Burning of Jaffna Library

Date: May 31, 1981 • Location: Jaffna, Sri Lanka

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1981.

An organized mob of police and government-sponsored Sinhalese paramilitary forces began three days of attacks that led to the burning of the Jaffna Public Library (renovated building pictured) in Sri Lanka, destroying more than 97,000 items in one of the most violent 20th-century examples of ethnic biblioclasm.

The Sinhalese people, also known as the Sinhalese or Sinhala people, are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group native to the island of Sri Lanka. They are the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, constituting about 75% of the Sri Lankan population and number more than 15.2 million.