Former Northern Provincial Councillor M K Shivajilingham commemorated five Tamil students who were summarily executed by Sri Lanka's Special Task Force (STF).
On January 2, 2006, five Tamil students were shot and killed at pointblank range by the STF whilst they spent an afternoon on the beach in Trincomalee.
The case – known as the 'Trinco 5' – remains one of the highest-profile killings in Sri Lanka to receive international attention, listed in 2014 by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the island as one of four ‘emblematic cases’ of the government's failure to ensure accountability and having been raised repeatedly in international forums.
In June 2019, 13 Special Task Force members who were suspected of executing the five Tamil youth were acquitted. Fifteen charges were filed against suspects and they were released due to the lack of evidence.
Read more on the massacre here: Still searching for justice - 17 years on from Trinco 5 killings