Anniversary of Mirusuvil massacre a reminder of impunity

On 19 December 2000, nine Tamil civilians – including three teenagers and a five-year-old child were brutally massacred by a unit of the Sri Lanka Army. These civilians had travelled from Udipiddy to Mirusuvil, a village 16 miles from Jaffna town. Later the Military Police arrested several army personnel who were on duty in the area. Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake gave a statement to the Military Police stating that the bodies of the eight civilians had been first thrown into a toilet pit and later buried somewhere else.

Thereafter the Police and the Magistrate went to the site of the burial and exhumed the bodies. Four men and four children were found with their throats slit and eyes blindfolded. Some corpses had their hands and legs chopped off. The deceased belonged to four families. A single family lost four members, including children aged 13 and 5. Another lost two breadwinners. Two more also lost primary breadwinners.

Justice for this massacre took more than 15 years to wind its way but, against all odds, judgment was delivered at last. On 24 June 2015, former Army Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake who had been on bail pending trial was found guilty of murdering the eight civilians and was sentenced to death by the Trial at Bar consisting of three High Court Judges held in Colombo. On appeal against the said judgment a five-Judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence on 25 April 2019. Although Sergeant Ratnayake was found guilty on 17 counts, other members of his unit were cleared of all charges for insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

This judgement remains one of the rare occasions in which the Sri Lankan judiciary had delivered justice against an atrocity committed by the security forces. It was presented to the world by the Yahapalana administration of the ability of the Sri Lankan State to administer justice against violations of human rights and humanitarian law, especially during the conflict and argue against international judicial mechanisms.

In October 2019, then Presidential hopeful Gotabaya Rajapaksa pledged that once in power, he would acquit and release ‘war heroes’ being held on ‘baseless’ charges. In one of the most shameful episodes of the Rajapaksa government, in 2020 Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake belonging to the president’s own Gajaba regiment was granted a presidential pardon. The move was championed by the current Defence Secretary General Kamal Gunaratne who also belongs to the same regiment.

Wars are never pleasant affairs and civilian casualties are a reality of any conflict, irrespective of the laws of war prohibiting intentional targeting of civilians. Both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict, the State and the LTTE committed countless atrocities during the conflict that was beyond the battlefield. Yet, the Mirusuvil massacre remains an emblematic failure of the State to bring to justice a blatant violation and to correct an obvious wrong.

By continuing to keep in place the same security apparatus of the Rajapaksa administration, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has demonstrated that the Sri Lanka State is unwilling to administer justice, even for a rare case when the judiciary has performed its duties, making international and extraterritorial jurisdiction inevitable. The Mirusuvil massacre will go down in history as one of the most heinous crimes committed by the Sri Lankan security forces during the ethnic war. The granting of a pardon by the Head of State to the sole convict of the crime and the ethno-nationalist basis on which that pardon was granted will remain one of the most shameful legacies of the ethnic war.