Tampalakamam massacre

Last updated

Tampalakamam massacre happened on February 1, 1998 when eight (8) minority Sri Lankan Tamil civilians were taken to the nearby police station and shot dead by Sri Lankan police and patriotic Sri Lankan civilians. The victims include a 13- and a 17-year-old boy. [1] One of the school boys killed was Arumugam Segaran, who had his reproductive organs pierced and placed in his mouth by the perpetrators. [2] Later one of the accused in the murder case was shot dead by unknown gunmen [3]

Contents

Incident

On the day of the incident about twenty (20) police arrested the victims. After taking the victims inside the police post they were shot at close range. The Kantale police reportedly went house to house pressuring the families to write and sign statement stating that those victims were killed by the LTTE or that they were killed by members of the LTTE. Later a national television channel reported that six (6) LTTE cadres were killed at Tampalakamam . [4]

Result

The alleged police officers have not been arrested. They were instead transferred to Kantalai police station and are still on duty. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam</span> Militant Tamil organisation in Sri Lanka (1976–2009)

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sri Lankan Civil War</span> 1983–2009 conflict

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Special Task Force (Sri Lanka)</span> Military unit

The Special Task Force (STF) (Sinhala: විශේෂ කාර්ය බලකාය Visesha Karya Balakaya; Tamil: சிறப்பு அதிரடிப் படை) is an elite police tactical unit of the Sri Lanka Police specialising in clandestine and covert operations, combat and patrolling in urban areas, combat search and rescue, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, crowd control, executive protection, forward observer, hostage rescue, indirect fire, irregular warfare, jungle and mountain warfare, parachuting, psychological warfare, search and rescue people who are in distress or imminent danger from disaster. serving high-risk arrest and search warrants, special reconnaissance, support military operations, tactical emergency medical, tracking, and unconventional tactics. It was formed in 1983 not as a military force, but rather as a highly specialised armed police unit.

Ilayathamby Tharsini was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was raped and killed in her home town of Pungudutheevu on December 16, 2005.

Human rights in Sri Lanka provides for fundamental rights in the country. The Sri Lanka Constitution states that every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. And, that every person is equal before the law.

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.

Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eelam War II</span> Armed conflict between Sri Lankan military and LTTE

Eelam War II is the name given to the second phase of armed conflict between Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The war started after the failure of peace talks between the Premadasa government and the LTTE. This phase of the war was initiated by the LTTE who massacred almost 600 Sinhalese and Muslim police personnel after they were ordered by the Premadasa government to surrender to the LTTE. The truce was broken on June 10, 1990 when the LTTE in October expelled all the 28,000 Muslims residing in Jaffna.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eelam War IV</span> Conflict between Sri lanka and LTTE separatists

Eelam War IV is the name given to the fourth 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 rebel air attack without external assistance in history.

The following lists notable events that took place during 2009 in Sri Lanka.

The war was waged for over a quarter of a century, with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war, on 20 May 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, "A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.

War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War are war crimes and crimes against humanity which the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been accused of committing during the final months of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.

Freedom of the press in Sri Lanka is guaranteed by Article 14(1)(a) of the Constitution of Sri Lanka which gives every citizen "the freedom of speech and expression including publication". But under some government's there was widespread suppression of the media, particularly those critical of those governments. Sri Lanka is ranked 146 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders's Press Freedom Index for 2022

Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is a remembrance day observed by Sri Lankan Tamil people to remember those who died in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. It is held each year on 18 May, the date on which the civil war ended in 2009, and is named after Mullivaikkal, a village on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war.

There are allegations that chemical weapons were used by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. No strong evidence for indicating the consistent use of such weapons during the war have been found thus far.

Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island'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.

References

  1. ↑ "Amnesty International Report". Amnesty International.org. Archived from the original on January 31, 2004. Retrieved 2006-01-06.
  2. ↑ Fein, Bruce (2009). Model Indictment for Genocide Against Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka Proposed to the U.S. Justice Department (PDF). Washington DC: Tamils Against Genocide. p. 89.
  3. ↑ "Tampalakamam accused shot dead". Tamilnet.com. Retrieved 2006-01-06.
  4. ↑ "Amnesty International Report". Amnesty International.org. Archived from the original on 2007-01-12. Retrieved 2007-02-28.
  5. ↑ "Amnesty International Report". Amnesty International.org. Archived from the original on 2007-01-12. Retrieved 2007-02-28.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.