A report that pieces together survivor accounts of a 35-year-old massacre in Sri Lanka committed by Indian troops sent to the island for ‘peacekeeping’ in the late eighties has been released in the country’s north.
Releasing “Testimonies of a Massacre” at the Vadamarachchi Media House on Sunday (2), the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) urges the Indian government to identify officials from the Indian Army implicated in the massacre and hold them accountable, to apologise to victims and to provide reparations.
“This report was only possible because of the extraordinary documentation work of one man who meticulously recorded affidavits from survivors while the stench of burning and corpses still hung in the air,” said Yasmin Sooka, executive director of the ITJP.
“The lesson is that documenting atrocities at the time they are perpetrated is an investment in future accountability, and while it might take decades for the opportunity for justice to present itself, without recording the violations and the harms suffered, there will be no chance whatsoever,” she added.
In 1989, Nadarajah Anantharaj, a school principal and science teacher in Valvettithurai or VVT, narrowly escaped with his life after being detained and tortured.
He finished cremating the dead, and within days began organising up to 200 sworn affidavits from survivors of the massacre.
He then travelled to Delhi to inform the Indian government of what had happened at VVT , including publishing a book on what he called India’s ‘Mai Lai massacre’.
Decades of war followed, and his own home was burned by the Sri Lankan army, destroying more than half of the affidavits he had
collected.
Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) in the island in the late 80s were ridiculed as ‘monkey forces’ by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) today led by Sri Lanka President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Publishing the 62 page report, ITJP also calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to establish an independent investigation into the VVT massacre, and to ensure reparations for the victims of the massacre.
Specifically, Sri Lanka should exhume a grave site in the Uduppiddy Girls College which was used by the Indians as a military camp and where ten young men and boys from VVT are thought to be buried.
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