Editor’s Note: We are publishing a translated article originally posted on Facebook by Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi, Director of International Media and Strategic Communication under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The opinions expressed here may be his personal views.
By Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi
Gamini Lokuge died a natural death in the Kesbewa house a few days after it was revealed that young children who were going to school with their parents were killed and buried in the Chemmani mass grave in Jaffna. The Sinhala Buddhist society we live in, which has failed to implement the legal system that punishes the guilty, has been waiting for fate to punish the pioneers of the mass graves in the north and south before and after the Chemmani mass graves led by Gamini Lokuge, and will now wait for the Lokuge-led clan to go to hell.
The Lokuges, who were pioneers of one of the most painful periods in Sri Lankan history, and the culture of torture that emerged as a result, still bring painful memories to the history of the nation. The peaceful death of Lokuge, along with the reopening of the graves, raises a conflicting feeling about human rights and the application of the law in Sri Lanka. According to Sinhala Buddhist tradition, a hundred or two hundred monks would have gone to the grave to pray for Lokuge to “nibbana” and “amaha nirvana”, but what kind of healing or wish for nirvana could the child whose small skeleton was found next to the school bag in the Chemmini grave and the children who were killed before and after it have received before and after death? Even if they went to amaha nirvana after being killed, they would certainly have been sent to hell before death.
The remains of the young child, mixed with the adult skeletons found in the Chemmini grave, suggest that the Chemmini land may have more stories to tell than we once believed. They are stories of lost lives, broken families and the crimes of war that remain unsolved.
A mass grave, by its very definition, is a place where multiple bodies are buried together, often in haste and without individual identification. But in contexts like Sri Lanka, it means much more. It signals the presence of systematic violence, state intervention or a failure of justice. It is a burial ground not only for the children of the people who were killed, but also for truth, accountability and the conscience of a state.
The bodies in the Chemmani grave are believed to be Tamil civilians who disappeared in the mid-1990s, when the Sri Lankan army recaptured Jaffna from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). These individuals were allegedly abducted, tortured and killed – some suspected of having links to the LTTE, while others were victims of collective punishment.
The Chemmani story emerged not through a forensic team or a government agency but through a confession made in 1988 by a soldier sentenced to death. Lance Corporal Somaratne Rajapaksa confessed in 1996 to the rape and murder of a Tamil schoolgirl, Krishanthi Coomaraswamy. He claimed that hundreds of the bodies of the killed Tamil civilians were buried in the Chemmani area, and that extrajudicial killings under military command were common in the Jaffna region at the time.
The confession sparked public outrage and forced the government to launch an official investigation. In 1999, an excavation supervised by forensic experts, international observers and this writer unearthed 15 skeletons. Some were later identified as missing persons from Jaffna. But no senior official responsible has been prosecuted. Like many other trauma sites in post-war Sri Lanka, Chemmani, like many others, slipped into silence amidst the war hero and war propaganda headlines.
Two decades later, the graves of Chemmani have begun to speak again. Although the memory of a past in which children were killed is once again open to Sri Lankan society, I wonder if the concept of war heroes has not elicited as much shock or social response as the Palestinian children dying in Gaza. However, it looms large over the long shadows cast by Sri Lanka’s repeated promises of reconciliation and raises burning questions: How many more graves are there beneath our feet? Who are the victims, who are the perpetrators? Is the truth buried forever?
The story of the Chemmani graves is not just an archaeological or legal exercise. It is a test of Sri Lanka’s moral and political will to confront its violent past. The child’s skeleton is not just evidence – it is a cry from the depths of impunity to remember, to remember and to act.
The Sri Lankan history of political disappearances began long before Chemmani, in the 1970s, when the first wave of state-sponsored abductions and killings occurred. The 1971 JVP rebellion. After being arrested in connection with a failed Marxist uprising against the government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, thousands of mostly poor and rural Sinhalese youth disappeared. Many were never seen again. Their bodies were thrown into rivers, burned, or left to rot in unmarked forests. There are no public records. No memorials. No justice.
This same pattern resurfaced during this period – on a larger scale – in the 1988-1990 JVP uprising, when thousands more Sinhalese youth accused of leftist activities were abducted in white vans and tortured to death. Mass graves such as Suriyakanda, where schoolchildren were buried, revealed the extent of the lawless terror that reigned in the south.
But while the south was burning, the north and east of Sri Lanka were already engulfed in it. The 1983 communal riots, when the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) escalated into a full-scale civil war, with Tamil civilians caught between the military and the militants paying the heaviest price.
Under military occupation, areas such as Jaffna, Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Vavuniya, and Mannar were hotbeds of enforced disappearances. Thousands of Tamil youth suspected of sympathizing with the LTTE were abducted during curfews, military raids, or checkpoints – many never to return. Some were buried in fields like Chemmani, while others were dumped in lagoons or burned beyond recognition.
The LTTE also carried out disappearances and abductions, but the scale, frequency, and impunity of state-sponsored disappearances normalized the culture of fear and violence. Even after the guns fell silent in May 2009, the phenomenon of disappearances did not end. Later, it became an organized movement, with a rise in incidents of “white van” abductions, often targeting government critics, journalists or former Tamil rebels. These were carried out in peacetime, often in the capital or its suburbs, sometimes in broad daylight. Despite promises of investigations, we have still failed to build public trust.
Sri Lanka, once the country with the highest number of enforced disappearances per capita, has an official estimate of 65,000 people missing. From Suriyakanda to Chemmani, from Mannar to Kokkuthuduwai, mass graves are marked in the record of state violence. But the tragedy is not just that these graves exist – they are neglected, controlled or forgotten. Excavations are delayed. Investigations are inconclusive. Public memory is selective. Sri Lanka’s mass graves are not just evidence of a dark past – they are also evidence of it.
The story of Sri Lanka’s disappearances is not a Tamil story or a Sinhala story – it is our story in Sri Lanka, the story of a political culture that has allowed power to operate above the law. Until the full truth about these disappearances is known, until each grave is acknowledged, each victim is named, and each family is heard, Sri Lanka will remain a country where the dead rise up.
In an extraordinary twist in Sri Lanka’s political history, many who once mourned their comrades who disappeared or who narrowly escaped the clutches of the death squad now sit in the nation’s highest offices. The National People’s Power (NPP) alliance was formed with key figures from President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who witnessed state terror firsthand for generations. They are not distant observers of the nation’s violence; they are its survivors.
This unique positioning has brought with it unprecedented moral authority—and high expectations. Can a government led by former victims of state repression finally bring justice to those silenced by enforced disappearances and buried in mass graves?
Many current government leaders, especially those from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), bear the scars of the 1988-1990 terror, when the state crushed the southern rebellion with ruthless efficiency. Tens of thousands of Sinhalese youth—students, activists, innocents—were abducted and disappeared, often tortured and killed in secret camps. Some were burned in tires, while others were buried in unmarked fields.
These experiences have shaped a generation of leaders who have vowed never to allow such atrocities to happen again. Their rise to power in 2024 was more than a political victory; it was, for many, a symbolic return from the graveyard of history. They came with a promise not only of economic reform and social justice, but also of accountability, truth, and memory.
This unique positioning has brought with it unprecedented moral authority—and high expectations. Can a government led by former victims of state repression finally bring justice to those silenced by enforced disappearances and buried in mass graves?
What has the government done so far?
- New investigations
The discovery of new human remains at Chemmani, including that of a child, is part of the government’s reactivation of a long-stalled investigation. Authorities have reopened files related to Chemmani and other mass graves under the supervision of independent monitors, with the aim of matching forensic findings with the accounts of the missing. This is a small but important step towards the recovery of the truth.
- Re-energizing the Office for Missing Persons
The once-dormant Office for Missing Persons has been given a new mandate with enhanced staffing and budget. The agency is tasked not only with locating the missing, but also with acknowledging the suffering of families, maintaining a central database and recommending future legal action.
- Public acknowledgement of past abuses
Unlike previous regimes, the current leadership has publicly acknowledged state responsibility for both Sinhala and Tamil disappearances. Presidential speeches and parliamentary debates that broke the decades-long silence on the crimes of 1971, 1989 and 2009, for the first time in history, discuss Sinhala and Tamil victims in a single national narrative.
- Policy dialogues on reconciliation
A national truth commission is being explored through government-backed commissions and civil society roundtables, modelled on examples in South Africa and Latin America. These initiatives aim to collect evidence, recommend reparations and create a national archive of memory.
But despite these developments, we must acknowledge that justice remains distant. Even when high-ranking generals or politicians are held responsible for disappearances or mass killings, there are still no significant prosecutions against them. The public perception is that the military establishment, once powerful during the war, still trumps the power of civilian law. Any attempt to investigate its behavior is silenced by a hidden contradiction.
The government has come to power with the support of progressive and victimized communities, while managing to do so. Sinhala nationalist sentiments still view war crimes trials as attacks on the military, and as a result, progress in investigations has been slow, cautious, and often symbolic. That is the tragedy. Those in power are not always free to act as they please. They are constrained by old institutions, fragile coalitions, and a deeply entrenched culture of impunity. Political capital risks becoming a vehicle for past suffering rather than a mandate for systemic change. The question then becomes, will moral authority translate into legal action? Can those who once buried their friends in shallow graves now be forced to reveal the crimes of the state?
The presence of former victims in the halls of power is a historic moment. But if they do not use this moment to institutionalize truth, justice, and reconciliation, the window may close again – for years or decades. The soil of Chemmani, Suriyakanda, and Mannar will not remain silent forever. The voices beneath the earth are waiting, waiting for someone brave enough to listen and act.
(This was translated using Artificial Intelligence and checked against the original article. )