WORLD AFFAIRS

A death plot in Jaffna

Investigations are under way at a site at Chemmani in Jaffna, where 400 Tamil civilians are alleged to have been killed and buried by Sri Lankan security forces.

V.S. SAMBANDAN
recently in Jaffna

IN the many years of enervating fighting between the Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, there have been several allegations of human rights violations by the security forces. However, an allegation made in July 1998 - that the security forces had done to death 400 Tamil civilians and buried them in a mass grave at Chemmani in the Jaffna peninsula - was particularly stunning. The allegation was made in open court by Lance Corporal Somratne Rajapakse of the Sri Lankan Army after he and five others were sentenced to death for the kidnap, rape and murder of a Jaffna schoolgirl, Krishanthy Kumaraswamy, and the abduction and murder of her friends and relatives.

Rajapakse said that close to a checkpoint in Jaffna where he had served, and where Krishanthy was killed, was a mass grave where at least 400 other civilians were buried. These, he said, were victims like Krishanthy, who, according to him, were done to death by the security forces after the Sri Lankan Government regained control of the northern peninsula from the LTTE which has been waging a war for a separate Tamil state.

Ever since the allegation was made, there were scores of media reports reflecting the anxiety and fear among the families of those who were reported "missing" in the northern peninsula. These prompted demands to dig up the site in order to verify the truth behind the accusation.

SRIYANTHA WALPOLA
Soil analysts gather samples from the site at Chemmani in the Jaffna Peninsula, where, it is alleged, over 400 Tamil civilians were done to death by Sri Lankan security forces and buried in a mass grave.

Opinion was divided on the veracity of Rajapakse's allegation: there were people who saw it as a "revelation" made by a convicted soldier to escape punishment or to try and mitigate the gravity of his crime; others felt that it should be taken as a full-fledged "confession" by a person who had committed the crimes.

The fact that the alleged incidents were reported to have been committed during the tenure of the People's Alliance (P.A.), which came to power in Colombo on the promise of resolving the ethnic conflict and respecting human rights, was particularly shocking. One of the reasons for the electoral defeat of the United National Party (UNP) after 17 years in power was the perception that there were large-scale human rights violations under its rule.

The Government responded by entrusting to the Human Rights Commission the investigation of the allegation. Subsequently, the judicial process took over. Since September 1998, however, there was a change in the situation in Jaffna following a series of violent incidents, such as the assassination of Jaffna Mayor P. Sivapalan and the shooting down of a civilian aircraft. Courts in Jaffna stopped functioning, citing "death threats from the LTTE".

Meanwhile, there was increasing pressure to dig up the alleged site of the mass grave. Yukthiya, a Sinhala weekly, had challenged the Government even as early as July 1998 to dig up the site. Recalling a similar situation in the South following allegations that Sinhala youths were killed as part of a crackdown on the Sinhala-chauvinist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and that their bodies were buried in a mass grave at Sooriya Kanda, the weekly said: "People's Alliance leaders who were enthusiastically involved in digging up graves in Sooriya Kanda when they were in the Opposition must now take up this challenge or forfeit whatever image they have been able to build for themselves as protectors of human rights."

Tamil parliamentarians demanded that international norms be adhered to in the exhumation process; they wanted the exhumation to be carried out scientifically.

However, the process was delayed by the late withdrawal of the monsoon and the subsequent closure of courts.

SRIYANTHA WALPOLA
Relatives of Tamil civilians who are reported "missing" and are believed to have been buried in the mass grave wait outside the Jaffna District Court which is overseeing the investigation into the allegations in respect of Chemmani.

Early this year, the judicial process resumed but got bogged down. Jaffna Magistrate Ekanathan pronounced that the case would be taken up for hearing on March 5; a Foreign Ministry statement, however, stated that the exhumation process would start on that date. The Magistrate protested and said that he had been misinterpreted. Shortly thereafter he expressed his inability to perform his judicial duties owing to "death threats".

The Government was caught on a sticky wicket. But in a series of moves in early March, it made clear its intention to carry forward with the judicial process.

On March 2, N. Arulsagaran, a District Judge in Colombo, was transferred as the Additional Magistrate of Jaffna and was flown to Jaffna to hear the case. Ekanathan had directed soil experts to be present for the March 5 hearing so that they could collect samples from the alleged mass grave to ascertain if the soil had been disturbed since the allegation was made.

On March 5, a plane-load of national and international journalists were taken to witness the court proceedings and whatever else was to follow. Taking up the case from where Ekanathan had left it, Arulsagaran firmly said that he wanted no further delay in the process. "Let us take it and finish it," he said.

THE action then shifted to the most-talked-about site in Sri Lanka since last July. Just ahead of an arch welcoming travellers to Jaffna from Colombo lay a vast expanse of land - the alleged site of the alleged mass grave. In the vicinity is a cemetery and small swamps.

Those in attendance were requested not to step on the roads until the Army had cleared them for landmines. A team of mine-sweepers were soon at work and were followed by the soil experts, the Additional Magistrate and the journalists.

But the person who mattered the most - Rajapakse, who made the allegation and had served at the checkpoint when the alleged atrocities were committed - was not present at the site to identify the location of the mass grave. No explanation was offered other than that Rajapakse had stated that he would be present only after exhumation was ordered; this, however, raised the question of whether the exhumation process could be undertaken without identifying the site with certainty. Asked if a court order could not be obtained mandating the presence of the accused, it was clarified on behalf of the Government that such a course of action would be resorted to when the need arose.

SRIYANTHA WALPOLA
Jaffna Additional Magistrate N. Arulsagaran, who is hearing the Chemmani case.

Following a process of elimination and deductive reasoning based on the site where the body of Krishanthy was reportedly exhumed, a patch of land between two roads - one leading to Jaffna, the other to Nallur - was selected and soil samples were taken.

The most evident outcome of the visit organised to Jaffna and the conduct of soil sample tests at the Chemmani site was that the Government made clear its sincerety about its attempts to unravel the truth. The exercise would have gained greater credibility if Rajapakse had been present to identify the site.

CHEMMANI apart, Jaffna town presents a picture of torment. Clear indications of a once-idyllic setting abound in the marketplace and the streets of Jaffna. Bullet-scarred walls and skeletal remains of buildings tell the tale of the town's painful trudge to normalcy.

"Life goes on," says a restaurant worker, who sought anonymity. Prices of commodities depend on the arrival of the cargo ship Lankamuditha from Colombo. Since the town now has no road to the rest of the island, sustenance is largely dependent on the arrival of the vessel. "Today the prices are better because the ship has arrived, but we do not know how much it will rise after stocks run out," the restaurant worker said.

Another person recalls the days when the LTTE had control over the peninsula. "There were no crimes at that time. Now there is a definite increase in crimes." A third person displays his watch - the time shown is half an hour behind the time in the rest of the island. As a daylight-saving measure, clocks were reset half an hour ahead in the rest of Sri Lanka; however, in the areas that were originally under LTTE control, people continued to follow the earlier time, which coincides with the Indian Standard Time. "I follow only this time," the man said.

In every other way, for him and for a couple of teenagers working in his shop, life goes on as usual. However, with the military conflict between the Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE dragging on, the time for peace in Jaffna has clearly not yet come.