Massacre
Chunnakam is situated in the Uduvil Assistant Government Agent Division in the Jaffna District. Ten kilometers from the Jaffna town, on the Kankesanthurai road, there is the Chunnakam Junction situated. The Chunnakam Police station was located about 250 metres south of this junction.
Many Tamil youth had been previously arrested since the escalation of conflict between the Army and the Tamil groups in the peninsula. Almost all of them were arrested under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) without evidence and were kept in various government buildings in the region.
On 8 January 1984, the State Police placed a time bomb in the Chunnakam Police station where at least 19 Tamil youth were held under the POTA and left the building. When the bomb exploded, all of them inside were killed. One man who attempted to rescue his friends inside also lost his life.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island in response to violent persecution and discriminatory policies against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government.
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.
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military.
Black July was an anti-Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 July 1983, which killed 13 soldiers. Although initially orchestrated by members of the ruling UNP, the pogrom soon escalated into mass violence with significant public participation.
The burning of the Jaffna Public Library took place on the night of June 1, 1981, when an organized mob of Sinhalese individuals went on a rampage, burning the library. It was one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century. At the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 books and manuscripts.
The 1974 Tamil conference attack occurred during the fourth World Tamil Research Conference, which was held in the city of Jaffna between 3 and 9 January 1974. Sri Lankan Police disrupted the meeting with force, killing nine or eleven people, and resulting in substantial civilian property damage and more than 50 civilians sustaining severe injuries.
The 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka followed the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalistic Tamil United Liberation Front won a plurality of minority Sri Lankan Tamil votes. In the elections, the party stood for secession. An official government estimate put the death toll at 125, whereas other sources estimate that around 300 Tamils were killed by Sinhalese mobs. Human rights groups, such as the UTHR-J, accused the newly elected UNP-led government of orchestrating the violence.
The Kent and Dollar Farm massacres were the first massacres of Sinhalese civilians carried out by the LTTE during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The massacres took place on 30 November 1984, in two tiny farming villages in the Mullaitivu district in north-eastern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government labeled this as an attack on civilians by the LTTE.
Uduvil is an agricultural village of about 32.7 square kilometers situated along the KKS Road at about five miles to the North of Jaffna city, Sri Lanka. It is surrounded by the villages Chunnākam, Kandarōdai, Sanguvēli, Mānipāy, Suthumalai and Inuvil. KKS Road and Kaithady - Mānipāy Road intersect at Uduvil and the Junction is called 'Maruthanār Madam' Junction. The name 'Maruthanār Madam' came into use because of the public resting place (Madam) situated at the North - Western corner of the junction. The old building that still exists is not in use nowadays. Two main roads, the Kaithady - Mānipāy Road and the branching Dutch Road cut through the village. The fork point is called 'Uduvil Junction.' A cross road connects the Dutch Road and the Puttūr - Chankānai Road that passes through Chunnākam Junction. It is called Uduvil - Kandarōdai Road. The nearest town to Uduvil is Chunnākam.
Mirusuvil massacre refers to the massacre and subsequent mass burial of eight Sri Lankan Tamil civilians on 20 December 2000.
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 Jaffna hospital massacre occurred on October 21 and 22, 1987, during the Sri Lankan Civil War, when troops of the Indian Peace Keeping Force entered the premises of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, an island nation in South Asia, and killed between 60 and 70 patients and staff. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the government of Sri Lanka, and independent observers such as the University Teachers for Human Rights and others have called it a massacre of civilians.
Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and the first Tamil militant to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide.
The Chunnakam market massacre was a massacre of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military in Chunnakam, a suburb of Jaffna in the Northern Province, Sri Lanka in 1984. This was the second such massacre carried out in the town, during the same year after 20 Tamil youth were massacred by the Sri Lankan military at the local Police station just two months earlier.
1984 Point Pedro massacre refers to the massacre of ethnic Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Police in Point Pedro, a town in Northern Province, Sri Lanka. Police violence resulted in the deaths of at least 18 Tamils and also a high damage to the local property. The Hartley College library was burned down along with its laboratory reminiscent of the Burning of Jaffna library.
Chunnakam Power Station was a thermal power station in Chunnakam in northern Sri Lanka. Commissioned in 1958, the station is owned and operated by the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). It was decommissioned in 2013, and replaced by the Uthuru Janani Power Station, which is constructed less than 100m south of the Chunnakam Power Station.
The 1987 Eastern Province massacres were a series of massacres of the Sinhalese population in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka by Tamil mobs and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Though they began spontaneously, they became more organized, with the LTTE leading the violence. Over 200 Sinhalese were killed by mob and militant violence, and over 20,000 fled the Eastern Province. The violence has been described as having had the appearance of a pogrom, with the objective of removing Sinhalese from the Eastern Province.
