Bodies Found in Sri Lanka’s Last Battle Site

There were nine bodies, found in a mass grave in Sri Lanka in the area where the last bloody battle of a 26 year war with Tamil separatists was fought in 2009m Most of the nine bodies were women. The international pressure is growing on Sri Lanka’s government to address the allegations that tens of thousands of civilians were killed by the army in the final weeks of the war.

At his month’s session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the United Stated is planning to put forward a resolution and the U.S. officials have stated that it may call for an international investigation. According to a U.N. panel, around 40,000 mainly Tamil civilians died in the final few months of the war. Though both sides committed atrocities, most of them were killed by army shelling. Sri Lanka is arguing against the figure and the conclusion.

The mass grave had been found last week when a tractor was ploughing farmland in the northern district of Mullaitivu. The judicial medical officer Sinnaiyah Sivaruban reportedly told Reuters that they “have found nine skeletons of most women with burn injuries.Three local people have said the bodies were dumped in this land on February 9, 2009, after they were killed in an army multi-barrel shell attack, and that there is another mass grave 200 metres from this. But we don’t know the truth.”

According to Thurairasa Raviharan, a provincial councilor in Mullaitivu from the Tamil National Alliance who was once the political proxy of the now defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the residents believe that there could be many mass graves in the area. The police and the military however rejecte the claims and said that proper investigation was under way. Th military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasooriya said that “there is no factual basis for such conclusions and we reject these false and misleading allegations. It is deplorable that such premature conclusions are drawn without allowing the investigations to proceed without hindrance.”

National police spokesman Ajith Rohana said that a witness had testified that the LTTE dumped the bodies in the area in 2009. Last year, Sri Lanka set up a presidential commission to investigate a grave with the remains of more than 150 people in a central province. The evidence was sent to China for forensic investigations. So far there has been no conclusion.

Denisha Sahadevan