ITJP: Valvettithurai – Testimonies of a Massacre

This report uses the voices of those who were there to tell the story of the Valvettithurai massacre in 1989, one of the worst atrocities committed by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka.

From 1987-1990, India deployed an estimated 70,000 thousand soldiers to Sri Lanka on a mission to disarm rival Tamil militias as part of an accord signed with the Government of Sri Lanka. However, almost as soon as the IPKF forces landed they themselves became embroiled in brutal conflict.

Valvettithurai, or VVT, is a small coastal town in northern Sri Lanka. Over three traumatic days in August 1989, IPKF soldiers from nearby military camps killed more than 60 people in the town, including five children under the age of 16 and one baby. People watched their loved ones and friends executed in front of them, forced to play dead in pools of blood in order to survive. Houses, shops, cinemas, vehicles, food stocks and fishing nets were set on fire in a wanton rampage of destruction and collective punishment.

from LankaFiles, March 2, 2025

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.

LankaFiles, March 2, 2025, ITJP’s “Testimonies of a Massacre” release at the Vadamarachchi Media House