Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama today that 6,000 gold items recovered from the North-East during and after the armed conflict have now been handed over to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
The CID explained that out of approximately 10,000 items sent to the National Gem and Jewellery Authority on court orders, a majority had been transferred to the Central Bank following examination. The Authority had been tasked with assessing the weight and gold content of the jewellery and submitting a report both to court and to investigators.
CID officers submitted this update in an additional progress report filed in court.
The gold in question was reportedly recovered from LTTE military camps, Tamil Eelam banks, and buildings in the Northern and Eastern provinces during what the state continues to call the “humanitarian operation.” The court previously heard that these items had either been “voluntarily given by local residents to the LTTE” or forcibly taken by the organisation. Investigations into ownership are said to be ongoing.
The transfer comes just months after Vanni district parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan demanded that the government return confiscated gold jewellery to Tamil civilians, warning that the state was attempting to permanently seize these possessions. “Under the guise of a so-called humanitarian war, governments with genocidal mindsets massacred people and destroyed the assets that symbolised Tamil cultural identity,” he said in May. “These governments have kept a large amount of Tamil people's jewellery hidden without offering any explanation until now.”
Adaikalanathan cautioned that many Tamil families had pawned jewellery during the war, only to later lose access to their possessions, and stressed that many now live in poverty. He urged the state not to use bureaucratic loopholes to confiscate jewellery under the pretext that rightful owners could not be identified.
Hundreds of thousands of Tamils were displaced in the final stages of the armed conflict, with many losing not only loved ones but also their homes and possessions. The Sri Lankan military confiscated large quantities of gold, particularly during mass surrenders at Mullivaikkal in 2009, when civilians were subjected to widespread shelling and enforced disappearances, in what is being increasingly recognised as a genocide.