Catholic bishops call for an impartial investigation as the mass-grave excavations again confront Sri Lanka with a question that has survived governments, commissions and decades
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference has called for an impartial investigation into the Chemmani mass graves and for the excavation process to be completed, adding an important national voice to an issue that has too often been confined to the country’s ethnic and political fault lines.
Chemmani should not be a Tamil question. Nor should it be treated as an accusation against an entire military, a particular government or the Sinhalese community.
It is an evidence question.
Human remains have been recovered. The responsibility of the State is therefore to establish, through credible forensic and judicial processes, who those people were, how and when they died and whether there is evidence capable of identifying those responsible.
The significance of the bishops’ intervention lies partly in removing Chemmani from the convenient political boxes into which Sri Lanka repeatedly places uncomfortable questions arising from the war.
For families searching for missing relatives, the discovery of human remains inevitably carries enormous emotional significance. For the State, however, emotion cannot substitute for evidence, and neither can political defensiveness.
An impartial investigation protects both sides.
If forensic evidence establishes criminal wrongdoing, those findings must be pursued regardless of the identity, rank or affiliation of anyone implicated. If allegations cannot be substantiated, that too must be stated clearly.
What Sri Lanka cannot afford is another investigation that begins amid headlines, disappears into bureaucracy and returns years later as another unresolved entry in the country’s catalogue of commissions, excavations and inquiries.
Chemmani already carries a difficult history.
Allegations surrounding disappearances and burials in the area date back decades, particularly to the conflict in the Jaffna peninsula during the 1990s. Earlier investigations and excavations produced discoveries but never generated the kind of comprehensive resolution capable of settling the wider questions surrounding the site.
The latest discoveries therefore arrive in a country where trust is already scarce.
Tamil families and political representatives frequently approach State investigations with suspicion. Sections of the security establishment and the South, meanwhile, fear that every discovery connected with the war will automatically be interpreted as proof of predetermined allegations.
Neither position should determine the investigation.
Modern forensic science can establish far more than was possible when many of the original allegations surfaced. Archaeology, forensic anthropology, DNA analysis and other scientific techniques can help determine the age of remains, possible causes of death and, in appropriate cases, identity.
But science is useful only if the process surrounding it is trusted.
That requires an unbroken chain of custody, proper documentation, independent expertise where necessary and protection of the site from political or institutional interference.
There is also a wider issue.
Sri Lanka cannot demand that international institutions accept domestic accountability mechanisms while simultaneously allowing sensitive domestic investigations to remain incomplete or unexplained. Every credible investigation completed at home strengthens the argument that Sri Lankan institutions can establish the truth themselves.
The reverse is equally true.
The Catholic bishops’ intervention should therefore not be interpreted as another attack on the State. It should be treated as an opportunity for the State to demonstrate that discovering the truth about Sri Lankan citizens does not depend upon their ethnicity, language or the politics surrounding their deaths.
Nobody should prejudge what Chemmani will ultimately prove.
But human remains cannot be left to carry unanswered questions indefinitely.
The dead cannot give evidence.
The institutions of the living must do that for them.
