Chemmani, Sri Lanka — Less than 100 metres (328 ft) from a busy road, policemen stand on watch behind a pair of rust coloured gates that lead to a cemetery in the outskirts of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province.
The officers are guarding Sri Lanka’s most recently unearthed mass grave, which has so far led to the discovery of 19 bodies, including those of three babies.
The discovery of the mass grave has reopened old wounds for Sri Lanka’s Tamil community, which suffered the worst violence of the island’s 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a group that was seeking a separate homeland for Tamils.
Many Tamils were forcibly disappeared by the state, with a 2017 report by Amnesty International estimating that between 60,000 and 100,000 people have disappeared in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s. In the final stages of the war, which ended in 2009, the Tamil community alleges that nearly 170,000 people were killed, while United Nations estimates put the figure at 40,000.
Chemmani, in particular, has gripped the public imagination for more than 25 years, since the case of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, a schoolgirl who was gang-raped by members of the Sri Lankan Army in 1996 before being killed. Her mother, brother and family friend were also murdered and the four bodies were discovered in Chemmani in 1996.
Former Army Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, who was found guilty of Krishanthi’s rape and murder, alleged during his trial in 1998 that between 300 and 400 people had been buried in mass graves in Chemmani. Fifteen bodies were discovered the following year based on information he provided, two of which were identified as men who had disappeared in 1996 after being arrested by the army.
The discovery of the new mass grave has also revived an old question that has continued to haunt the Sri Lankan Tamil community in its quest for justice. Past excavations have not fully yielded answers to the questions about forced disappearances and killings during the war, in part because the government has not followed through on the findings, say archaeologists. Can mass graves like the one found in Chemmani really bring closure?
Babies younger than 10 months among the dead
In February, skeletal remains were discovered while a building was being constructed in Chemmani. A 10-day excavation began in mid-May.
Raj Somadeva, the archaeologist leading the excavation, told Al Jazeera that the 19 bodies discovered so far include three “neonatal” skeletons, or babies younger than 10 months old.
He said the bodies would eventually be analysed by doctors to try and determine their cause of death, and that he would use artefacts, such as cellophane wrappers bearing dates or clothes, to try and date the burials. If artefactual material is unavailable, then radioactive dating could be employed as an alternative, he said.
However, Somadeva told Al Jazeera that “less than 40 percent” of the burial site had been excavated so far and that he had already identified a second probable burial site within the cemetery using satellite images and drones to take high-altitude photographs.
“I have submitted an interim report to the court, saying it can be identified as a mass grave and further investigation is needed,” Somadeva said.
Ranitha Gnanarajah, a lawyer representing families of the disappeared, told Al Jazeera she was working with more than 600 people from the Jaffna area who were looking for their missing loved ones, the majority of whom went missing between 1995 and 2008. Many Tamils were displaced in 1995 from Jaffna, the capital of the Northern Province, the country’s Tamil heartland.
She said the families were “fully participating” in the excavation process and wanted the identification efforts to be carried out properly, given that previous excavation efforts had not led to a final conclusion. Family members of missing people are also helping the police in ensuring the security of the site.
A history of failed investigations
However, the willingness on the part of the Tamil community to help excavators in unearthing clues from the Chemmani mass grave is tempered by past experiences.
Recent excavations of other mass graves in Sri Lanka have failed to lead to meaningful answers, setting off allegations of coverups.
Yogarasa Kanagaranjani, the president of the Association of Relatives of Enforced Disappearances (ARED), said she was fearful that Chemmani would follow the pattern of previous excavations in Mannar, Kokkuthoduvai and Thiruketheeswaram, all in the Northern Province.
“This could also be covered up like the other graves, with no justice or answers given,” said Kanagaranjani, whose son Amalan was part of the LTTE and disappeared in 2009 after she said he surrendered to the army. “If you ask the killers to give you justice, will they?”
The largest excavation of a mass grave was carried out in the northwestern region of Mannar. Starting in 2018, the digging was also led by Somadeva. In all, 346 skeletons were unearthed. The excavation was overseen by the Ministry of Justice and the Office of Missing Persons (OMP), established by the government in 2017.
However, Somadeva criticised the state’s handling of the Mannar excavation, saying he had received the artefacts unearthed only a week ago, three years after his initial request, and that he had still not been allocated a budget to analyse them.
He also told Al Jazeera that he had still not been paid “a single cent” for 14 months of work on the Mannar excavation, and had been forced to use his own money to cover his travel expenses.
“We can’t work under this type of circumstances. Nobody takes responsibility,” Somadeva said, describing the OMP as a “white elephant”.
An OMP representative told Al Jazeera it was participating in the Chemmani excavation solely as an observer but that it had facilitated the Mannar excavation alongside the Ministry of Justice. The representative said he believed there were no outstanding payments but was not certain, and declined to comment further in the absence of a formal complaint.
Demands for international oversight
A 2024 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it “remains concerned that there are insufficient financial, human and technical resources to conduct exhumations in line with international standards and encourages the Government to seek international support in this regard”.
The Jaffna-based Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research said that “the same defects that plagued the previous exhumations persist” in Chemmani, which it said was also “being undertaken without international observation or expertise”.
“If the government wants the Tamil community in general and families of the disappeared in particular to believe in the transparency and genuineness of the exhumation process, it must first adopt without undue delay a clear and comprehensive exhumation policy with adequate funding allocation, allow international participation, actively seek international expertise, and permit the families of the disappeared to participate and have a legal representation in the exhumation process,” Adayaalam said in a written statement to Al Jazeera.
The election of leftist President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in September had sparked hopes among Sri Lankan Tamils that he might support their search for justice. But Kanagaranjani, the ARED president, said that, so far, Dissanayake had failed to deliver.
“It’s now been more than eight months since the president has been in power, but he hasn’t taken the slightest notice of our problems,” she said. “Rulers change, but reality stays the same.”
Kanagaranjani told Al Jazeera that answers were vital for the families of the disappeared as would lead to “clarity”. Like the Adayaalam centre, she too said that the excavation needed “international oversight” and that “investigations [needed] to be carried out in accordance with international standards”.
Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, a South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said calls for international oversight were “entirely legitimate” given that “there’s not been a single instance where exhumations have been seen through to the end – where remains found in mass graves have been identified and returned to family members for a dignified burial.”
Ruwanpathirana reiterated Amnesty’s call for “transparency” and said that as a signatory to the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, “Sri Lanka has an international obligation to provide the truth to families of the disappeared”.
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