Mirusuvil massacre remembered 22 years on

A commemoration event was held this morning to mark 22 years since the Mirusuvil massacre, where Sri Lankan soldiers murdered eight Tamil civilians in Jaffna, including three children, before dumping their bodies in a mass grave.

Relatives of the victims gathered at Mirusuvil Church to light candles and lay flowers in memory of the eight Tamils. 

The massacre 

On December 19, 2000, at least nine displaced Tamil villagers had travelled by bicycle to visit their abandoned houses in the village of Mirusuvil, located in the Jaffna district.

The group included Ponnadurai Maheshwaran, Raviwarman, Thaivakulasingham, Nadesu Jayachandran, Wilvarasa and his two sons— 5-year-old Prasad and 13-year-old Pradeepan Jayachandran, Gnanachandran, and his 15- year-old son Shanthan. 21-year-old Maheshwaran would be the sole survivor.

The group were detained at a nearby military camp for questioning and subsequently murdered and buried in a mass grave. The murders came to light after Maheswaran escaped from the army's custody with serious injuries and informed the relatives of the others who had travelled to Mirusuvil. 

Maheswaran testified in court and identified at least five of the soldiers responsible. In 2015, after a lengthy court process, Sunil Ratnayake, a member of the military’s elite Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP), had been sentenced to death while the other men were cleared of all charges.

Just five years after the sentence, Ratnayake received a presidential pardon from former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

At the time of his release, Amnesty International's Regional Director for South Asia, Biraj Patnaik said: 

“Where accountability is so rare for serious human rights violations in Sri Lanka, the government’s arbitrary decision to release Sergeant Rathnayake sends an extremely worrying message. It means that military perpetrators of horrific crimes, even if convicted through a court of law, will be pardoned and released."

Last year, the US State Department announced that Rathnayake would be barred from entry to the United States over his role in the killings.

Read more on the massacre here: Revisiting the Mirusuvil massacre.