Krishnan Anjan Jeevarani presented some of her family’s favorite foods on a banana leaf on a beach in Mullipakkal, Sri Lanka. She placed a samosa, lollipops and a large bottle of Pepsi next to flowers and incense sticks in front of a framed photo.
On May 18, Jeevarani was one of the tens of thousands of Tamils who gathered in Mullivaikkal to commemorate the 16-year anniversary of the brutal civil war that erupted between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group fighting for a Tamil homeland.
This year, Tamils lit candles in memory of their loved ones and observed a moment of silence in addition to previous anniversaries. Dressed in black, people paid their respects before a memorial fire and ate kanji, the gruel consumed by civilians when they were trapped in Mullivaikkal amid acute food shortages.
The new government, led by leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected president in September, has sparked hopes for justice and answers for the Tamil community. This year’s commemorations were the first to take place.
The Tamil community alleges that a genocide of civilians took place during the war’s final stages, estimating that nearly 170, 000 people were killed by government forces. The figure is 40, 000, according to estimates from the UN.
The Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which led violent uprisings against the Sri Lankan government in the 1970s and 1980s, has stressed “national unity” and its goal to eradicate racism. He made several promises to Tamil voters before the elections last year, including the withdrawal from military-occupied territory in Tamil heartlands and the release of political prisoners.
However, those commitments are now being tested eight months after his election, and many Tamils in the Tamil community claim that their so far have been mixed, with some successes but also disappointments.
No ‘ climate of fear ‘ but no ‘ real change ‘ either
When Sri Lankan forces shelled the tents where they were sheltering near Mullivaikkal in March 2009, Jeevarani lost several members of her family, including her parents, her sister, and her three-year-old daughter.
She said, “We had already prepared and eaten, and we were content.” “When the shell fell it was like we had woken up from a dream. The house was destroyed.
Jeevarani, now 36, moved through Mullivaikkal while shelling her way to a bunker where all of her family members were buried. In May 2009, she and the surviving members of her family entered army-controlled territory.
Most Sri Lankan Tamils say their memorials have largely been unobstructed despite reports of police obstructing one event in the eastern region of the nation after 16 years, as she and other Sri Lankan Tamils commemorated their lost loved ones.
This was a contrast from previous years of state crackdowns on such commemorative events.
According to former presidents Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brothers who jointly ruled Sri Lanka for 13 out of 17 years between 2005 and 2022, “there isn’t that climate of fear that existed during the two Rajapaksa regimes,” said Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan army carried out the final bloody assaults in 2009, amid allegations of human rights violations, under the leadership of Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“But has anything changed substantively]under Dissanayake]? Not yet, Satkunanathan asserted.
The government’s continued use of Sri Lanka’s contentious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and a gazette announcing land seizing in Mullivaikkal, according to Satkunanathan, as problematic examples of manifesto promises being overturned in a clear lack of transparency.
Despite making pre-election promises, Dissnayake’s government earlier this month criticized Tamil claims of genocide as “a false narrative.” Dissanayake also served as the chief guest at a “War Heroes” celebration honoring the Sri Lankan military on May 19, the day after the Tamil commemorations, and the Ministry of Defense announced the promotion of a number of military and navy personnel. In his speech, Dissanayake stated that “grief knows no ethnicity”, suggesting a reconciliatory stance, while also paying tribute to the “fallen heroes” of the army who “we forever honour in our hearts”.
We “walked over corpses,” the statement read.
In 2009, Mullivaikkal casualties were so severe that “we even had to walk over dead bodies,” said retired 60-year-old principal Kathiravelu Sooriyakumari.
She said government forces had used white phosphorus during the civil war, a claim Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly denied. Many legal scholars interpret international law to prohibit the use of white phosphorus, an incendiary chemical that can cause bone-to-skin burns in densely populated areas, despite not being specifically prohibited.
Sooriyakumari’s husband, Rasenthiram, died during an attack near Mullivaikkal while trying to protect others.
“He was directing everyone there,” he said. A shell struck a tree before coming right up to him, killing him, she said, and when he had sent everyone, he had already died. Although his internal organs were coming out, “he raised his head and looked around at all of us, to see we were safe”.
Her son was only seven months old. She claimed that “he has never seen the face of his father.”
The war left many households like Sooriyakumari’s without breadwinners. Following Sri Lanka’s economic crisis in 2022 and the resulting rise in living costs, they have a growing food shortage.
Will anyone come in and check on us if we are starving? said 63-year-old Manoharan Kalimuthu, whose son died in Mullivaikkal after leaving a bunker to relieve himself and being hit by a shell. “If the [children who died in the final stages of the war] had been here, they would have looked after us,” he said.
Kalimuthu asserted that she did not believe the new government would uphold Tamils’ rights, stating that “we can only believe it when we see it.”
No accountability, exactly.
Additionally, Sooriyakumari added that she didn’t anticipate that the new administration would change anything.
“There’s been a lot of talk but no action. How can we believe that there are no solid foundations? she told Al Jazeera. “So many Sinhalese people these days have understood our pain and suffering and are supporting us … but the government is against us”.
She claimed that she and the rest of the Tamil population were “scared of the JVP before” and that Dissanayake’s JVP party and its history of violence were at odds with her. When the army resurrected the Tamil separatist movement, the party had backed Rajapaksa’s government.
Satkunanathan said the JVP’s track record showed “they supported the Rajapaksas, they were pro-war, they were anti-devolution, anti-international community, were all anti-UN, all of which they viewed as conspiring against Sri Lanka”.
She acknowledged that the party was attempting to “emphasize that its action is not rhetorical, but it is trying to demonstrate that it has “evolved to a more progressive position.”
Although Dissanayake’s government has announced plans to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, it has rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for war crimes, much like previous governments. Dissanayake stated that he would not pursue charges against those who committed war crimes prior to the presidential election.
They have not moved at all, according to Satkunathan, citing the government’s refusal to cooperate with the UN-initiated Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP), which was established to gather evidence for potential war crimes. “I would love them to prove me wrong”.
The government’s position on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which gives devolved powers to areas with a majority of Tamils in the north and east, has also been repeatedly changed. Dissanayake stated his support for it in meetings with Tamil political parties prior to the presidential election, but the government has not laid out a concrete strategy, with the JVP’s general secretary denying it as unnecessary.
“We need answers,” the phrase means.
“Six months since coming into office, there’s no indication of the new government’s plan or intention to address the most urgent grievances of the Tamils affected by the war”, Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said. “And those in the North and the East prioritize the truth about the forcibly disappeared.”
Some people, like Krishnapillai Sothilakshmi, a 48-year-old man, still harbor optimism. Sothilakshmi’s husband Senthivel was forcibly disappeared in 2008. She asserted that she had faith in the new administration to provide answers.
According to a 2017 report from Amnesty International, between 60 and 100 000 people have disappeared in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s. Although Sri Lanka established an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in 2017, there has been no clear progress since.
We require solutions. Do they still exist? We want to know”, Sothilakshmi said.
It’s too late for Jeevarani, who is weeping on the beach as she examines a photo of her three-year-old daughter Nila, to hold any hope. She is unable to pinpoint the precise location where her family was buried because palm trees are growing over her family’s grave.
Source: Aljazeera
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