Lanka govt to dig up more mass grave sites

Rajapakse reportedly claimed that only one of the sites contained 20 bodies. He said the bodies had been brought in tractors, naked or clothed only in underwear, and dumped into the graves, some of which had been Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) bunkers before the army took over the area in December 1995.

The identification of the sites will continue over the next two days. Four other soldiers convicted along with Rajapakse for the rape and murder of a Jaffna teenager, will also take part in the process. All five were flown to the peninsula with tight security and were produced before the Jaffna magistrate on Monday morning before the identification of the sites began. The excavation is scheduled for September 6.

“We questioned him about the identities of those who we may expect to find at the locations, the circumstances of their illegal detention, death and burial,” said state counsel Yasantha Kodagoda, speaking on the phone from Jaffna.

This is the second major stage of the investigation into the Chemmani saga, which began with Rajapakse’s allegation of the existence of the mass grave last year at the time of his conviction.

In June this year, the government yielded to pressure from national and international human rights organisations and conducted a preliminary dig at a site pointed out by Rajapakse at Chemmani and came up with two skeletons.

The two skeletons were quickly identified as those of two youth who had disappeared along with nearly 600 others during an army crackdown in the peninsula between July and November 1996.

The find seemed to at least partially substantiate Rajapakse’s claim, and increased the probability that Chemmani may indeed hold the key to all the disappearances from that period in Jaffna’s troubled history.

After the June excavation, the government committed itself to a more complete excavation at the vast marshland as soon as it had organised the logistics for it. It is yet uncertain what the large-scale excavation will yield, but it is certain that — if the soldiers prove right — it could have consequences not just for the present set-up in the Sri Lanka army but also Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government in this election year.