.jpeg)
In February this year, I could hardly believe it when I heard that more bodies had been discovered during construction work near Chemmani, in Jaffna district in Sri Lanka’s North. Observing exhumations there in 1999 on behalf of Amnesty International had been one of the most searing experiences of my working life. Even now, a quarter of a century later, I often think back to that time – to the families of the disappeared present there, clinging to hopes for truth, justice and reparations, only to have them cruelly denied by the administrations in power then and since.
The current probe, which began in May 2025 after construction workers preparing to build a Hindu crematorium stumbled upon human bones, is a stark reminder of Sri Lanka’s unresolved past. The Jaffna Magistrate Court promptly ordered excavation and further investigation. Found in Sri Lanka’s former war zone, the mass graves have brought the country’s troubled history back into focus 16 years after the civil war ended. For the country’s Tamils, who have long demanded accountability for war crimes, atrocities and human-rights violations, the site has renewed apprehensions over the real prospects for justice.
So far, around 240 skeletal remains have been recovered by a team of experts – including a senior archaeologist assisted by students from the University of Jaffna, and Judicial Medical Officers specialising in forensic pathology and anthropology. Visiting the site in June 2025, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described Chemmani as “a compelling reminder that the past haunts the lives of many in Sri Lanka,” underscoring the ongoing weight of these discoveries.
Despite the gravity of the site and its past, the state’s commitment to the investigation has been uneven. Reports of delays and interruptions, coupled with the stop-start nature of the excavations, raise serious concerns about the political will and credibility of the current administration, under president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, to pursue the investigation and see justice served.
The political climate in Sri Lanka today carries echoes of the 1990s. While the current government, led by the National People’s Power alliance, has promised reconciliation and justice for the Tamil population, stalled investigations and repeated obstacles suggest that past failures may be repeating themselves. Looking back at Chemmani in 1999 is essential not just as cautionary history, but also as a lens through which to view the choices – and the inaction – of the present.
To understand the stakes for the victims’ families and the significance of the ongoing exhumations, it is important to recall the political and military context of the mid-1990s.
At the time, Sri Lanka’s political climate was marked by guarded expectations. Eleven years into the civil war, in November 1994, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had been elected as president, partly owing to support from Tamil voters. A subsequent ceasefire agreement with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) proved short-lived, and the security forces launched a “war for peace”, regaining the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE during Operation Riviresa. The LTTE responded with deadly attacks: a suicide bombing on 4 July 1996, which killed the Jaffna town commander and several others, followed by an assault on the Sri Lanka Army’s Mullaitivu camp on 18 and 19 July.
In the aftermath, the army, with the police under its unified command, quickly resumed its longstanding practice of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances. Around 600 people were reported missing in just a couple of months, and numerous massacres occurred at Kumarapuram, Thampalakamam and Nagarkovil, across the country’s North and East.
One disappearance in the Chemmani area, however, would shock the country. The horrific abduction, rape and murder of the schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy in September 1996 – along with the killing of her mother, brother and a neighbour, who went searching for her – became a landmark case. In a rare instance, at least one of the lower-ranking perpetrators was sentenced to death. During the 1999 trial, one accused, Somaratne Rajapakse, testified that as many as 400 bodies of detained and disappeared individuals were buried at Chemmani. That revelation prompted the first round of exhumations and placed Chemmani at the centre of international attention as a potential crime scene implicating the Sri Lankan security forces.
Rajapakse was eventually brought to Chemmani and asked to point out where the bodies were buried. Possibly due to the lack of landmarks, he was able to indicate only a few sites. In the end, just 15 bodies were exhumed.
Despite the ongoing armed conflict, the government allowed exhumations to proceed and permitted forensic experts from Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights to observe Phase I of the work, carried out by Sri Lankan counterparts.
Not many readers will have ever been present at an exhumation, and the atmosphere of it is not an easy one to convey. To me, it felt strangely serene; partly because one witnesses the truth literally being dug up, revealing its gruesome self. We were in what felt like the middle of nowhere – a desolate stretch of land with no houses in sight, just a few scattered bushes and no shelter to speak of. The hot sun was our constant companion throughout the day.
The excavation team included six to eight national forensic experts from Ruhuna University, led by Chandrasiri Niriella. They conducted the excavation and analysis of the first grave, which was relatively straightforward to exhume, with reasonable skill. The international experts – Kevin Lee, a pathologist for Amnesty International; William Haglund, an anthropologist also with Amnesty International; and Melissa Connor, an archaeologist for Physicians for Human Rights – were initially met with suspicion and not welcomed as collaborators. On the second day, for instance, Niriella asked Haglund to observe only, rather than participate. The reason given was that the Sri Lankan team did not want to work “under” international experts. Over time, however, particularly during the laboratory stage of the work, away from media attention, Lee was able to establish a much more collegial and collaborative rapport with the local experts.
A government analyst was present throughout the investigation, though his exact role was rather unclear. On two separate occasions, when asked whether Amnesty International could visit his department, he flatly declined. He repeatedly cited a lack of resources, but also turned down offers of assistance from Amnesty International to help secure donor funding for equipment.
The other key component of the investigation was, of course, police work. The preliminary inquiries were carried out by 50 officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Colombo. It was led by Superintendent Nandana Munasinghe, who was assisted by three inspectors, two sub-inspectors and two sergeants, The remainder of the team comprised constables. The team was divided into three units: one was posted at the exhumation site, and the other two were tasked with conducting enquiries and tracing witnesses. In the first six months alone, CID investigators interviewed 325 witnesses in connection with 283 missing persons and recorded a total of 430 statements. It is understood that the files from this investigation are now missing, resulting in the loss of potentially critical evidence.
One of the most acute shortcomings during the early days of the exhumation was the treatment of the families of the disappeared. There appeared to be no system controlling who could observe the work. In practice, the only people barred were Tamil relatives and officials from the missing persons’ organisation, although their lawyers were present. The outer cordon held most observers at a distance, while access to the inner cordon was meant to be reserved only for those directly participating in the excavations. Yet I saw individuals with no official role move freely into this inner ring, and no log was kept of those who entered the crime scene.
After concerns were raised over these issues, eight relatives of the missing were escorted to the site, where a representative of the attorney general’s office and a local forensic expert briefed them. The CID officer in charge then spoke with them and appealed for any witnesses to come forward. Detailed statements were taken, but, as noted, the investigation files are now reportedly missing – along with potentially vital evidence. This is all the more tragic because many who testified at the time would now be unable to come forward, whether due to old age, death or displacement. It underscores how delays in delivering truth and justice come at a heavy cost to both families and the country.
The CID’s handling of the investigation left much to be desired. No officer or counsel was assigned to review statements, extract relevant information and plan lines of enquiry, and there was no case-management system in place. Beyond a note in the superintendent’s pocketbook, there was no record of task allocation. There also appeared to be no dedicated office for securely storing information, nor any index, whether on cards or computers, for organising and then analysing the material. As a result, vital information was at risk of being lost, and key leads and witnesses very likely went unpursued.
The CID’s limitations were compounded by the power and influence of the Sri Lanka Army. The police admitted that they had not traced all members of the relevant army units deployed in the area in late 1996, when disappearances were at their peak. This would have included personnel stationed at the military intelligence camp at Ariyalai East, near Chemmani, as well as the Pungankulam army camp, the main camp east of Jaffna City. Investigators said they had not done so because the army was uncooperative and unlikely to assist, apparently believing the killings were “necessary”.
Since the statements were recorded in Sinhala, international observers could not directly assess the strength of the evidence. However, an independent committee report later made clear that sufficient evidence existed to identify 35 army personnel named during the investigations. The CID subsequently arrested and remanded five of them. As typical before and since in cases related to war-time abuses, the legal proceedings dragged on and were ultimately allowed to lapse, with the suspects quietly released.
The attorney general’s office played a markedly negative role in the prosecutions of those accused in connection with the disappearances and killings of the 15 individuals exhumed in 1999. As noted earlier, the case was repeatedly postponed. In mid-2000, it was transferred to the Colombo Magistrate’s Court after the alleged perpetrators claimed they feared for their lives if required to appear at the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court. Meanwhile, the victims’ families were reluctant to travel to Colombo, as anyone leaving the Jaffna peninsula had to obtain security clearance. Doing so would have required revealing to the military that they intended to testify against army personnel.
In January 2006, the case effectively ended when the police informed the Colombo magistrate that they could not proceed without instructions from the attorney general, despite having submitted the findings of their investigation. The suspects were released on bail and subsequently promoted to senior positions.
This outcome exemplifies a longstanding problem, as highlighted in a recent report by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL):
The HRCSL […] recalls that according to Sri Lanka’s Second Periodic Report to the Committee against Torture in 2004, a special unit in Sri Lanka Police called the ‘Disappearance Investigation Unit’ had carried out investigations into 3,615 cases of disappearance, of which 2,462 were completed. Most of these cases were then closed on the advice of the Attorney General. 376 cases were filed before the High Court, but only twelve resulted in convictions.
The HRCSL has long recommended the establishment of a permanent “Office for the Investigation and Prosecution of Serious Crimes by State Officials” – a recommendation also endorsed by several United Nations bodies. The current NPP government has set up a committee to determine the office’s powers and the process for its creation, but the committee’s report has been slow to materialise.
Around the time of the 1999 Chemmani exhumations, Kumaratunga had established three “zonal commissions” to investigate the tens of thousands of enforced disappearances reported during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) insurrections between 1987 and 1990 in southern Sri Lanka, as well as the ongoing conflict in the North and East. The commissions travelled across the country, recording testimony from relatives and survivors. They received 27,526 complaints and found that, of the cases they had time to examine, 16,742 constituted enforced disappearances. The All-Island Commission, tasked with investigating the remaining complaints, recorded an additional 10,136 cases. By the late 1990s, official commissions had already confirmed around 27,000 disappearances.
The terms of reference for these four commissions allowed them to investigate only cases arising after 1988. After some time, Kumaratunga instructed them to stop accepting new complaints. The All-Island Commission subsequently referred more recent cases – including the 1996 disappearances in Jaffna – to the newly-established HRCSL. The HRCSL then set up a committee under Devanesan Nesiah, a former civil servant turned academic, to investigate these cases. The committee’s report makes for compelling reading. It reveals extensive evidence, as well as the names of 35 army personnel – and seven additional individuals – allegedly responsible for 44 disappearances. It is unclear whether the CID at the time, or now, has made efforts to obtain the evidence collected by the committee.
The Jaffna Army Commander at the time, Lieutenant General Lionel P Balagalle, informed the committee chairman that the army could not fully assist in the investigation because, in 1996, army personnel had frequently been moved around due to the prevailing security situation, and many documents were destroyed during LTTE attacks on army camps. The army did, however, make Lieutenant Colonel Duminda C Keppetiwalana available to give evidence. He had been named in 10 of the 44 cases where the committee identified alleged perpetrators. Despite this evidence, no successful prosecutions were ever achieved.
All of this is highly significant for the ongoing Chemmani exhumations. This time, the work is reportedly proceeding well, aided by technology such as ground-penetrating radar, which allows for more efficient discovery of remains. Over 200 bodies had been exhumed by early September 2025, before work was paused pending approval of funds for the next phase. The few Sri Lankan forensic experts involved have now gained considerable experience through successive exhumations across the country, including at Matale, Mannar and Kokkuthoduvai. However, their numbers remain small, and with many other graves still being discovered, there is an urgent need to expand capacity, as emphasised in the HRCSL’s recent report.
The UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on Sri Lanka, passed on 6 October 2025, also urged the government to seek international support to ensure adequate financial, human and technical resources for exhumations conducted in accordance with international standards.
One obvious way to strengthen the process would be to involve international forensic experts. The government’s decision not to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, despite repeated requests, is telling. The Argentinian forensic expert previously visited Sri Lanka during the 1994 Sooriyakanda exhumations, in the south-central district of Ratnapura, and is well placed to advise his Sri Lankan counterparts on what is needed and how the international community can provide support.
When an Amnesty International observer was finally able to visit the Government Analyst Department in September 1999, he reported that the laboratory was severely lacking in both equipment and expertise, and that the building was completely unsuitable for modern forensic work. He feared that the evidence obtained by the department would not stand up to international scrutiny in terms of integrity and preservation. The observer concluded that the entire Sri Lankan forensic service was in need of modernisation and recommended the creation of a new laboratory equipped with up-to-date tools. At the time, no such facility existed in Asia, and establishing one could have positioned Sri Lanka as a regional centre of excellence on forensics, potentially offering services to other law-enforcement agencies in the region.
A key ongoing forensic shortcoming concerns the capacity to analyse DNA samples from the families of the disappeared in affected areas. Without rigorous scientific analysis, identifying discovered remains and returning them to families remains a major challenge. As highlighted by the HRCSL in its recent report, this process would require advanced techniques, including bomb pulse carbon-14 dating – currently unavailable in Sri Lanka – alongside the establishment of a truly independent and professional DNA bank.
The inability to properly identify remains also severely hampers the collection of evidence against alleged perpetrators of abductions and enforced disappearances. During the 1999 Chemmani exhumations, only two of the bodies were identified by relatives – and, even then, identification relied solely on clothing. Both were garage workers who had disappeared after being arrested by army personnel in August 1996. One individual was found blindfolded with his shirt; the other had his hands tied behind his back with his vest. Their remains, however, were never returned to the families. Bone samples taken to the University of Glasgow for further forensic analysis are reportedly still held there.
The recent exhumations have also yielded items such as children’s shoes, a school bag, milk bottles and a toy, which could potentially assist in identifying the remains. Given that more than a quarter of a century has passed since these disappearances, locating the relatives of the victims may be challenging. However, a professionally conducted tracing effort should be able to manage this, starting with a public appeal for families of the disappeared to come forward, including relatives now living abroad. DNA samples should be collected from both the exhumed remains and the families of the disappeared in the Chemmani area during the period in question.
In its October 2003 report to the HRCSL, the committee summarised its findings from investigations into 281 of the 327 complaints referred to it, determining that 256 of them were committed against Tamils in the North and East. Of these, the Sri Lanka Army was found responsible for 247 cases – two victims were shot dead and 245 were arrested and subsequently disappeared. The files and interview recordings from these investigations should be made available in the archives of the HRCSL and/or the Colombo office of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which funded the committee’s work. These materials could serve as evidence for the CID as it advances the current investigations.
The NPP government has so far made few formal statements about the discovery of remains at Chemmani. The justice minister spoke about it at some length during a television programme in mid-August, but otherwise the response has been muted. To date, the government has provided the resources necessary for the exhumations to proceed at pace. Whether that commitment will hold through the remaining phases of the work and beyond remains to be seen.
It is also unclear how the current police investigations are progressing. Have the authorities located all the relevant files from the 1999 CID inquiry and the aborted prosecution? Can any of that material be matched with evidence being gathered now? Have the suspects identified in 1999 been re-interviewed, and have their passports been seized to prevent them from leaving the country? Is there the political will, and an adequate budget, to carry out proper DNA testing this time? And will the attorney general’s office – or, should it be established, the proposed Office for the Investigation and Prosecution of Serious Crimes by State Officials – act independently to ensure justice is finally served? These are only some of the urgent questions still awaiting answers.
After more than 45 days of work, the second stage of excavation was halted in early September. The ministry of justice denied media reports that the pause was due to a lack of funds, stating that sessions were being scheduled in light of weather conditions and other ongoing mass-grave investigations. The Jaffna magistrate has decided to reopen the case on 3 November 2025. A new budget of close to LKR 20 million has since been approved, and the third phase of exhumations is expected to commence shortly.
In early October, the “Unextinguishable Lamp” memorial in Jaffna, erected to demand justice for the victims of Chemmani, was vandalised. It has since been rebuilt. Residents condemned the attack, describing it as an attempt to erase Tamil remembrance and suppress calls for accountability.
The Chemmani exhumations present yet another opportunity for Sri Lanka to confront and break through the entrenched cycle of impunity that has prevailed in the country for decades. The NPP government has spoken of its commitment to reconciliation, but there can be no meaningful reconciliation without truth and justice.
As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights observed during his recent visit to Sri Lanka, “an absence of justice will undermine the stability of peace. Conversely, acknowledging the truth creates the space for justice and reparations – and ultimately, healing.” His words underscore what has long been clear to victims’ families: without accountability, promises of reform will ring hollow. As he further noted, “Accountability and justice, including full acknowledgment of the truth of what was done to people, shape the path to lasting reconciliation. This in turn is essential to inclusive economic growth and sustainable development.” One can only hope.
_____
This article was originally published in Himal Southasian and has been republished with permission from the author.