The Duraiappa stadium mass grave (also spelled Duraiyappah or Thuraiappa) was discovered and excavated at the Duraiappah Sports Stadium (named after Alfred Duraiappah) in the formerly embattled northern city of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, during a period of relative calm between civil conflicts. The mass grave was unearthed in stages between April 4 and 10 of 1999. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Renovation of the stadium, which was damaged and neglected during the course of the various phases of the Sri Lankan civil war, began in 1999. The attempt was hailed as a sign that normalcy had returned to the Jaffna peninsula, the battle-scarred heartland of the Tamils by the then government. Instead, it exposed one of the many secret mass graves created during the conflict between the Sinhalese majority dominated military forces and the minority Sri Lankan Tamil dominated rebel group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, [2] a conflict that has claimed more than 65,000 lives by 2007.
As workers sank the foundations for new changing rooms at the Duraiyappah stadium in northern Sri Lanka, their spades struck bones. Eventually 25 skeletons, including those of two children, [5] were unearthed. As the battered skins of six oil drums were pulled back to reveal a pit a few feet across, horrified villagers clutching the identity cards of missing sons and husbands came forward to witness the layers of skulls and broken vertebrae crushed into hardened clay 3 feet below the turf. [2] [6] [7]
Paramanthan Selvarajah was one of the witnesses to the unearthing of the mass graves. He was quoted as looking for his son, Pirapakaran, who disappeared in July 1996, age 24, after being taken by the Sri Lankan army as he rode home past a checkpoint in Jaffna. "I saw his bike lying behind a bunker and heard him crying inside," he said. "We never saw him again."
Pirapakaran, a tailor, is among more than 12,000 predominantly Tamil civilians believed to have disappeared since the war began. [6] [8] [9]
Jaffna Additional magistrate S. A. E. Ekanathan sought assistance from forensic experts, Ruhuna University’s Professor N. Chandrasiri declared that proper scientific methods were not used in the excavation and vital evidence may have been destroyed. Preliminary reports suggest that the site may be around ten years old, placing the suspicion on the Indian Peace Keeping Force or the rebel LTTE. [10]
According to a local human rights group UTHR the bodies could hardly have been buried there before late 1987. The Indian Army or the IPKF was there until the end of 1989. The LTTE was in control of the area from September 1990 to October 1995. Since then the Sri Lankan Army has been in control. [11]
According to UTHR the age of the victims had not been ascertained, which would allow the forensic experts to determine as to when they might have died. The organization demanded that an impartial investigation must be conducted and the Magistrate allow exhumations. It was noted that the basic step of issuing a public notice calling upon persons who have reason to believe, or even suspect, that the graves may contain the remains of persons in whom they have an interest, to come forward was not done, and because of this error the field has been left open to interested speculators. The forensic tests alone will not be satisfactory since the gaps between the departure of one armed party and the arrival of the next are small. It demanded that only a public testimony that will be the determining factor. The report concluded that at that time the excavations at Duraiappah Stadium are neither satisfactory nor professional. [11]
A local newspaper demanded that as they are several more mass graves in the North-East of the country and they should be investigated impartially as well. [12] Although news agencies reported that the skeletons were sent to capital Colombo for further forensic analysis there is no further information on this mass grave. [13]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka.
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 Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. 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.
Velupillai Prabhakaran, was an Eelam Tamil revolutionary. Prabhakaran was a major figure of Tamil nationalism, and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka in reaction to the oppression of the country's Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. Under his direction, the LTTE undertook a military campaign against the Sri Lankan government for more than 25 years.
Kilinochchi is the main town of Kilinochchi District, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some 100 km (62 mi) south-east of Jaffna. It was the administrative center and de facto capital of the LTTE until 2 January 2009, when troops of the Sri Lankan Army recaptured the city.
Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), previously known as the "Karuna Group", is a political party in Sri Lanka. It was formed by Karuna Amman, a former leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, after he defected from the organization in 2004. Initially a paramilitary group that helped the Sri Lankan Government fight the Tamil Tigers, the TMVP was registered as a political party in 2007. Under deputy leader Pillayan, they contested their first provincial elections in 2008, winning a majority in the Eastern Provincial Council. Members of the TMVP continue to carry arms under the auspices of the Sri Lankan government, which they claim is for their own safety from the Tamil Tigers, who carry out repeated attacks against them. The group is believed to be working with the Sri Lankan Army. They have been accused of human rights violation by local and international human rights organization.
Alfred Thangarajah Duraiappah was a Sri Lankan lawyer and politician, who served as Mayor of Jaffna and Member of Parliament.
Ilayathamby Tharsini was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was raped and killed in her home town of Pungudutheevu on December 16, 2005.
Krishanti Kumaraswamy, also spelled Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, was a Tamil woman in Sri Lanka who was raped and murdered on 7 September 1996 by six Sri Lankan Army soldiers; the effort to bring her assailants to justice became a cause célèbre as a part of the protest against atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Army during the Sri Lanka civil war.
The 1974 Tamil conference incident 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 expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern province was an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Tamil militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization in October 1990. Yogi, the LTTE's political spokesman claimed that this expulsion was carried out in retaliation for atrocities committed against Tamils in the Eastern Province by Muslims, who were seen by the LTTE as collaborators with the Sri Lankan Army. As a consequence, in October 1990, the LTTE forcibly expelled 72,000 strong Muslim population from the Northern Province.
The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) or UTHR(J) was formed in 1988 at the University of Jaffna, Jaffna, in Sri Lanka, as part of the national organization University Teachers for Human Rights. Its public activities as a constituent part of university life came to a standstill after the assassination on September 21, 1989 of Rajini Thiranagama, a key founding member, for which the group blamed the LTTE.
The Chencholai bombing took place on August 14, 2006 when the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed what it said was a rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) training camp, killing 61 girls aged 16 to 18. The LTTE, UNICEF, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and UTHR all said those in the compound were not LTTE cadres.
The Kalmunai massacre refers to a series of mass killings that occurred in June 1990 in Kalmunai, a municipality within the Ampara District of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province. The massacre of civilians was allegedly carried out by the Sri Lankan Army in retaliation for an earlier massacre of Sri Lankan police officers. The University Teachers for Human Rights, a human rights organization, put the number of dead in the second massacre at 250, while a local Member of Parliament claimed that at least 160 people were killed.
In 1998, allegations of mass graves at Chemmani were made by a Sri Lankan soldier on trial for rape and murder. He claimed hundreds of people who disappeared from the Jaffna peninsula after it was retaken by Government troops from the LTTE in 1995 and 1996 were killed and buried in mass graves near the village of Chemmani. There are reports about 300 to 400 bodies being buried there.
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 Sooriyakanda mass grave is the mass burial ground of murdered school children from Embilipitiya Maha Vidyalaya in Sri Lanka. These school children were killed and buried as part of the counterinsurgency during the second JVP uprising in Sri Lanka. It was alleged that over 300 bodies were buried in the location. The mass grave was located in 1994. The Sri Lankan government last reported in 1996 to have conducted a forensic analysis of the burial ground uncovering an unspecified number of bodies. Local media, NGOs and the US state department have claimed that the investigations are not satisfactory.
The St. Philip Neri Church shelling occurred when St. Philip Neri Church in Allaipiddy village, off the coast of Sri Lanka's Jaffna Peninsula, was shelled on August 13, 2006, allegedly by the Sri Lankan Army. The attack killed at least 15 people and injured as many as 54 others.
