An organized mob of police and government-sponsored Sinhalese paramilitary forces began three days of attacks that led to the burning of the Jaffna Library in Sri Lanka.

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.

The burning of the Jaffna Public Library by an organized mob of Sinhalese individuals took place on the night of 31 May 1981. The library's burning was one of the most violent examples of ethnically motivated biblioclasm of the 20th century. At the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 books and manuscripts. Sri Lankan Government rebuilt the burnt library and restarted its collection.