Talk:Inginiyagala massacre

This page is redundant...

The content of this page is already covered in the 1956 anti-Tamil pogrom. Not to mention that NESOHR bungled hard here. Its description of events is utterly at odds with those who were actually in Gal Oya during the riots, like Stanley Tambiah. I mean, 150 Tamils killed from one sugar factory? Seriously? I'm not even sure if there was a sugar factory at Inginiyagala in 1956. And how about all the other Tamils in Gal Oya? SinhalaLion (talk) 01:41, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

@SinhalaLion Just like how the sources in the 1956 anti - Tamil progrom were bungled hard. Claiming Tamils are colonialists and then that there were 6000 Tamils trained with guns there to attack Sinhalese civilians. Laxshen (talk) 18:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Laxshen: I'll address your other comments here.

The 1956 anti-Tamil program does not go in depth about the Inginiyagala massacre itself nor about the colonization schemes. Also the 1956 anti - Tamil program has a lot of missing informations.

You are completely free to add information to that page if you think it's missing.

Claiming Tamils are colonialists and then that there were 6000 Tamils trained with guns there to attack Sinhalese civilians.

The page makes neither of those claims. A "colonialist" is not the same is a "colonist." Most Tamils in Gal Oya would be colonists as they were settled by the government on a colonisation scheme. Stanley Tambiah, a well-respected TAMIL anthropologist who criticizes the Sri Lankan government, also used the term "Tamil colonists." As for your second claim, what the page says is that there were rumours of 6,000 armed Tamils, not there actually being that many.

I take note that NESOHR has not claimed that they interviewed anyone who was present at Inginiyagala during the riots. I also take note that they have not given any citations to other literature other than Emergency '58, and even that is for the casualty figure. So why should we believe NESOHR's version of events? SinhalaLion (talk) 21:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Laxshen and Oz346: I propose a merge of this page into 1956 anti-Tamil pogrom. That page has already been established for a number of years and covers the scope of this article. Information from this page, if appropriate, can be put there. SinhalaLion (talk) 23:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I think either option is suitable. merge the two, or develop on the particular massacre specifically in this page. But there should be a lack of repetition if the latter option is done. Oz346 (talk) 11:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Oz346 Alright Laxshen (talk) 19:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Oz346 and Laxshen: I'm glad we crossed that bridge without too much issue, but there's still another issue: NESOHR's version of events is at odds with other sources. Personally, I think NESOHR's version is bollocks, but I'm not sure how we address conflicting sources. SinhalaLion (talk) 20:16, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

The NESOHR source says thats 150 Tamils working in a sugar cane farm and factory in Gal Oya area were killed by the recent colonists. Which other sources contradict this account? Tarzie Vitachi says that over 150 were killed in 1956. Oz346 (talk) 21:24, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

@Oz346 Exactly Laxshen (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I admit there's no direct contradiction, but the testimony of sources at Gal Oya during the violence suggest that NESOHR's description of events is unlikely. My issues are as follows:

1. NESOHR says that all the killings happened in one sugarcane farm/factory. So all 150 deaths happened in one place, in one village of the entire Gal Oya valley?
2. Related to above, Stanley Tambiah notes that Sinhalese rioters had gone to villages such as Bakiella and Vellavelli. Both villages are far away from Inginiyagala. And Tambiah makes no mention of this sugarcane massacre at Inginiyagala where all the deaths are alleged to have taken place.
3. Another source at Gal Oya, Ajit Kanagasundaram, makes no mention of this massacre at Inginiyagala.
4. According to the Annual Report to the President and to the Congress for 1971-1972, "Commercial sugar production at Gal Oya commenced in 1961." Gal Oya's primary purpose was the settlement of people, not agricultural revenue.
5. If NESOHR's version of events is so reliable, why didn't the Tamil Guardian article cite it??? The Tamil Guardian strikes me as a source that would normally not be averse to citing NESOHR.

The problem with Gal Oya is there are not many clear cut sources regarding the actual killing of Tamils. But I would expect that such a concentrated massacre would have been mentioned by sources who were actually at Gal Oya. SinhalaLion (talk) 00:13, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

perhaps can qualify it with

"according to nesohr, 150 Tamils were killed in a sugar cane farm/factory massacre in inginiyagala by Sinhalese settlers, who later threw the bodies of the victims into the fire. Journalist Tarzie Vittachi however instead attributes this number to the total number of civilians killed in Gal Oya during the entirety of the riots." Oz346 (talk) 06:14, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with this, though chronologically, Vittachis's description would come first. SinhalaLion (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

How about:

Journalist Tarzie Vittachi states that over 150 civilians were killed in the entire Gal Oya valley during the entirety of the riots. NESOHR however claims that that number of Tamils were massacred in a sugar cane farm and factory in Inginiyagala by Sinhalese settlers, who later threw the bodies of the victims into the fire. Oz346 (talk) 20:35, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Oz346 So what are we gonna do with this article ? I would like to keep it as a seperate article. Laxshen (talk) 20:28, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Oz346: I'm fine with your suggestion.

@Laxshen: It seems the consensus is to merge this article into the the 1956 anti-Tamil pogrom so this page will become a redirect. Quite frankly, I see no need for this page. Its scope is already covered by the other page. It's not like either page is that big. We could easily take what's here and put it there. Another issue is that this article's content seems to be derived heavily from the Tamil Guardian article and the NESOHR book, to levels that may violate Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources and Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. SinhalaLion (talk) 22:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Most of the article overlaps with 1956 pogrom and is duplication. That overlapping content needs to be either merged or culled. And it needs to be rewritten to avoid clear plagiarism or close paraphrasing. After that occurs, I'm not sure whether there will be enough content to warrant a separate page. Unless you can find more references for this massacre specifically. Oz346 (talk) 05:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I've now completed the merge. SinhalaLion (talk) 01:33, 30 April 2023 (UTC)