Chemmani becomes Sri Lanka’s largest known mass grave as unresolved disappearances return to the national agenda
More than 580 skeletal remains have now been recovered from Chemmani in Jaffna, according to Human Rights Watch, turning an excavation site into one of the most disturbing unfinished chapters of Sri Lanka’s past.
Human Rights Watch describes Chemmani as the largest mass grave discovered in the country.
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The numbers are terrible enough. The objects emerging alongside the remains make them harder to reduce to statistics: personal possessions and other material which investigators hope may eventually help identify some of those buried there.
The existence of Chemmani has been part of Sri Lanka’s consciousness for decades. In 1998 a soldier convicted over the rape and murder of schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy told a court that hundreds of bodies had been buried in the area during the military occupation of the Jaffna peninsula in the 1990s.
When skeletal remains were subsequently uncovered, the ground began surrendering some of its secrets.
Human Rights Watch says Sri Lankan government data identifies numerous mass-grave sites around the country and argues that investigations into disappearances and serious abuses have repeatedly suffered from delay, insufficient forensic capacity and political interference.
The present Government has pledged something different. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has committed his administration to investigating mass graves and confronting unresolved crimes, while the authorities have acknowledged that international expertise may be required for specialised forensic work.
That is precisely why Chemmani is now a test of more than history. It is a test of whether the Government’s promise of accountability applies even when the answers may be painful, politically difficult or institutionally embarrassing.
There must also be care about what the evidence does not yet establish. A skeleton establishes a death. A mass grave raises profound questions. Neither by itself identifies the killer, establishes the circumstances of death or determines criminal responsibility.
That is what a credible investigation must discover.
Sri Lanka has spent too many years allowing its dead to become political property, claimed by one side and denied by another. The people buried at Chemmani deserve something rather simpler.
They deserve names. Their families deserve answers. And if crimes were committed, those responsible deserve a courtroom.
Be that as it may, after more than 580 bodies, looking away is no longer an available national policy.
