The never-ending stench of mass graves

Sri Lanka for long years has held an ugly, yet open secret; its governments, from 1971, bar none, have been responsible for the killing, often on a mass scale, of its own citizens. An even worse indictment of the Sri Lankan State is that hardly anyone has been held accountable for these mass atrocities.

It has created a culture of impunity, especially among the security forces and police that even today, shooting at protestors, killing of persons in State custody and indiscriminate acts of violence are normalised, condoned, and even praised.

The latest reminder of this legacy of cruelty is the discovery of yet another mass grave, this time in Mullaitivu. The discovery of the Kokkuthoduvai mass grave has once again ignited the fears of impunity with the excavation process and methodology being questioned. The international standards which should be followed on the exhumation of mass graves is stipulated in the ‘Revised UN Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions’ which is also known as the ‘Minnesota Protocol.’ 

These guidelines and prevailing international law obliges the State to undertake investigations and prosecutions of potentially unlawful deprivations of life. These processes must be aimed at ensuring that those responsible are brought to justice, at promoting accountability and preventing impunity, at avoiding denial of justice and at drawing necessary lessons for revising practices and policies with a view to avoiding repeated violations.

The Sri Lankan experience demonstrates that the bare minimum standards expected have not been adhered to when investigating mass graves. Instead, the State apparatus has actively covered up the crimes and provided impunity to those responsible. Despite over 100,000 extra judicial killings being committed in the country since 1971 there has been hardly a judicial precedence to hold those responsible. In the rare instances in which State officials were investigated and tried for crimes, junior officers were convicted, while their superiors were never indicted or were acquitted, despite evidence indicating responsibility through the chain of command. 

In 1996, after the conviction of military personnel in the murder of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, a 17-year-old schoolgirl in Jaffna, the Chemmani mass graves were identified by the convicts. Similarly in 1989, military personnel forcibly disappeared 25 schoolchildren from Embilipitiya. In both these cases junior officers were convicted. These two cases remain the only examples of any form of accountability for mass crimes committed by State officials.

Despite 20 mass graves having been partially exhumed over the last three decades hardly any family has had the remains of their loved ones returned. Instead, officials, including magistrates and forensic experts involved in these excavations have been transferred abruptly, police have delayed carrying out judicial orders and there has been a concerted effort to deny justice. In this regard, the much-touted Office on Missing Persons (OMP) established in 2016 through an Act of Parliament has been an abysmal failure. Despite its mandate to carry out investigations of ‘incidents of missing persons including those missing as victims of abduction, persons missing in action or otherwise missing in connection with armed conflicts, political unrest and civil disturbances’ to date it has failed to identify a single victim and assist in any judicial process to bring those responsible to justice.

In this backdrop of State failure and active attempts to stifle efforts to seek justice, the Mullaitivu mass grave should not be allowed to be forgotten and become yet another statistic in the long list of cases of impunity.