Every time a mass grave is excavated in Sri Lanka, Thambirasa Selvarani can’t sleep.
“We don’t know what happened to our relatives, and when they start digging, I feel panicked,” Selvarani told DW.
The 54-year-old has been searching for her husband, Muthulingam Gnanaselvam, since he disappeared in May 2009 after he surrendered to government forces at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. After decades of fighting, the conflict ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),also known as the Tamil Tigers.
Multiple mass graves have been uncovered since then. For the last three months, archaeologists have been excavating a mass grave in Chemmani, on the outskirts of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. The excavation has unearthed 140 skeletons so far, including children.
Victims ‘heaped together’ in a shallow grave
Chemmani has been suspected as a mass grave site since at least 1998. A former army corporal, who at the time was on trial for the rape and murder of schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, said there were hundreds of other bodies buried in the area alongside the young girl.
Lawyer V. S. Niranchan told DW he was working with families whose relatives had disappeared from the area surrounding Chemmani in the 1990s.
So far, the excavations have shown that bodies were buried “haphazardly, without any legal barriers, heaped together in a shallow, unmarked” fashion.
“We think some of them could have been buried alive,” he said, adding, “if they were already dead, the bodies wouldn’t be bent,” with some of them displaying twisted limbs.
Several artifacts have been discovered at the site along with the skeletons, including slippers, a baby’s milk bottle, and a child’s school bag.
Opening old wounds
Anushani Alagarajah, executive director of the Jaffna-based Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, said Chemmani had a “very painful, very traumatic history, particularly with people in Jaffna.”
“A lot of our friends’ brothers and fathers and sisters disappeared at the time,” Alagarajah told DW. “It’s been over 25 years. It’s opening up very old, deep wounds, not just for the families, but for the whole community, the whole of Jaffna. And it’s a reminder that you can’t really forget.”
The Chemmani excavation has become the most high-profile instance of a mass grave investigation in Sri Lanka to date.
It has also triggered numerous calls for international oversight, especially from the country’s Tamil community.
Visiting the site in June, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted that “Sri Lanka has struggled to move forward with domestic accountability mechanisms that are credible and have the trust and confidence of victims. This is why Sri Lankans have looked outside for justice, through assistance at the international level.”
‘We don’t know who they’re going to find next’
Tamil activists held a protest to coincide with Türk’s visit. Thambirasa Selvarani attended the event and met Türk personally, telling him she had no faith in Sri Lankan justice mechanisms.
Selvarani is the chairperson for the Association of Relatives of Enforced Disappearances (ARED) in Ampara District. She wants mass graves in her district to also be excavated.
“We feel scared. We don’t know who they’re going to find next, who they’re going to identify next,” Selvarani told DW. “I keep thinking about it day and night and I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I feel so disturbed.”
“For the last 17 years, as presidents keep changing, we’ve been asking them to tell us the truth about what happened to our children and loved ones,” Selvarani said.
The progress, however, has been slow. Selvarani says she still faces intimidation by officers from Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) when attending protests.
“They say, ‘You shouldn’t go there, your relatives are dead, why are you still going here and there?'” Selvarani told DW.
New government, old problems
In a break from Sri Lanka’s usual dynasty politics, the country elected leftist president Anura Kumara Dissanayake in September 2024. But lawyer Niranchan remains suspicious, saying “history has shown” that governments could not be trusted and would object to international oversight.
“This government doesn’t understand ethnic problems,” he told DW. “They think that the country will be peaceful if we stop corruption. But they don’t understand that ethnic problems are also a reason that this country has fallen into debt.”
Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, shares his distrust.
“Historically, pretty much nearly every Sri Lankan government has been extremely reluctant to obtain international assistance in different accountability processes,” she said.
Before coming to power, President Dissanayake said he would not seek to prosecute those responsible for war crimes. Talking to DW, Satkunanathan highlighted the lack of trust that victims have that the state is committed to pursuing justice.
In Sri Lanka, hope is ‘dangerous’
Last month, human rights NGO International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) called for “international oversight and victim-centred investigation” to take place “in compliance with international law and standards” in Sri Lanka.
But Alagarajah from the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research says she does not believe Dissanayake’s government would request international oversight. She also said she did not see “anything different” regarding Chemmani when compared to previous excavations.
Alagarajah said she had met with families who believed they would find their children in Chemmani and who “want to believe that this process is going to give them some answers,” but that the hope for answers was also “dangerous.”
“Hope is not always the best thing to have, because it can also deeply disappoint you and hurt you, particularly in this country,” Alagarajah said.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic
