From Tamil Guardian Jun 15, 2025
More grisly discoveries were made in Tamil Eelam this week. Human remains were uncovered near an occupying Sri Lankan military camp in Jaffna, just days after more bodies, including that of an infant, were excavated from a site near Chemmani. These findings serve as a sobering reminder that Sri Lanka’s atrocities are not relics of a distant past. Nor can they be buried forever. The crimes will return to haunt those who seek to cover them up.
The latest discoveries were particularly harrowing. Among the remains was the skeleton of a young infant, buried alongside an adult. Who was the child? Were they with their mother? How did they die? Who was responsible?
The answers are not entirely unknown. In 1998, during the trial following the infamous 1996 gang rape and murder of Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, a Sri Lankan soldier admitted that military forces had abducted and murdered hundreds of Tamils in Jaffna, before dumping their bodies in mass graves in Chemmani – just metres from these latest discoveries. “There are 300 to 400 bodies in this land,” he said at the time. “Almost every evening, dead bodies were brought there and the soldiers were asked to bury them.”
In the face of those frank admissions, the Sri Lankan state acted swiftly to suppress any further meaningful action. It claimed that there were “no such graves” and the few sites that had been excavated were dragged through decades of bureaucratic delay. Colombo sought to bury the issue, as it prepared further military offensives in its ongoing genocidal campaign against the Tamil people.
More than two decades on, dozens of mass graves have been identified across the Tamil North-East – from Mannar to Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi to Trincomalee. Yet to this day, not a single person has been held accountable for any of these deaths.
Even graves that were excavated in recent years, such as at Kokkuthoduvai where the bodies of possible LTTE fighters, have yet to yield any answers. Instead, the site has been left to deteriorate. These graves remain neglected pits, covered over with soil and shrubs, bereft of memorials or even a plaque. This stands in sharp contrast to other societies around the world, such as in Cambodia, Srebrenica and elsewhere, where dignity for the dead and justice for their families are essential components of the healing process.
Sri Lanka has chosen a different path: silence, erasure, and impunity.
This decay is not the result of mere neglect. It is a deliberate strategy. The longer evidence is left exposed to the elements, the harder it becomes to conduct proper forensic analysis, to identify victims, and to prove culpability. This slow degradation of evidence is a conscious attempt to erase the physical traces of atrocity, and with them, the possibility of justice.
It is not difficult to understand why. The recurrence of mass graves across the North-East points not to isolated excesses, but to a systematic campaign of abduction, disappearance, and mass murder carried out by state forces, with political sanction. Many of these graves lie close to military camps. The continuing militarisation of Tamil areas not only looks to suppress any ongoing dissent, but also protects these sites of past crimes from scrutiny.
For all its rhetoric of reconciliation, the Sri Lankan state, including the current regime, has demonstrated time and again that it is neither willing nor able to investigate its crimes against the Tamil nation. That includes when it comes to mass graves. Domestic mechanisms have clearly borne no results. Forensic investigations when permitted are partial and opaque, with only limited international involvement. Evidence is sent away for analysis and never heard from again. Cases stall. And families wait fearfully for answers. Meanwhile, those who ordered and oversaw these atrocities live freely, many promoted within state institutions.
In such a climate, there is no credible path to justice without international oversight. As Tamil families of the disappeared and civil society have rightly demanded, the international community must ensure that these mass graves are properly protected, that comprehensive forensic investigations are conducted, and that those responsible are held to account.
It is also vital that these sites are not simply treated as forensic crime scenes, but as places of memory and reflection. The denial of memorialisation is a further violence against the victims and their families. Tamils must be able to grieve and commemorate their dead with dignity.
There is, too, a broader principle at stake. If these latest discoveries are ignored, as so many have been before, it sends a message not only to Sri Lanka, but to the world: that states can commit mass atrocities, and that with enough time, they can bury the evidence and escape justice. That is a precedent no responsible international actor should tolerate.
With more graves certain to be found, and with time running out to preserve them, the time for action is now.