TCHR welcomes the visit to Sri Lanka by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, 23-26 June 2025.
Mass Graves in Sri Lanka are nothing new to anyone globally. They started soon after the PTA – Prevention of Terrorism Act provided the police with broad powers to search, arrest, and detain suspects. On 14th July 1979 six Tamil youths were taken from their homes in Jaffna. The following day, the mutilated bodies of two of them were found near the Pannai causeway near Jaffna town. Another died later in the Prison hospital in Jaffna. Three were never seen again.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act – PTA, initially passed in 1979 as a temporary measure, gave freedom to the security forces in Sri Lanka to launch many mass graves in the North and East, including some in the South.
A Brief History of the Chemmani Mass Graves: By the end of 1983, the LTTE – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were running a de facto government with its infrastructure in the Jaffna peninsula. But in 1995, the Security forces took over the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. Since then, most of the civilians in the Jaffna peninsula suspected of being LTTE sympathisers or supporters were taken overnight from their homes and never seen again by their kith and kin.
However, in 1998 an Army soldier who was on trial for the rape and murder of Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy in the Jaffna peninsula, testified in court in 1996 said that many civilians were killed and buried in mass graves near the village of Chemmani. He further said that he knew where those three hundred to four hundred (300-400) bodies were buried.
TCHR was established in 1990, and since then, our representatives have regularly attended the UN Human Rights Forums in Geneva and other global conferences concerning human rights and issues affecting victims in Sri Lanka. We have worked tirelessly and filed numerous cases of disappearances, arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, violence against women, etc. Our website, www.tchr.net contains our published Press Releases, Urgent Actions, reports, and documents.
As far as Civil and Political rights and Economic Social and Cultural rights of the people mainly in the North and the East of Sri Lanka, TCHR was the only organization regularly reporting to the global community from every nook and corner of the North and East, especially to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – OHCHR and other stakeholders of the UN.
Of course, other international human rights organisations were also reporting but they had their limits. There were occasions when the TCHR covered some incidents taking place in other parts of Sri Lanka as well.
During the ceasefire agreed in 2002 between the two conflicting parties, namely the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE – representatives of the TCHR made two fact-finding missions to the North and East, the areas worst affected by the bloody conflict for nearly two decades. Our reports are on our website.
Our task eventually evolved into a high-profile lobbying effort with state leaders and diplomats to find a durable solution to this long-standing conflict, in Asia. The people from the North and East belong to the world’s oldest linguistic group, “the Tamils”. Even though the history of their existence on the island dates back thousands of years, the Tamils of the North and East have been struggling for their ‘right to self-determination’, in the island of Sri Lanka.
On that basis, in our reporting from 1996 onwards, we have regularly reported on the mass graves in the North and East, especially the mass graves in Chemmani. Our information regarding these alarming affairs was promptly brought to the attention of the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and then UN Special Rapporteurs on “Extrajudicial Summary or arbitrary execution” – namely Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, Asma Jahangir, Philip Alston, and many other stakeholders.
The annexes accompanying this press release give information not only about the Chemmani mass graves but also about many other mass graves.
It is to be noted that TCHR’s tireless work on the killing and rape of Krishanti Kumaraswamy and the Chemmani mass graves were side-lined by the Sri Lankan government’s well trained and well-paid lobbyists and representatives of the government in international forums and institutes.
When one looks at the line of command responsibility for the Chemmani mass graves, the President, who was the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the military top brass in charge of the Jaffna peninsula and also members of the paramilitary, namely the EPDP, should be brought to justice.
Therefore, it is the duty of the present government, which talks much about ‘clean Sri Lanka’, to prevent culprits responsible for the Chemmani mass graves and other later violations that took place including in May 2009, from leaving the country and to bring them to justice.
However, it’s no secret that the present government in power – the JVP/NPP- was always in support of the war. Additionally, they opposed any international scrutiny. Well and good, now it is too late for any local investigation or hybrid investigation. Sixteen years since the end of the war is more than enough for meaningful action to have been initiated in favour of genuine justice.
Unfortunately, in 2012, some Tamils, planted in the UN Forums by the government of Sri Lanka with the help of a Tamil Minister, pretended to be working on the Human rights of the Tamils, messing up many initiatives already taking place in the North and East as well as internationally. Those who caused this damage are presently in prison, legally punished by a state and the United Nations.
This is the time for the Tamil diaspora, wherever they live in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, along with those genuinely concerned about the mass graves and other gross violations, to concentrate on International Jurisdiction.
We know that, especially three loud voices, talk pure racism in the South for their political mileage. Whether they spoke or not, they were fit neither to contest nor to win an election in their constituencies. Those three are political clowns – U.G., S.W.and V.W. of the South.
Please see the annexes for further information regarding Chemmani mass graves, right from the beginning.
