Chammani mass graves: ITAK calls for international oversight into excavations

Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil political party, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), has written to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake seeking the involvement of independent, internationally respected forensic experts to oversee all stages of the investigation into the mass grave in Chemmani, a village in northern Jaffna.

Expressing profound concern regarding the on-going exhumation at Chemmani, the Tamil party urged urgent and decisive action to uncover the truth, ensure forensic protocols meet internationally recognized standards, and bring perpetrators to justice.

Chemmani has come to represent Sri Lanka’s unresolved legacy of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings extending into the mid-1990s, ITAK said in the letter addressed to the President.

The letter reads: “In 1998, Lance Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse convicted for the rape and murder of Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy and family members, revealed at his sentencing hearing that between 300 and 400 Tamil civilians had been buried there. This disclosure prompted excavations in 1999 that yielded fifteen skeletons, two of which were identified as disappearances from 1996. Despite forensic confirmation of assault and execution, prosecutions stagnated and no meaningful justice was delivered to this day.”

“In early 2025, during redevelopment work at the Chemmani Ariyalai Siththuppaththi Hindu crematorium in northern Jaffna, human skeletal remains were uncovered, prompting the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court to formally declare the site a mass grave and order a court-supervised excavation under judicial supervision. As of today, approximately 65 skeletons including infants and children had been exhumed in two phases, accompanied by personal artefacts such as a schoolbag, toy, bangles, sandals and fragments of clothing. All remains are held at the University of Jaffna for forensic examination.”

ITAK said that truth seeking must serve as the foundation of any transitional justice process and that hundreds of families continue to seek answers, more than sixteen years after the war ended in 2009.

“These families are asking an imperative question about the fate of their missing loved ones. The silence of successive regimes is not merely a political failure but a grave moral one. Every year without truth undermines the possibility of national healing and closure,” it said.

“The fifteen bodies removed in 1999 are clearly connected to the same criminal context as the current discoveries. However, the pending case in the Colombo Magistrate’s Court relating to that excavation has not been formally integrated with the present investigation. These must now be treated as part of a single criminal transaction. Only consolidation of both investigations can enable meaningful accountability,” the letter added.

It further highlighted that Sri Lanka’s limited domestic forensic capacity and the “history of opaque handling of mass graves” make transparent protocols and credible international oversight indispensable.

“Chain of custody must be documented meticulously. Independent forensic experts of recognized international standing should be engaged to oversee excavation, identification and analysis. Interim and final reports must be publicly disclosed to victims’ families, civil society, international observers and the wider public,” the party said.

Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) noted it has come to light that the fifteen bodies exhumed in 1999 were reportedly transferred to the University of Glasgow for analysis and charged that to date, successive Sri Lankan governments have taken no meaningful steps to repatriate those remains, identify the victims or facilitate their proper last rites.

“Those remains must be urgently returned to Sri Lanka so they may be reinvestigated under the same internationally monitored protocols applied to the current Chemmani excavation contributing to a unified and coherent truth-seeking process.”

“The earth at Chemmani is speaking again. Over forty skeletons, including infants, have emerged with personal artefacts that painfully affirm their civilian status and innocence. Yet many perpetrators remain at liberty. Symbolic gestures of reconciliation ring hollow without real legal action.”