimate of 150,000 - 200,000 Tamil civilians were killed by the government100,000 of which were killed between March 28th - May 18th 2009 when the government packed 300,000+ Tamils in internationally recognized “NO FIRE ZONES” and were then shelled with artillery and other heavy weaponry.40,000 of those were killed on the beaches of Mullivaikal between April 26th - May 18th 2009After the war had ended, hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were rounded up and sent to internment camps. Many Tamils would die of malnutrition, dehydration, disease and suicide. Thousands were taken for interrogation by the army only to never be seen again, as such, making Sri Lanka 2nd in the world in disappearances. After the war, Tamils are subjected to heavy militarization, “land grabs” by the state, forced implementation of Buddhist sites, intimidation, torture and arbitrary detention. The acts of genocide committed by the government has convinced many in the international community to recognize the Tamil Genocide and advocate for an international human rights tribunal against the government, something the government is strongly against for evident reasons.*Please take time to watch Sri Lanka’s Killing FieldsLong Answer(Full analysis):Post colonial anti-Tamil legislation(1948–1977)Citizenship Act(1948)After the country’s independence, the new government, dominated by the Sinhala majority Sinhalese passed the Ceylon Citizenship Only act.The Bill intended to discriminate against Indian Tamils by denying them citizenship, hence, preventing them from votingIndian Tamils made up 11.7% of the SL population in 1948 compared to 4.1% in 2019The Act specified that anyone wishing to obtain citizenship had to prove that they were, at least, 3rd generation immigrants, which was an impossible task for the majority of Indian TamilsThose who were, at least, third-generation immigrants rarely had the necessary documentation since they rarely registered births or printed birth certificates, hence, they could not prove they were citizens and were deportedAbout 5,000 Indian Tamils qualified for citizenship while over 700,000 Indian Tamils, who made up about 11% of the population, were denied citizenship and deported. The Act successfully disenfranchised plantation Tamils, and significantly dropped the voting power of the Tamil populationAmita Shastri, political science professor at the university of San Fransisco has stated:This orientation was made evident in the citizenship and franchise laws Sri Lanka passed soon after independence to exclude the plantation Tamil workers from the political nation. The actions of the Sinhalese elite led by D.S. Senanayake were loaded with an anti‐working class and ethnically divisive content that has been neglected in previous studies. The new laws distorted the pattern of political incentives, alignments and party competition in the emerging system, and systematically skewed it to favour the most traditional segment of the Sinhalese electorate. This created an intractable dynamic of ethnic outbidding between the two major Sinhalese‐dominated parties to attract the Sinhalese voting base, at the expense of the Sri Lankan Tamil minority. This directly contributed to the latter's alienation, support for secessionism, and the outbreak of ethnic violence and civil war in the 1970s and 1980sSinhala Only Act(1956)By independence, Tamils made up over 30% of government services admissions, and it’s estimated that Tamils constituted 50% of the clerical personnel of the railway, postal and customs services, 60% of all doctors, engineers and lawyers, and 40% of other labor forcesDespite Sri Lankan Tamils only making up around 15% of the populationIn the 1956 parliamentary elections, the SLFP, led and founded by Solomon Bandaranaike, campaigned on largely nationalist policies, and made the one of their key election promises. Thus, the Sinhala Only Bill was quickly enacted after the election. The bill was passed with the SLFP and the UNP supporting it, with the leftist LSSP, Communist party of SL and Tamil parties opposing itThe policy, being severely discriminatory, placed the Tamil population at a "serious disadvantage" and prevented them from attaining high positions in politics and federal servicesSinhala academic, A. M. Navaratna Bandara, states:"The Tamil-speaking people were given no option but to learn the language of the majority if they wanted to get public service employment. [...] A large number of Tamil public servants had to accept compulsory retirement because of their inability to prove proficiency in the official language [...]" The effects of these policies were dramatic as shown by the drastic drop of Tamil representation in public sector: "In 1956, 30 percent of the Ceylon administrative service, 50 percent of the clerical service, 60 percent of engineers and doctors, and 40 percent of the armed forces were Tamil. By 1970 those numbers had plummeted to 5 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, and 1 percent, respectively."As such, most of the government positions and services in the 1960’s were virtually unavailable to Tamils, and this situation only escalated the rise of Tamil nationalismStandardization(1971)The government, lead by PM Sirimavo Bandaranaike, implemented a policy of standardization, a modern day essence affirmative action, to assist Sinhala students to gain better post-secondary educationSinhala nationalists and politicians sought to dilate Tamil presence in education and, thus, also in the professions and civil administrationFrom 1971 to 1977 , the “standardization” policy ensured that the number of students qualifying for university entrance from each language was proportionate to the number of students who sat for university entrance examination in that language. Meaning, that Tamil speaking students had to score much higher than Sinhalese speaking students to gain admission to universitiesNot only did the chances of Tamils to gain access to higher education plummet, but so did the overall process of ethnic relationsThe benefits enjoyed by Sinhalese students also meant a significant fall in the number of Tamil students within the Sri Lankan university student populace.Sri Lankan Tamils, although making up of around 15% of the population, made up 70–80% of university students in the countryTamils constituted 35% and over 45% of students in Medical schoolsThe act significantly dropped the number of Tamils enrolled in universities on the islandUniversity admissions process in 1971 was calculated considerably based on the language of said applicant. Numbers of allocations were proportional to the number of participants who sat to the examination in that language.In 1969, the Northern province, which is 94% Tamil and makes up 7% of the general population, provided 27.5 percent of the entrants to science-based courses in Sri Lankan universitiesStandardization had reduced this to 7%.However, the hardest hit population group were the Tamils in the Western provinces,Colombo and etc, which contained 26%. In 1969, the Western Province provided 67.5 percent of it to admissions to science-based courses.Standardization reduced it to 27%Sinhala historian, C.R. de Silva states:“By 1977 the issue of university admissions had become a focal point of the conflict between the government and Tamil leaders. Tamil youth, embittered by what they considered discrimination against them, formed the Tamil United Liberation Front(TULF). Many advocated the use of violence to establish a separate Tamil state of Eelam. It was an object lesson of how inept policy measures and insensitivity to minority interests can exacerbate ethnic tensions”Many Tamil youths, disfranchised by standardization, began studying aboard, working labour jobs or joining armed guerrilla movements, like the Tamil New Tigers, renamed LTTE in 1976Anti-Tamil riots1956 Gal Oya riotsDeath toll: 150 Tamil civilians and 100+ severely woundedPerpetrators: Sinhalese mobsSri Lanka’s first ethnic/anti-Tamil riotViolence took place in Colombo and Batticaloa as well, but the worst of the violence took place in Gal Oya valley, where local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya Development Board(GODB) used government vehicles, dynamite, knives and other weapons and to massacre Tamils in the areaProperties owned by Tamils, were looted and burned down. In the following days, rumours began to spread that a Sinhalese girl had been raped and made to walk naked down the street in Batticaloa by a Tamil mobThis was later proved to be false, but the rumour had already inflamed the mobs and led to further massacres and property destructionThe police ignored the violence and remained in active , but they eventually intervened and stabilized the situation.Federal Party protestors were attacked by a Sinhalese mob that was led by NLF leader KMP RajaratneThe same mob, after listening to a speech by populist Sinhalese politicians urging them to boycott Tamil business, went on a looting spree in the city, burning and looting Tamil businesses.Over 150 Tamil owned shops were looted and many people were hospitalized for their injuries1958 pogrom158–1500 Tamil civilians and some Sinhalese civilians died in the pogrom and 1000+ were severely woundedPerpetrators: Sinhalese mobsAlthough most of the victims were Tamils, some Sinhalese civilians were killed by Sinhalese mobs who attacked said Sinhala’s who provided sanctuary to TamilsPM Bandaranaike referred to the death of DA Seneviratne, Nuwara Eliya mayor, as the cause of the riots. Hence, giving the Sinhalese the notion that Tamils were responsible for the riots.This resulted in mobs laucnching acts of violence against Tamils across countryMobs would beat Tamils, burn&loot shops, rape Tamil women, and burn housesIn Kantale, Sinhalese rioters stopped buses that were entering the city and killed anyone who was unable to recite a Buddhist verseVictims who were murdered included Sinhalese Christians.In Pandura, a rumour, spread that Tamils had preceded to torture and murder a Sinhala school teacher in Batticaloa. The rumour was later proven to be false as subsequent investigations proved that there was no female Sinhala teacher from Panadura stationed in Batticaloa, but the damage had already been done. As a result, a Sinhalese mob attempted to burn down the Hindu Kovil temple. They were unable to do so, however, they forced the priest out of the temple, tied him to a tree and then preceded to burn him aliveThis incident, one of many, was one that Prabhakaran grew up hearing as a child. When hearing this for the first time, Prabhakaran asked “ why didn’t the priest hit back”. No one really had an answer to his question, however, Prabhakaran decided that he would do what the priest couldn’t, he would “hit back”Gangs roamed Colombo, looking for people who might be Tamil. The usual way to distinguish Tamils from Sinhalese was to look for men who wore shirts outside of their pants, or men with pierced ears.As such, people who could not read a Sinhala newspaper, which includes Sinhalese that were educated in English, were beaten or killed.One trick used by the gangs was to disguise themselves as policemen. They would tell Tamils to flee to the police station for their safety. Once the Tamils had left, the empty houses were looted and burned. Across the country, arson, rape, pillage and murder spread. The state police is accused of being complicit and even organizing several riotsSinhalese that protected their Tamil neighbours by using their homes as shelters had their homes burned down "had their brains strewn about".Sinhalese laborers of the Land Development and Irrigation Department (LDID) from Padaviya formed a mob, armed with guns , and began roaming the northern border areas in trucks. Though they planned on going to Anuradhapura, they took an indirect route on the Padaviya—Kebitigollewa—Vavuniya Road to outmaneuver the army, attacking any Tamils they could find on the way.Prabhakaran’s had family members and family friends who were victims of the 1958 pogrom. Listening to their stories and looking at their wounds perpetuated his belief that an armed struggle was the only optionPrabhakaran’s statement on the riot in his 1984 interview with CNN correspondent, Anita PratapThe shocking events of the 1958 racial riots had a profound impact on me when I was a schoolboy. I heard of horrifying incidents of how our people had been mercilessly and brutally put to death by Sinhala racists. Once I met a widowed mother, a friend of my family, who related to me her agonizing personal experience of this racial holocaust. During the riots a Sinhala mob attacked her house in Colombo. The rioters set fire to the house and murdered her husband. She and her children escaped with severe burn injuries. I was deeply shocked when I saw the scars on her body. I also heard stories of how young babies were roasted alive in boiling tar. When I heard such stories of cruelty I felt a deep sense of sympathy and love for my people. A great passion overwhelmed me to redeem my people from this racist system. I strongly felt that armed struggle was the only way to confront a system which employs armed might against unarmed, innocent people1977 pogrom300 Tamil civilians and some Sinhalese civilians died in the pogrom and 1000+ were severely woundedPerpetrators: Sinhalese mobsIn 1974, the major Tamil poltical parties, who’s primary goal was to represent Tamils in the North&East, joined forces under one party, the Tamil United Liberation Front(TULF)In 1976 they adopted a resolution at their party convention in Vaddukoddai, Jaffna calling for a separate state (Tamil Eelam).The Tamil districts in the 1977 election, almost unanimously, voted for TULF which gravely enraged JR Jayawardene who was convinced that TULF had links with Tamil militant groupsIt’s to note that by 1977, Tamil militant groups began orchestrating attacks against the Sri Lankan army and police forceJayawardene tried to suppress both groupsThere isn’t a universally accepted reason for the riots, but most speculate that it began with a dispute that began when four policemen entered a carnival without tickets. Apparently the policemen were inebriated and proceeded to attack those who asked for tickets. The conflict escalated and the policemen were beaten up by the public and in retaliation the police officers opened fireOthers have the view that the carnival incident was a pretext, inquiries revealing that it was conducted in an organized manner and was hence a pre-planned attack. The riot started on August 12, 1977, within less than a month of the new government taking officeOver 75,000 Tamils were victims of racial violence and were forced to relocate to parts of the northern and Eastern provincesThe events during the pogrom radicalized Tamil youths, convincing many that the TULF's strategy of using legal and constitutional means to achieve independence would never work, and armed struggle was the only to achieve equal rights and independence.The pogrom highlighted TULF's failure to provide security for the mainland Tamil population.It was only after the pogrom that TELO and the LTTE began to openly advocate for an independent Tamil Eelam Later, a TULF activist, Uma Maheswaran, would join the LTTE and would later leave to become the leader of TELO Many TULF activists began to follow in his footsteps and join various Tamil militant groups to fight for independenceWalter Schwarz wrote in Minority Rights Group Report of 1983:The trouble (in 1977) began in Jaffna, capital of the Northern province, when Sinhala policemen, believed to have been loyal to the defeated Sri Lanka Freedom Party of Mrs. Bandaranaike, acted provocatively by bursting into a Tamil carnival. In the violent altercation that followed the police opened fire and four people were killed. A wave of rioting followed, spreading quickly to the south. Among 1,500 people arrested were several well known Sinhalese extremists, accused of instigating violence against TamilsEdmund Samarakkody in Workers Vanguard (New York) stated:The outbreak in mid-August (1977) of the anti-Tamil pogrom (the third such outbreak in two decades) has brought out the reality that the Tamil minority problem in Sri Lanka has remained unresolved now for nearly half a century, leading to the emergence of a separatist movement among the Tamils. As on previous occasions, what took place recently was not Sinhalese – Tamil riots, but an anti-Tamil pogrom. Although Sinhalese were among the casualties, the large majority of those killed, maimed and seriously wounded are Tamils. The victims of the widespread looting are largely Tamils. And among those whose shops and houses were destroyed, the Tamils are the worst sufferers. Of the nearly 75,000 refugees, the very large majority were Tamils, including Indian Tamil plantation workers.Burning of the Jaffna public library(1981)Perpetrators: UNP sponsored paramilitiasThe Jaffna public library, established in 1933The library held archival material written in palm leaf manuscripts, original copies of regionally important historic documents dating back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, political history of Sri Lanka and newspapers that were published hundreds of years ago in the Jaffna Kingdom. Thus, making it the largest historical library in the Indian subcontinent, if not all of Asia, and symbolic for the Tamil peopleThe library became the pride of the local people as even researchers from India and other countries began to use it for research and academic purposesOn May 31st, May 31, 1981, TULF held a rally where which 3 Sinhala policemen were killed by Tamil militanAs a result, police and paramilitary officers began a pogrom that lasted for 3 days. TULF’s head office was destroyed alongside Jaffna MP V. Yogeswaran’s houseFour people were pulled from their homes and killed at random. Many business establishments and a local Hindu temple were also deliberately destroyed.On the night of June 1, according to many eyewitnesses, police and government-sponsored paramilitias set fire to the Jaffna public library and completely destroyed it.Over 97,000 volumes of books along with numerous culturally important and irreplaceable manuscripts were destroyed.Scrolls of historical value and the works and manuscripts of philosophers, artists and authors, including Ananda Coomaraswamy and prominent intellectual Prof. Dr. Isaac ThambiahThe destroyed articles included memoirs and works of writers and authors who contributed greatly towards sustaining the written presence of Tamil cultureThe office of the Eelanaadu, a local newspaper, was also destroyed. Statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures were either destroyed or defaced.Nancy Murray states:several high-ranking security officers and two cabinet ministers were present in the town of Jaffna, when uniformed security men and plain clothed mobs carried out organized acts of destruction.The burning of Jaffna Public Library became an example of ethnic biblioclasm and left a deep impact on Tamil people who perceived it as an attack on their identity and as a cultural genocide as the Library served as a monument to the desire for learning and culture of the people of Jaffna. The Library, then one of Asia’s biggest, contained 95,000 volumes of works relating to Tamil culture and history, including numerous culturally important and irreplaceable manuscripts. When ethnic nationalist forces engaged in book burning in Germany in the 1930s and Bosnia in the 90s, it culminated in genocides. It was part of a long genocidal process that began with the country’s independence. The Sinhalese long sought to suppress Tamil culture because they, as a majority with a minority complex, feared being dominated by Tamils and losing their identity to the larger presence of Tamil culture in the nearby south Indian state. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who would become the country’s prime minister in 1956, campaigned on the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist platform opposing linguistic parity for Tamil, denouncing those that favoured it as traitors to the race. Portraying the Tamil demand for linguistic parity as an existential threat to the Sinhala race, he said if Tamils were granted parity they “would come to exert their dominant power over us.”UNP politician John Kotelawala warned that parity would ensure in the years to come Sinhala children will be speaking Tamil which with its prolific literature “will gain precedence and finally kill the Sinhalese language.” J.R. Jayewardene (who would later become a prime minister) expressed fear that Sinhala spoken by only three million people would suffer or go extinct altogether if the Tamil language, with its larger share of speakers in India and influence of its literature and films in the island, were granted parity of status. Political Buddhist monks became prominent during this time and argued that linguistic parity ‘would be the death-knell of the Sinhalese’*Exert from Siva E Loganathan’s answerIronically, Mahinda Rajapaksa even referred to the incident stating:Burning the Library sacred to the people of Jaffna was similar to shooting down Lord BuddhaBlack July riots(1983)The turning point of the ethnic conflict happened on July 24, 1983Charles Anthony, aka Lt Seelan, had sacrificed himself so his comrade, nicknamed Aruna, could escape, as the two were attempting to escape the pursuing Sri Lankan armyWhen Prabhakaran received news of Lt. Seelan's death, he immediately plotted to retaliate against the Sri Lankan armyHe hatched a plan to ambush a military convoy on a narrow road in Tinneveli, Jaffna.On the night of July 23, a 15 soldiers were passing through a convey in the villageMines had been laid and the LTTE were in position when the army patrol neared the site. As the SLA soldiers drew closer, a heavy explosion sent the trucks flying into the air and the LTTE soldiers immediately opened fire, killing 13 of the 15 soldiers as they scrambled out of the truckThis is would spark the 5 day massacres of the Tamil population across the countryJR Jayewardene tried to keep the funeral for the dead soldiers from turning into a large demonstration. However, his intentions would fail. The arrival of the bodies from Jaffna to Colombo on July 24 was delayed by several hours, and the funeral had to be cancelled. In the meantime, a large group of people had gathered at the army’s cemetery.As hours passed, the crowd grew more agitated and in the future hours, large scale violence would eruptThe rioting, July 24 - 29, saw thousands Tamil businesses and homes being burned, homes while fleeing Tamils were beaten, shot, or burned alive in their houses, vehicles or on the street. Many Tamil women were raped or forced to display themselves in front of heckling Sinhalese mobsRioting had spread to the Canal Bank, Grandpass, Hattewatte, Kirilapone, Kotahena, Maradana, Modera, Mutwal, Narahenpita, and Wanathamulla. Mobs armed with crow bars and kitchen knives roamed the streets, attacking and killing Tamils.In Colombo, the riots had spread to large Tamil populated areas in Wellawatte, Dehiwala, Anderson Flats, Torrington Flats, Thimbirigasyaya, Cinnamon Gardens, Kadawatha, Kelaniya, Nugegoda and Ratmalana.Violence had spread to Gampaha and Negombo as wellIn Kalutara, the TKVS stores were burned down, one owner managed to escape, but the mob threw him back into the fireThe residence of Indian high commissioner was also burned downBy the evening, virtually, all of Colombo was on fireThe mobs possessed electoral lists which enabled them to identify Tamil homes and propertyThis indicates the prior organization and cooperation by elements of the government.In some cases, the police would re-direct Tamils fleeing to refugee camps to areas controlled by riotersJR Jayewardene would later admit in a statement,"a pattern of organization and planning has been noticed in the rioting and looting that took place."The mob attacked the industrial area of Ratmalana, which contained a number of Tamil-owned factories. Jetro Garments and Tata Garments on Galle Road were completely gutted. Other factories attacked included Ponds, S-Lon, Reeves Garments, Hydo Garments, Hyluck Garments, AGM Garments, Manhattan Garments, Ploy Peck, Berec, and Mascons Asbestos. Indian-owned factories such as Kundanmals, Oxford, and Bakson Garments were not attacked, giving credence to the suggestion that the mob was deliberately going after Sri Lankan Tamil targets. Seventeen factories were destroyed in Ratmalana. Capital Maharaja a Tamil-owned company, is one of Sri Lanka's largest conglomerates. Six of their factories in Ratmalana and their headquarters in Bankshall Street were destroyed. The mob ended the day by setting fire to Tilly's Beach Hotel in Mount Lavinia.One of the most notorious incidents of the rioting took place at the Welikada Prison on 25 July37 Tamil prisoners were killed by Sinhalese prisoners using knives and clubsThe Tamil inmates were political prisoners who were arrested under treason charges while the Sinhalese prisoners were arrested for murder, rape and robberyTamil and Sinhalese prisoners were separated to prevent a large scale riotIn one incident, survivors claimed that prison officers allowed their keys to fall into the hands of Sinhalese prisoners; but at the subsequent inquest, prison officers claimed that the keys had been stolen from them.The most infamous incident in the prison massacre happened when 2 men, one being TELO militant Kuttimani Yogachandran, announced in court that they would donate their eyes in the hope that they would be grafted on to Tamils who would see the birth of Tamil Eelam, Second hand reports from Batticaloa gaol, where the survivors of the Welikada massacre are now being kept, say that Yogachandran and another man were forced to kneel and their eyes gouged out with iron bars by prisoner guards before they were killed. Kuttimani's tongue was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: "I have drunk the blood of a Tiger."The riots left:4000 Tamils dead20,000 Tamils severely wounded30,000 Tamils and Sinhalese unemployed150,000 Tamils homeless1,000,000 Tamils displacedIt’s to note however, that they were many instances, where Sinhalese civilians were using their homes as refuge and were voluntarily risking their lives to provide protection for Tamils fleeing from state-sponsored mobsAs one Sinhalese individual recalled:"I was completely shattered for months (I was actually hospitalized of exhaustion) after running around transporting my friends and unknown Tamil-speaking families to safe places. We had nearly 15 people in our house."After the riots, the LTTE went from a group of 30 members to 2000 over night. In the preceding weeks, the LTTE saw a spike in recruitment numbersOne LTTE soldier stated:LTTE was very careful in taking people. They didn't just take a bunch of people. They had studied the people, looked at their background.. they would give a person the run-around and then only take him in. After Black July, there was a marked increase in membership among all of the Tamil militant groups in Sri LankaAn example of this would be Anton Balasingham’s political aid, alias Yogi, who was forced to watch the brutal rape of his mother during the riotsHis mother was dragged out of her house and Yogi was forced to watch as Sinhalese thugs preceded to rape and beat her. Every time Yogi looked away, the thugs would beat his mother even moreAfter the 3 hour ordeal, Yogi’s mother was dead, and the Sinhala thugs had left laughing, saying “Tamil whores deserve it”Yogi would flee Colombo to arrive in Jaffna and join the LTTE the following dayIn an interview with the Daily Telegraph on 11 July 1983, about two weeks before the riots, Jayewardene expressed the state's complicity in the violence against the Tamils stating:I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna (Tamil) people now. Now we cannot think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us. The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here... really, if I starve the Tamils, Sinhala people will be happy...The Daily Telegraph also reported:Motorists were dragged from their cars to be stoned and beaten with sticks. Others were cut down with knives and axes. Mobs of Sinhala youth rampaged through the streets, ransacking homes, shops and offices, looting them and setting them ablaze, as they sought out members of the Tamil ethnic minority. A mob attacked a Tamil cyclist riding near Colombo's eye hospital. The cyclist was hauled from his bike, drenched with petrol and set alight. As he ran screaming down the street, the mob set on him again and hacked him down with jungle knivesMrs Eli Skarstein, back home in Stavanger, Norway, told how she and her 15 year old daughter, Kristen witnessed one massacre. 'A mini bus full of Tamils were forced to stop in front of us in Colombo', she said. A Sinhalese mob poured petrol over the bus and set it on fire. They blocked the car door and prevented the Tamils from leaving the vehicle. 'Hundreds of spectators watched as about 20 Tamils were burnt to death.' Mrs. Skarstein added: 'We can't believe the official casualty figures. Hundreds, maybe thousands, must have been killed already. The police force (which is 95% Sinhalese) did nothing to stop the mobs. There was no mercy. Women, children and old people were slaughtered. Police did nothing to stop the genocide.'An exert from William McGowan’s book, The Tragedy of Sri Lanka, statesWhile travelling on a bus when a mob laid siege to it, passengers watched as a small boy was hacked 'to limb-less death'. The bus driver was ordered to give up a Tamil. He pointed out a woman who was desperately trying to erase the mark on her forehead—called a kumkum—as the thugs bore down on her. The woman's belly was ripped open with a broken bottle and she was immolated as people clapped and danced. In another incident, two sisters, one eighteen and one eleven, were decapitated and raped, the latter 'until there was nothing left to violate and no volunteers could come forward', after which she was burned. While all this was going on, a line of Buddhist monks appeared, arms flailing, their voices raised in a delirium of exhortation, summoning the Sinhalese to put all Tamils to deathThe Economist stated:"...But for days the soldiers and policemen were not overwhelmed; they were un-engaged or, in some cases, apparently abetting the attackers. Numerous eye witnesses attest that soldiers and policemen stood by while Colombo burned."Dr. Brian Senewiratne’s post Black July statement:It has been erroneously claimed that there has been an ‘ethnic conflict’ in Sri Lanka. There has been no ethnic conflict since 1915, and that was between the Sinhalese and the Muslims. What there has been for six decades, are a series of increasingly virulent pogroms against the Tamil people by a succession of Sinhalese-dominated government, assisted by Sinhalese political opportunists and ethno-religious chauvinists, and conducted by the Sinhalese Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese), with a degeneracy of Sinhala society and its rapid descent to barbarism. These anti-Tamil pogroms have been to crush the Tamil people into submission to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nationPaul Sieghart of the International Commission of Jurists stated in Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors that:Clearly this (July 1983 attack) was no spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people – nor was it as has been suggested in some quarters, a popular response to the killing of 13 soldiers in an ambush the previous day by Tamil Tigers, which was not even reported in the newspapers until the riots began. It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organized well in advanceCanadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, recently stated:“Today, we remember the thousands of Tamil people who lost their lives and the countless others who were displaced from their homes during the 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka.“Black July was a week of violent riots and horrific destruction that followed decades of unrest and rising tensions in the country. It led to a conflict that lasted 26 years, killing tens of thousands more people and leaving lasting wounds in communities across Sri Lanka.“Thanks in large part to the advocacy of Tamil-Canadians, Canada implemented a Special Measures program in 1983 to welcome more than 1,800 Tamils. We see the resiliency of Tamil-Canadians in the tremendous contributions they make to Canada every day.“I extend my deepest sympathies to all those who suffered and lost family, friends, and neighbours during Black July and the conflict that followed. Canada continues to offer its full support to those working toward meaningful justice, accountability, peace, and reconciliation in the country.”The Black July riots officially commenced the 26 year civil war as the mainland Tamil population had now openly supported the LTTE and their movement for independenceSri Lankan government massacres of Tamil civilians during the war(1983–2009)*If what happened in Sri Lankan in 2009 happened in 2019, the entire world and social media would be outragedStatistically, the Sri Lankan government is responsible for 92.5% of innocent civilian deathsThe IPKF is responsible for 5%The LTTE is responsible 2.5%Sri Lankan government and IPKF killed more civilians than LTTE soldiersThe LTTE killed more Sri Lankan and Indian soldiers than civiliansSri Lankan government atrocities against Tamil civilians(*NOTE: This is a long list so brace yourself)Inginiyakala massacre ‐ 05.06.19562. 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom3. Tamil research conference massacre ‐10.01.19744. 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom5. 1981 communal pogrom6. Burning of the Jaffna library ‐01.06.19817. 1983 Black July riots8. Thirunelveli massacre ‐ 24, 25.07.19839. Sampalthoddam massacre ‐ 198410. Chunnakam Police station massacre ‐08.01.198411. Chunnakam market massacre ‐ 28.03.198412. Mathawachchi – Rampawa ‐ September 198413. Point Pedro – Thikkam massacre ‐ 16.09.198414. Othiyamalai massacre ‐ 01.12.198415. Kumulamunai massacre ‐ 02.12.198416. Cheddikulam massacre ‐ 02.12.198417. Manalaru massacre ‐ 03.12.198418. Blood soaked Mannar ‐ 04.12.198419. Kokkilai‐Kokkuthoduvai massacre ‐ 15.12.198420. Vankalai church massacre ‐ 06.01.198621. Mulliyavalai massacre ‐ 16.01.198522. Vaddakandal massacre ‐ 30.01.198523. Puthukkidiyiruppu Iyankovilady massacre 21.04.198524. Trincomalee massacres in 198525. Valvai‐85 massacre 10.05.198526. Kumuthini Boat massacre 15.05.198527. Kiliveddi massacre in 198528. Thiriyai massacre ‐ 08.06.198529. Sampaltivu ‐ 04 to 09.08.198530. Veeramunai massacre ‐ 20.06.199031. Nilaveli massacre 16.09.198532. Piramanthanaru massacre ‐ 02.10.198533. Kanthalai‐85 massacre ‐ 09.11.198534. Muthur Kadatkaraichenai ‐ 08, 09, 10.11.198535. Periyapullumalai massacre in 198636. Kilinochchi Railway Station massacre ‐ 25.01.198637. Udumbankulam massacre ‐ 19.02.198538. Vayaloor massacre ‐ 24.08.198539. Eeddimurinchan massacre ‐ 19, 20.03.198640. Anandapuram shelling ‐ 04.06.198641. Kanthalai‐86 massacre ‐ 04, 05.06. 198642. Mandaithivu sea massacre ‐ 10.06.198643. Seruvila massacre ‐ 12.06.198644. Thambalakamam massacres ‐ 1985, 198645. Paranthan farmers massacre ‐ 28.06.198646. Peruveli refugee camp massacre ‐ 15.07.198647. Thanduvan bus massacre ‐ 17.07.198648. Mutur Manalchenai massacre ‐ 18.07. 198649. Adampan massacre ‐ 12.10.198650. Periyapandivrichchan massacre ‐ 15.10.198651. Kokkadichcholai‐87 massacre ‐ 28.01.198752. Paddithidal massacre ‐ 26.04.1987.53. Thonithiddamadu massacre ‐ 27.05.198754. Alvai temple shelling ‐ 29.05.198755. Eastern University massacre ‐ 23.05.199056. Sammanthurai massacre ‐ 10.06.199057. Xavierpuram massacre ‐ 07.08.199058. Siththandy massacre ‐ 20, 27.07.199059. Paranthan junction massacre ‐ 24.07.199060. Poththuvil massacre ‐ 30.07.199061. Tiraikerny massacre ‐ 06.08.199062. Kalmunai massacre ‐ 11.08.199063. Thuranilavani massacre ‐ 12.08.199064. Eravur hospital massacre ‐ 12.08.199065. Koraveli massacre 14.08.199066. Nelliyadi market bombing ‐ 29.08.199067. Eravur massacre ‐ 10.10.199068. Saththurukkondan massacre ‐ 09.09.199069. Natpiddymunai massacre ‐ 10.09.199070. Vantharamullai‐90 massacre ‐ 05, 23,09,199071. Mandaithivu disappearances ‐ 23.08.1990, 25.09.199072. Oddisuddan bombing ‐ 27.11.199073. Puthukkudiyiruppu junction bombing - 24.7. 199074. Vankalai massacre ‐ 17.02.199175. Vaddakkachchi bombing ‐ 28.02.199176. Vantharumoolai ‐ 09.06.199177. Kokkadichcholai‐91 massacre ‐ 12.06.199178. Pullumalai massacre ‐ 1983‐199079. Kinniyadi massacre ‐ 12.07.199180. Akkarayan hospital massacre ‐ 15.07.199781. Uruthrapuram bombing ‐ 04.02.199182. Karapolla‐Muthgalla massacre ‐ 29.04.199283. Vattrapalai shelling ‐ 18.05.199284. Thellipalai temple bombing ‐ 30.05.19985. Mailanthai massacre ‐ 09.08.199286. Kilali massacre ‐1992, 199387. Maaththalan bombing ‐ 18.09.199388. Chavakachcheri‐Sangaththanai bombing ‐ 28.09.199389. Kokuvil temple bombing ‐ 29.09.199390. Kurunagar church bombing ‐ 13.11.199391. Chundikulam‐94 massacre ‐ 18.02.199492. Navali church massacre ‐ 09.07.199593. Nagarkovil bombing ‐ 22.05.199594. Chemmani mass graves in 199695. Kilinochchi town massacre ‐ 1996‐199896. Kumarapuram massacre ‐ 11.02.199697. Nachchikuda strafing ‐ 16.03.199698. Thambirai market bombing ‐ 17.05.199699. Mallavi bombing ‐ 24.07.1996100. Kaithady Krishanthi massacre ‐ 07.09.1996101. Pannankandy massacre ‐ 05.07.1997102. Konavil bombing ‐ 27.09.1996103. Vavunikulam massacre ‐ 26‐09‐1996, 15‐08‐1997104. Mullivaikal bombing ‐ 13.05.1997105. Mankulam shelling ‐ 08.06.1997106. Thampalakamam‐98 massacre ‐ 01.02.1998107. Old Vaddakachchi bombing ‐ 26.03.1998108. Suthanthirapuram massacre ‐ 10.06.1998109. Visuvamadhu shelling ‐ 25.11.1998110. Chundikulam‐98 bombing 02.12.1998111. Manthuvil bombing ‐ 15.09.1999112. Palinagar bombing and shelling ‐ 03.09.1999113. Madhu church massacre ‐ 20.11.1999 .114. Mirusuvil massacre ‐ 19.12.2000115. Pesalai housing scheme massacre – 23 December 2005116. Trincomalee students massacre – 2 January 2006117. Manipay family massacre – 24 January 2006118. TRO employees disappearance –29 January 2006119. Trincomalee riots – 12 April 2006120. Puthoor massacre – 18 April 2006121. Muthur bombing – 25 April 2006122. Uthayan Daily Press Office attack – 2 May 2006123. Nelliyadi massacre – 4 May 2006124. Manthuvil Temple massacre – 6 May 2006125. Allaipiddy massacre – 13 May 2006126. Vadamunai pressure mine – 7 June 2006127. Vankalai family massacre – 8 June 2006128. Kaithady mass grave – 6,7,8 June 2006129. Pesalai church massacre – 17 June 2006130. Action Faim INGO staff massacre – 5 August 2006131.Nedunkerni ambulance claymore – 8 August 2006132. Eastern bombing and shelling – August - December 2006133. Allaipiddy shelling - 13 August 2006134. Senchcholai bombing – 14 August 2006135. Pottuvil massacre – 17 September 2006136. PTK bombing - 16 October 2006137. Kilinochchi hospital precicnts bombing – 2 November 2006138. Vavuniya Agriculture School massacre – 18 November 2006139. Padahuthurai bombing – 2 January 2007140. Silavathurai claymore attack – 2 September 2007141. Periyamadu shelling – 25 October 2007142. Tharmapuram bombing – 25 November 2007143. Iyankulam claymore attack – 27 November 2007144. Madhu school bus bombing - 29 January 2008145. Kiranchi bombing – 22 February 2008146. Murukandy claymore attack – 23 May 2008147. Nahathambiran temple pilgrim claymore attack148. PTK bombing – 15 June 2008149. Mullaitivu petrol station and bus depot bombing - 2 January 2009150. Thevipuram and Vaddakachchi shelling - 8 January 2009151. Tharmapuram Hospital shelling - 8 January 2009152. Visuamadu shelling - 17-20 January 2009153. Suthanthirapuram, Thevipuram, Udayarkattu and Vallipuram shelling - 20 January 2009154. Vallipuram Hospital shelling - 22 January 2009155. Suthanthirapuram shelling - 24 January 2009156. Suthanthirapuram and Udayarkattu shelling - 26 January 2009157. Puthukkudiyiruppu shelling - 26-31 January 2009158. Udayaarkaddu Hospital shelling - 26 January 2009159. Puthukkudiyiruppu Hospital shelling - 1-3 February 2009160. Suthanthirapuram shelling - 3 February 2009161. Ponnambalam Memorial Hospital bombing - 5-6 February 2009162. Mahtalan, Moongilaru, Suthanthirapuram, Thevipuram, Udayarkattu and Vallipuram shelling - 6 February 2009163. Puthukkudiyiruppu shelling - 7 February 2009164. Putumattalan shelling - 7 February 2009165. Suthanthirapuram shelling - 7 February 2009166. Devipuram shelling - 9 February 2009167. Pokkanai bombing - 9 February 2009168. Mattalan shelling - 9 February 2009169. Mattalan, Thevipuram and Vallipuram shelling - 11-12 February 2009170. Iranaipalai shelling - 13 February 2009171. Puthukkudiyiruppu Hospital shelling - 13 February 2009172. Thevipuram and Vallipuram shelling - 14 February 2009173. Mullivaikkal and Putumattalan bombing and shelling - 15 February 2009174. Valayanmadam shelling - 15 February 2009175. Mattalan shelling - 16 February 2009176. Valayanmadam shelling - 17 February 2009177. Ampalavanpokkanai, Idaikdu and Puthukkudiyiruppu shelling - 18 February 2009178. Valayanmadam bombing - 19 February 2009179. Ananthapuram, Iranaipalai, Mullivaikkal and Puthukkudiyiruppu shelling - 19 February 2009180. Valayanmadam shelling - 20 February 2009181. Ananthapuram, Iranaipalai, Pokkanai, Puthukkudiyiruppu and Valayanmadam shelling - 20 February 2009182. Ampalavanpokkanai, Mattalan, Mullivaikkal, Pokkanai and Valayanmadam shelling - 21 February 2009183. Ananthapuram and Iranaipalai shelling - 21 February 2009184. Iranaipalai shelling - 23 February 2009185. Puthukkudiyiruppu bombing and shelling - 25-26 February 2009186. Ampalavakanai shelling - 4 March 2009187. Mattalan and Valayanmadam shelling - 5 - 7 March 2009188. No Fire Zone shelling- 12 March - May 18 2009189. Mattalan, Mullivaikkal and Pokkanai shelling - 13 March 2009190. Valayanmadam bombing - 17 March 2009191. Valayanmadam shelling - 20 March 2009192. Mullivaikkal, Putumattalan and Valayanmadam shelling - 2 March 2009193. Pokkanai shelling - 7 - 19 April 2009194. Pokkanai shelling - April 2009195. Valayanmadam makeshift hospital bombing - 21 April 2009196. Valayanmadam shelling - 23 April 2009197. Mullivaikal massacres - 23 April - May 18 2009*Please read the following descriptions of the details and victims of each massacre through the links : http://www.nesohr.org/files/Lest... http://www.nesohr.org/files/Lest...*Please take the time to watch Channel 4’s “No Fire Zones: Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”*Every Tamizhan and political activist should watch this documentaryMullivaikal Genocide reportsBruce Fein, counsel for TAG, wroteI am writing to urge you to open investigations under the Rome Statute of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan presidential adviser and Member of Parliament, Basil Rajapaksa, and Sri Lankan Army Commander Sarath Fonseka.The quartet should be investigated for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide of Sri Lankan civilian Tamils unconnected with the conflict between the government and the LTTE.A US State Department report noted a source inside the No Fire Zone as stating the Sri Lankan military was:“engaged in daily shelling and bombing of the NFZ, killing an estimated minimum of 100 people per day”The US State Department also stated that,“One shell landed in front of the admission ward, killing 26 people instantaneously.”“Among the casualties was the Administrative Officer of Mullaittivu Regional Director of Health Services (RDHS), who was killed while arranging a patient’s admission to the hospital.”“A witness at the hospital said that the shelling came from the direction of Iraddayvaikkal, which GSL forces had recently captured. Another source said that in addition to the 49 killed, scores of others were wounded, and he expected the death toll to rise. Shells were still hitting the area hours later, including one that landed about 150 yards from the hospital.”“the smaller NFZ unilaterally declared by the GSL continued to come under attack.”"An organization’s sources expressed their belief that the GSL was deliberately preventing delivery of medicine to the NFZ and reported that ―over the last week, at least 20 people have died due to starvation and lack of medication"A local source reported that the remaining hospital facilities were continually hit by SLA shelling, even though their locations had been carefully reported to the government.“An organization reported that shipments of food and medicine to the NFZ were grossly insufficient over the prior month and that the GSL reportedly delayed or denied timely shipment of life-saving medicines as well as chlorine tablets. A source in the NFZ reported that patients were brought to the hospital for fainting attacks attributed to their lack of food.”“Shortly thereafter the hospital was attacked, killing four or five people including a doctor and wounding more than 30. Several sources informed HRW that each time a hospital was established in a new location, GPS coordinates of the facility were transmitted to the Sri Lankan government to ensure that the facility would be protected from military attack. Witnesses said that on several occasions, attacks occurred on the day after the coordinates had been transmitted.”“Mothers were crying at the hospital and asking for milk powder. They had not eaten and were unable to feed their children, but the hospital did not have milk powder in stock.”Jacques de Maio, the ICRC head of operations for South Asia, in Geneva said, "not all the wounded could be evacuated today, and it is of the utmost importance that more evacuations take place over the coming days"."The food and medical supplies that have been delivered remain insufficient to cover the basic needs of the people there."A leaked US embassy cable notes,The Embassy has credible information that the Sri Lankan Air Force conducted an air strike south of the civilian safe zone yesterday afternoon, May 10."The Foreign Ministers of the UK, France, Austria and Costa Rica, as well as the U.S. and Mexico all strongly supported SC action, with Russian FM Lavrov on the defensive. Lavrov said the situation in Sri Lanka is a humanitarian disaster, but not a threat to peace and security. He said other fora in the UN were better suited to address this issue. He added that there were plenty of similar instances when the Security Council did not act. China said that the Security Council's informal meetings on Sri Lanka had made a difference.Ambassador Rice disagreed, and said the meetings had not yet made a difference; displaced persons were not receiving help, and the shelling continued despite government assurances to the contrary. On the margins of the meeting, the French said they intend to bring Sri Lanka to the Security Council this week, and would push for a product."Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch commented,“If the Security Council stays silent on this issue any longer, it will be a failure of historic proportions… It is already late, but lives can still be saved”.In a statement, the Tamil National Alliance(TNA) stated,“there is genocide taking place in Vanni; the entire international community is being silent; we don’t want just statements of condemnations and pledges without any action; the killings of civilians must immediately be stopped; this is our urgent request”.“The use by the Sri Lankan State of internationally banned weapons, such as cluster bombs and chemical weapons, has been a characteristic feature of the current phase of the war being waged against the Tamil people.”“The Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka are clearly being subjected to Genocide.”OISL statements:“A senior United Nations official said they were amongst the worst cases of malnutrition he had ever seen”.“a shell landed near a tent accommodating hospital staff and volunteers, killing a nursing assistant and causing serious burns to six others”.“At least two witnesses indicated that at that time, patients were being brought in with unusual burns, one of them describing the different parts of the body of the patients being blackened, with skin like “black charcoal”.”“Witness testimonies and other documentation refer to many dying of starvation, exhaustion or lack of medical care in addition to those killed by shelling and shooting”.“It remains to be investigated how many people - particularly the most vulnerable such as the elderly and children - died as a result of lack of access to food and medical care.”“One of the children who was 18 months old was suffering severe lethargy, she could not stand up or walk and had to be carried all the time. Even though we favoured the children with food, they showed signs of muscle wastage in their legs, they had distended stomachs and their ribs where showing through their skin where the normal layer of fat in a child of this age had disappeared.”“Cluster munitions release bomblets over a wide area above a target that explode on impact. However, indirect fire munitions may also be configured to explode into fragments overhead. OISL believes that given the persistent nature of the allegations of cluster munitions, further investigation needs to be carried out to determine whether or not they were used.”“Firing from the SLA would pass over the LTTE front line “and impact on the civilians behind it”.”“He said that everyone was squeezed into a small piece of land and practically each time a shell fell, people would be injured and killed. Another witness said he saw nine people being killed when a shell hit a mango tree by a well where they had gathered. One saw a woman killed when a shell hit her bunker… she had a sewing machine and used to make cloth bags to fill with sand for the bunker. “Often, people fled when family members were killed – they had no time to mourn or bury the dead…” Another witness described seeing more than a 100 dead bodies, including children, near his bunker.”“The SLA force now confronting the LTTE was probably in excess of 50,000 soldiers, with significant heavy weapons capability and air supremacy… The SLA was on one side of a large lagoon, the LTTE on the other, the civilians being at some distance behind the LTTE.“Between 8 and 12 May the facility was shelled on several occasions as the NFZ3 came under intense daily bombardment by SLA artillery, the air force and the navy.”“The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we’ve watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months... The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality.”“Likewise, while OISL received allegations of the use of white phosphorous, and witnesses described such incidents, particularly in the last few weeks of the conflict where bombs caused intense burning and blackened skin, it was not able to gather enough information to confirm that white phosphorous was used. OISL therefore believes that these allegations should also be investigated further.”Human Rights Watch reported two witness testimonies from the day."K. Kanaga," a 35-year-old woman whose name is withheld for security reasons, said that around 7 p.m. on May 9, she and 15 others were hiding in a bunker that they had built under a tractor when a shell struck the tractor. "If it hadn't been for the tractor, we would have all been dead," she said. About eight to 10 shells struck the immediate area, which was populated with tents and improvised bunkers. Kanaga's 45-year-old cousin was staying in a tent nearby; she never reached the bunker and was killed in the attack. "Many other people were injured as well, but I don't know how many," Kanaga said. "I could hear their screams.""R. Raman," 29, said that he and his family had been hiding in their bunker in Mullaivaikal - a dug-out trench without any cover - for several days. "We were being attacked from all sides," he said. "My wife and I only left the bunker to get food and water for our three children."Early in the morning on May 9, a shell struck one of the tents closeby, killing Raman's 15-year-old nephew and wounding his nephew's older brother and sister. Raman believes that the shell came from Sri Lankan army positions and may have been targeting LTTE forces that were deployed in the jungle about 100 meters away. Several shells struck the tented area inhabited by displaced civilians.Catholic Priest Father Francis Joseph writes to the Pope from inside the No Fire Zone, calling on the Church to break its silence on the massacre of Tamils. The father, who was later detained by Sri Lankan security forces after passing through a military checkpoint in May 2009, has not been seen since and is one of the 12,000 Tamils who have gone missing under government custodyExtracts of his letter are below.Last night’s toll of the dead is 3318 and of the injured more than 4000. It was a barrage of artillery, mortar, multi-barrel shelling and cluster bombs…The cries and woes of agony of babies and children, the women and the elderly fill the air that was polluted by poisonous and unhealthy gases…I deem it my duty to point my finger at the Church for its silence while some of the countries like USA, UK, France and some of the European Union countries and others, even the UN have voiced their dismay at the way the Sri Lankan Government is conducting a war to annihilate the Tamils…Let it be known that under the guise of eradicating terrorism, the Sri Lankan Government is waging the war to annihilate the Tamil nation. It is a genocidal war.Tamil Genocide by Professor Francis BoyleProf Francis Boyle, a Harvard law school graduate and a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, writes that "since the outset of this latest crisis in January, the GOSL has exterminated about 7000 Tamils in Vanni, certainly a "substantial part" of the Tamil population in Vanni and Sri Lanka.”“If not stopped now, the GOSL's toll of genocide against the Tamils could far exceed the recent horrors of Srebrenica.""A generation ago the world turned away from the Nazi genocide against the Jews--and lived to regret it. Humanity is at a similar crossroads today.”An exert from his book:These Nazi style concentration camps that the Sri Lankan government is now forcibly imposing on at least 300,000 Tamil civilians constitutes acts of genocide within the meaning of Article II(c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which Sri Lanka is a contracting party.United Nations's Secretary- General's advisory panelThe UN released a 215 pages report on the human rights abuses during the war and states:The Sri Lankan military used large-scale and widespread shelling causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni.The Sri Lankan government tried to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war using a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear.The Sri Lankan military shelled on a large scale the three Safe Zones where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate. It did this even after saying it would cease using heavy weapons.The Sri Lankan military shelled the UN hub, food distribution lines and Red Cross ships coming to rescue the wounded and their relatives. It did this despite having intelligence as well as notifications by the UN, Red Cross and others.Most of the civilian casualties were caused by Sri Lankan military shelling.The Sri Lankan military systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines. All hospitals in the Vanni were hit by mortars and artillery, sometimes repeatedly, despite the Sri Lankan military knowing their locations.The Sri Lankan government systematically deprived civilians in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, adding to their suffering. The government deliberately underestimated the number of civilians in order to deprive them of humanitarian aid.Tens of thousands of civilians were killed between January and May 2009. Many died anonymously in the final days.The Sri Lankan government subjected the civilians who managed to escape the conflict zone to further deprivation and suffering.Screening for Tamil Tigers took place without any transparency or external scrutiny. Some of those separated by the screening were summarily executed whilst women were raped. Others simply disappearedUS Congress report in October 2009 reported:“Majority of shelling into the Safe Zone was from Sri Lankan government forces; the government forces carried out shelling during a 48-hour "ceasefire"; the government forces unlawfully killed captives and combatants seeking to surrender, including senior Tamil Tigers; the government forces and paramilitary groups abducted and then killed Tamil civilians, particularly children and young men; there was an acute shortage of food, medicine and clean water despite government assurances that it would supply sufficient amounts”Between January 14–16 2010, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal reported that:“The tribunal found numerous instances of human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan government. Violations between 2006 (end of the ceasefire) and 2009 (end of the war) included: bombing civilian objectives like hospitals, schools and other non-military targets; bombing government-proclaimed 'safety zones' or 'no fire zones'; withholding of food, water, and health facilities in war zones; use of heavy weaponry, banned weapons and air-raids; using food and medicine as a weapon of war; mistreatment, torture and execution of captured or surrendered Tamil Tiger combatants, officials and supporters; torture; rape and sexual violence against women; deportations and forcible transfer of individuals and families; and desecration of the dead”“Violations committed in the IDP camps included: shooting of Tamil citizens and Tamil Tiger supporters; forced disappearances; rape; malnutrition; and lack of medical supplies”“ There was also evidence of forced "disappearances" of targeted individuals from the Tamil population during the ceasefire (2002–2006)”In May 2010, the International Crisis Group reported, with vasts amounts of evidence including numerous reliable eyewitness statements, hundreds of photographs, video, satellite images, electronic communications and documents from multiple credible sources. The report concluded that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces displaying:The report found credible evidence of intentional shelling of civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces; intentional shelling of hospitals by the Sri Lankan armed forces; intentional shelling of humanitarian operations by the Sri Lankan armed forces; deliberate obstruction of food and medical treatment for the civilian population by the Sri Lankan armed forcesThe report found evidence that suggested that during 2009 tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed, countless wounded and hundreds of thousands deprived of basic food and medical care which resulted in further, unnecessary deaths.The report suggested that the actions of some members of the international community produced conditions which allowed war crimes to be committedIn January 2011 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, a German human rights group, sent a dossier detailing alleged war crimes committed by the 57 Division to the German Federal Foreign office:The ECCHR followed the military offensives as described by the Sri Lankan military, examined reports produced by the Sri Lankan government and NGOs, and talked to eyewitnesses present in the conflict area. The dossier concluded that many violations of international law were committed by the Sri Lankan militaryThe dossier states that the senior military and civilian leaders were responsible for these crimesEvidence for government war crimes range from a variety of sources such as:Satellite imageryA number of independent organizations have published an analysis of satellite images of “NO FIRE ZONES” showing heavy damage that could only have been caused by shelling and aerial bombardment. These contradict the Sri Lankan government’s claim that its forces had not used heavy weaponry.A confidential UN report dated 26 April 2009 comparing UNOSAT images of the “NO FIRE ZONES” taken between 5 February 2009 and 19 April 2009 was leaked to the media. The images showed numerous craters caused by shelling.The main finding of the report was that "there are new indications of building destruction and damages resulting from shelling and possible air-strikes".The report found that 60 main buildings had been destroyed to date in the “NO FIRE ZONES” but this excluded temporary structures erected by the IDPs as it was not possible to identify damage to these using satellite images. Over 5,000 IDP shelters had also been relocated during April 2009 due the shelling and bombardment. There was evidence of hundreds of craters and heavy damage to buildings outside the Safe Zone. The report concluded that damage estimates were a minimum and that the "actual damages are likely to be greater". The accuracy of some of the damage suggested that it could only have been done by air-dropped bombs. Although the report does not apportion blame, given that Tamil Tigers' air wing had been destroyed in early 2009, this damage could only have been caused by the SLAF.After being confronted with the UN satellite images during an interview with Al Jazeera’s Sri Lankan foreign secretary Palitha Kohona admitted that the Sri Lankan armed forces had carried out shelling and air raids in the “NO FIRE ZONES”.This contradicted the statements by the Sri Lankan government and President Rajapaksa, and an earlier statement by Kohona himself, that there was no shelling by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the “NO FIRE ZONES”.Following a request from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the American Association for the Advancement of Science compared commercial high-resolution satellite images of the “ NO FIRE ZONES” taken on 6 May 2009 and 10 May 2009 to evaluate the impact of heavy fighting on 9/10 May. They found evidence of significant removal of IDP shelters, artillery and mortar emplacements, destroyed permanent structures, bomb shell impact craters and 1,346 individual graves. By calculating the trajectory of the shells which caused the craters the AAAS was able to conclude that the shells came from Sri Lankan army territory.US government satellites had been monitoring the war zone secretly. In April 2009 the US state department released two satellite images of the “NO FIRE ZONES” showing 100,000 civilians trapped in 8-square-mile (21 km) area.The State Department report to Congress (above) included a number of images taken by US government satellites. The images showed that Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) Hospital had been heavily damaged between 28 January 2009 and 16 March 2009.VideosAmateur videos, taken by civilians and SLA soldiers, detailed war crimes committed by government forces during the final stages of the warVideos have been used and seen as concrete evidence of human rights abuses and have been displayed in documentaries such as “No Fire Zones: Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”All of the videos have been authenticated by the UNEyewitness accounts and statements by opposing leaders and civiliansOn 18 May 2010 Channel 4 news broadcast interviews with two people who claimed they were Sri Lankan soldiers and who made the allegation that they had been given orders from "the top" to summarily execute all ethnic Tamils, civilians as well as fighters. A senior commander claimed "the order would have been to kill everybody and finish them off..It is clear that such orders were...from the top". Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaska brother, was said to have given direct orders to army commanders at the battle front. It was also claimed in the story that Prabhakaran’s 13-year-old son Balachandran was interrogated by the Sri Lankan military before being executed. A front line soldier said "our commander ordered us to kill everyone. We killed everyone". The soldier claimed that the Tamils were tortured before being executed. Numerous photos taken by Sri Lankan soldiers showing dead bodies and Tamil prisoners were also shown in the broadcast. No audio of the actual commander or the front line soldier making the claims were aired to protect their identity, a standard practice.Civilians reported numerous signs of abuse in reports to journalists and aid workers which have been displayed in written reports, news articles, documentaries and short clipsEyewitness accounts from SLA soldiersIn 2012, Ravindra Watudura Bandanage, a former frontline soldier of the army’s 58th division, admitted that the SLA tortured Tamil civilians during the final stages of the war. Bandanage also admitted to being ordered to place a bomb at the home of MK Shivajilingam, a Tamil MP in parliament. During this time, Shivajilingam was an outspoken critic of the government and was aligned with the opposition, TNA. Bandanage refused to go through with any of these orders and admitted to seeing members of the Sri Lankan army torturing, beating and raping Tamil civilians.8 stages of the Tamil Genocide*No Fire Zones, 2009*Sri Lankan internment camps, 2009CLASSIFICATION: “Tamil vs Sinhalese”. Anti-Tamil riots and legislation sponsored and passed by the government, giving leverage to the Sinhalese majority while alienating the Tamil minority, exemplifies their pro Sinhalese attitude and “us vs Tamils” mentality. An example of this would be the Citizenship Act(1948), Sinhala Only Act(1956), Standardization(1971) and the distribution of Tamil voting addresses and information, given to Sinhalese mobs to systematically locate and eliminate innocent Tamils across the country during the Black July Riots(1983). The Citizenship Act can also be compared to Hitler’s Nuremberg laws.SYMBOLIZATION: Classifying Tamils as “terrorists”, “LTTE supporters”, and “Chola invaders”, hence, distinguishing them as outsiders and non-natives of the island. The government had also banned the importation of media that would prove otherwise or go against their propaganda.DEHUMANIZATION: Denying Tamils the right to equality during the country’s infancy. The classification of Tamils as “terrorists” dehumanizing them as individuals. The mass display of dead Tamils on Sri Lankan state-media, the systemic sexual and physical torture of Tamils, the continues bombing and shelling of Tamil owned hospitals, schools, orphanages and etc depicts them “animals” by the state.ORGANIZATION: The government has four options to turn Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist state During the Black July riots, Sinhalese mobs were aided and lead by the states police force and abetted by the government. In 2009, the government transported 300,000 Tamil civilians to their sanctioned “NO FIRE ZONES” and then proceed to fire on them with artillery and other heavy weaponry. Then again, after the war had ended, the government packed 300,000 Tamils in concentration camps, many of each, died of malnutrition, dehydration, disease and suicide. The attempt toThe U.N. continues to impose a war crimes tribunal against the Sri Lankan government despite their continuous refusal.5. POLARIZATION: The Sri Lankan government began to arrest moderate Sinhala journalists who contradicted their propaganda, most notable being Lasantha Wickremetunga. The army would arbitrarily detain Tamils across the country, would subject them to brutal methods of torture, would threaten Tamil MP’s and would implement widespread polarizing propaganda against the Tamil population in the Vanni.6. PREPARATION: Tamils are identified and separated into groups and then transported to various No Fire Zones and internment camps.7. Extermination: The government would precede to shell Tamil civilians in all 3 No Fire Zones with artillery, other heavy weaponry and would block humanitarian aid for the internment camps. Tamils in state controlled camps would die of malnutrition, dehydration, disease and suicide, many Tamils were taken by the army for questioning and, as of today, have never been seen since. 100,000 Tamils were killed by the state in a span of 3 months and thousands more perished from the inhumane conditions in the internment camps8. Denial: The government’s continues to deny these claims. Despite international calls for a UN run human rights tribunal against the government, the government has insisted that they conduct their own investigation. Tamil victims are continuously intimidated by the police force and military, they are victims of “land-grabs” by the ongoing militarization of Tamil areas. “Sinhalanisation” and lack of accountability for war crimes continue to encompass the Tamil community. State controlled media continues to display propaganda denying war crimes while Sri Lankan diplomats attempt to defend the government’s actions and human rights hearings and blame the crimes on the LTTE or state that the victims were all LTTE soldiers.International recognition(Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day)On May 18th, Tamils worlwide remember the innocent civilians who were killed by government shelling in No Fire Zones and other areas during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil warThe event is commemorated by many politiciansThe cities of Toronto and Brampton have officially declared May 18th as “Tamil Genocide Rememberance Day”The provincial government of Ontario has unanimously voted in favour of passing the implementation of Bill-104, “Tamil Genocide Education Week(May 11 –18)”Sri Lanka continues to defy the United Nations’ call for a international war crimes investigations, they have even appointed Shavendra Silva, Sri Lankan army commander who is accused of human rights abuses against the Tamil population, as the head of the army.Sources:Ceylon Citizenship Act - WikipediaSinhala Only Act - WikipediaPolicy of standardisation - Wikipedia1956 Ceylonese riots - Wikipedia1958 anti-Tamil pogrom - Wikipedia1977 anti-Tamil pogrom - WikipediaBlack July - WikipediaBlack July: Remembering the 1983 Riots in Sri Lankahttp://www.nesohr.org/files/Lest...http://www.nesohr.org/files/Lest...10 years today - A massacre in MullivaikkalSri Lanka Massacred Tens of Thousands of Tamils While the World Looked Away36 years of burn wounds: The Jaffna LibraryThe Burning of the Jaffna Public Library by the Police in 1981 – 1Burning of Jaffna Public Library - WikipediaThe Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka
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