The Sri Lankan government claimed to have been monitoring the site since 2004, that it was a training camp and clearly was not a mistaken or wrong target.[10][11]
The Tamil Nadu state assembly in India passed a resolution termed the Chencholai orphanage bombing as 'uncivilized, barbaric, inhumane and atrocious'.[12]
The human rights organisation University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR) said LTTE had organized an first-aid class and that the children were not child soldiers. It said the camp was used by LTTE, but not as a training camp.[13]
A United Nations spokeswoman, Orla Clinton, said the students killed in the attack were between 16 and 18, A-level students, from the Kilinochichi and Mullaittivu areas and were attending a two-day training course.[14]
The Tamil National Alliance condemned the airstrike: "This attack is not merely atrocious and inhuman – it clearly has a genocidal intent. It is yet another instance of brazen state terrorism,”[15][16]
UNICEF
UNICEF staff from a nearby office immediately visited the compound to assess the situation and to provide fuel and supplies for the hospital as well as counselling support for the injured students and the bereaved families. Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director, stated, "These children are innocent victims of violence". UNICEF's Joanne Van Gerpen stated, "At this time, we don't have any evidence that they are LTTE cadres".[17][18]
SLMM
A retired major general of the Swedish Army, Ulf Henricsson, was the head of the Nordic truce monitors SLMM and said that his staff had not finished counting the dead and that they could not find any sign of military installations or weapons.[19]
Victims
The Director of Education for Kilinochchi district, T. Kurukularajah, and the Director of Education for Mullaitivu district, P. Ariyaratnam, confirmed the school girls' names.[20][21]
Sri Lanka government
The Sri Lanka government spokesmen Keheliya Rambukwela and Brigadier Athula Jayawardene told the media in Colombo that the orphanage had in fact been a training and transit camp for the LTTE's military cadres. The camp, Jayawardene pointed out, did not look like an orphanage at all or any other civilian structure for that matter. Rambukwela and Jayawardene argued that even if the victims were minors (under 18 years of age) and girls, they were soldiers or soldiers under training. The Sri Lankan refused to condemn the incident or to order any inquiry. The government also showed journalists, as Reuters reported, what appeared to be satellite footage of Tigers fleeing a training camp shortly after Kfir jets had bombed it.[22]
However, a journalist who viewed the tapes stated:
there was nothing in the footage that reporters could see to suggest any military activity except that the location was secluded and had lush green trees in the neighbourhood.[23]
On September 1, Sri Lankan police said they arrested three young women, aged 18, 19 and 20, who they said were injured in the airstrike and were subsequently brought to a hospital in central Sri Lanka for treatment. Inspector General of Police Chandra Fernando said the young women claimed that they were taken by a member of the Tamil Tigers to a camp deep within rebel territory for first aid training – but when they reached the camp, they were forced to undergo weapons training.[24]
A Sri Lankan commission of inquiry was headed by Justice Udalagama to investigate 16 high-profile human rights cases but could finish only 7 cases before it had been disbanded and exonerated the government [25] based on statements of the three arrested girls one of whom came before the commission and other from hospital, the third girl died.[26]
North East Secretariat on Human Rights statement
In the Senchcholai complex in Vallipunam in the Mullaithivu district hundreds of female students from 17 to 20 were gathered on 10 August 2006 for a weeklong training in leadership and first aid, which was intended for preparing the students for leadership in their school and community during the impending war.[27]
On 14 August 2006, around 7.30 am, Sri Lankan Air Force carried out extensive bombing. 52 students and two staff were killed, and 130 students were seriously injured. Many more received minor injuries. Three of the injured girls lost one leg and another girl lost an eye.[citation needed]
A further three of the injured girls were sent by the Mullaithivu hospital to Kandy for treatment. Sri Lankan Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) then arrested them. They were eventually cleared and brought to Vavuniya hospital to return to their homes in Vanni when one of the injured girls, Thambimuttu Thayalini, died.[28] The other two girls were immediately taken back Kandy hospital. Eventually, the whereabouts of the two girls, Kasthuri Sripathy and Sumithra Balasingham, became mysterious except that their parents were permitted to meet the girls at prearranged locations. The parents of the girls remained at a loss as to the detention of the two girls without charges for almost two years.[27][29]
The Sri Lankan civil war was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
Ilayathamby Tharsini was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was raped and killed in her home town of Pungudutheevu on December 16, 2005.
The Navaly Church bombing refers to the bombing of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Navaly in the Jaffna Peninsula by the Sri Lankan Air Force during the Sri Lankan Civil War on 9 July 1995. It is estimated that at least 147 Tamil civilians, who had taken refuge from the fighting inside the church, died as a result of this incident. The victims included men, women and children.
The Nagarkovil school bombing refers to an airstrike that took place on 22 September 1995 when the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed the Nagarkovil Maha Vidyalayam school in Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, resulting in the death of, by varying accounts, 34-71 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians, primarily schoolchildren, and the injury of many more. Sri Lankan Defense spokesman admitted the incident but claimed that it was a LTTE facility and several of the dead were LTTE cadres. The airstrike took place 12 hours after the Sri Lankan government had imposed a press censorship on war-related events.
Relangi Selvarajah was a popular Tamil broadcaster and a one time actress. She was assassinated by unknown assailants on 12 August in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The Vaharai bombing is a disputed event in the Sri Lankan civil war. It occurred on November 7, 2006 when, according to survivors of the incident interviewed by Reuters, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fired artillery at Sri Lankan military personnel from near a school where minority Sri Lankan Tamil refugees displaced by the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war had taken shelter. The Sri Lankan Army returned fire and around 45 civilians were killed. Over 100 were injured and admitted to the local hospitals. However, people who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch claimed that the LTTE did not fire artillery. Further, the rebel LTTE denies firing artillery from close to the school. The incident occurred at around 11.35 a.m close to Kathiraveli, a coastal village in Vaharai peninsula of the Batticaloa district in eastern Sri Lanka.
Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.
The Tamil Eelam Air Force or Sky Tigers was the air service branch of the Divisions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who used it against the Government of Sri Lanka. They also called themselves the Tamileelam Air Force (TAF). Though the existence of the Sky Tigers had been the subject of speculation for many years, the existence of the wing was only revealed after an attack in March 2007, during Eelam War IV.
Eelam War IV is the name given to the fourth and final phase of armed conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Renewed hostilities began on the 26 July 2006, when Sri Lanka Air Force fighter jets bombed several LTTE camps around Mavil Aru anicut. The government's casus belli was that the LTTE had cut off the water supply to surrounding paddy fields in the area. Shutting down the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru on July 21 depriving the water to over 15,000 people - Sinhalese and Muslim settlers under Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonisation schemes in Trincomalee district. They were denied of water for drinking and also cultivating over 30,000 acres of paddy and other crops. The fighting resumed after a four-year ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and LTTE. Continued fighting led to several territorial gains for the Sri Lankan Army, including the capture of Sampur, Vakarai and other parts of the east. The war took on an added dimension when the LTTE Air Tigers bombed Katunayake airbase on March 26, 2007, the first terrorist air attack without external assistance in history.
The Madhu School bus bombing, also known as Thadchanamadhu claymore attack, was the bombing of a school bus carried out on January 29, 2008, in rebel LTTE controlled area in Thadchanamadhu in Mannar, Northern province of Sri Lanka. The bombing killed 17 Tamils, including 11 school children, and injured at least 14 more people. The LTTE and NESHOR accused the Sri Lankan Army ’s deep penetration unit for the attack but the Army denied the allegations. This attack was the second attack on a civilian bus in the month of January in Sri Lanka
The following lists notable events that took place during 2009 in Sri Lanka.
Visuvamadu Maha Vidyalayam is established in 1978 as a provincial school in Visuvamadu, Sri Lanka. School girls studying in this school were among those killed in the Chencholai bombing.
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the country's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.
Udayarkaddu Maha Vidyalayam is a provincial school in Udayarkaddu, Mullaitivu District, Sri Lanka. School girls studying in this school were among those killed in the Chencholai bombing.
Chemmalai Maha Vidyalayam also spelt Cemmalai is a provincial school in Chemmalai, Alampil, Mullaitivu District, Sri Lanka. School girls studying in this school were among those killed in the Chencholai bombing. [Citation overkill]
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