{"id":28650,"date":"2026-07-23T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/?p=28650"},"modified":"2026-07-23T17:36:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T12:06:05","slug":"no-room-for-black-smoke-again-remembering-the-horrors-of-black-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/?p=28650","title":{"rendered":"No Room for Black Smoke Again: Remembering the Horrors of Black July"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today (23) marks the anniversary of the organized violence unleashed during Black July in 1983 through the misuse of political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The current government is implementing numerous measures to ensure that Sri Lanka will never again allow such painful, horrific, racist, or religiously extremist acts against humanity. Concurrently, civil activists and artists have launched a strong ideological struggle to foster unity and prevent a recurrence of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Renowned director Sunil Costa, who directed the teledrama \u2018Sudu Andagena Kalu Avidin\u2019 (Walking in Black Clad in White), has released a brief note alongside a short documentary on his Facebook page regarding July 23rd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His statement and the short documentary are presented below &#8211; at a time when citizens across the country are increasingly seeking and demanding meaningful creative works of this nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsunil.costa.495100%2Fposts%2Fpfbid05qpbzLVQhhLDry1jC7XdTs2PMqHRJXg2rykrDzB8mBJiCAHbMsDqLPyxRu3btFHNl&#038;show_text=true&#038;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"712\" style=\"border:none;overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share\"><\/iframe>\n<div class='saic-wrapper saic-default saic-comments-closed saic-border' style='overflow: hidden;'><div class='saic-wrap-link'><a id='saic-link-28650' class='saic-link saic-icon-link saic-icon-link-true auto-load-true' href='?post_id=28650&amp;comments=0&amp;get=30&amp;order=DESC' title='0 Comments'><i class='saico-comment'><\/i><span>0<\/span> Comments<\/a><\/div><!--.saic-wrap-link--><div id='saic-wrap-commnent-28650' class='saic-wrap-comments' style='display:none;'><div id='saic-wrap-form-28650' class='saic-wrap-form saic-clearfix'><div class='saic-form-avatar'><\/div><div id='saic-container-form-28650' class='saic-container-form saic-no-login'><p>Comments are closed<\/p><\/div><!--.saic-container-form--><\/div><!--.saic-wrap-form--><div id='saic-comment-status-28650'  class='saic-comment-status'><\/div><ul id='saic-container-comment-28650' class='saic-container-comments saic-order-DESC ' data-order='DESC'><\/ul><div class='saic-holder-28650 saic-holder'><\/div><\/div><!--.saic-wrap-comments--><\/div><!--.saic-wrapper-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today (23) marks the anniversary of the organized violence unleashed during Black July in 1983 through the misuse of political [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101,94,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-education","category-latest","category-smartphones","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28652,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28650\/revisions\/28652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lankatruth.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}