## Metadata - Author: [[Samanth Subramanian]] - Full Title: This Divided Island - Category: #books ## Highlights - The date traditionally fitted to the start of the civil war is 23 July 1983, when the Tigers killed 13 soldiers in an army patrol in Jaffna. For nearly a week thereafter, in what came to be known as the Black July riots, Sinhalese mobs visited retribution upon Tamils across the south of the country, killing more than three thousand men, women and children, unhindered—and sometimes even abetted—by the police. ([Location 491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00Y7YF4ZG&location=491)) - Even before the practice grew notorious in South Africa’s race riots, Tamils were pulled out of their homes and necklaced: their torso inserted into a rubber tyre which was then set on fire. ([Location 494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00Y7YF4ZG&location=494)) - Prabhakaran remained the protagonist of his conflict: he created the Tigers in 1976, and the curtain on the civil war fell only with his death on 18 May 2009, cornered and shot up by the army in a lagoon in north-eastern Sri Lanka. ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00Y7YF4ZG&location=555))