Unearthed bones in Chemmani reopen the wounds of Sri Lanka’s war years and the silence that followed.
by Saikiran Kannan, Frontline, The Hindu, Chennai, September 1, 2025
The skeletal remains of a school girl unearthed recently in Chemmani have once again reopened the wounds of the past. | Photo Credit: Kumanan Kanapathippillai
The excavators kept digging in the midday heat, when something soft-blue rose above the dusty earth: a child’s school bag, its nylon straps still looped around a tiny ribcage. It was June 29, 2025—day 4 of the second phase of excavations at a mass grave located near the Sindhubathi cemetery in Chemmani, Jaffna. The labourers, who were brought in for what was to be routine work on a new crematorium, ended up reopening the mass grave story that Sri Lanka has been trying to bury for 26 years.
The first shovel struck bone in mid-February. By the time the court-appointed archaeologist Prof. Raj Somadeva led an official dig on May 15, forensic teams were already logging evidence tags—bangles, rubber dolls, bundles of cloth—in a chain of custody overseen by the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court.
Nineteen skeletons surfaced in three weeks. After a second trench was opened in early July, the tally climbed to 65. Among them were the remains of two infants and a girl no older than five, all buried less than half a metre deep.
By August 6, a total of 147 skeletons had been identified, with 140 fully exhumed so far. After a pause, excavation resumed on August 22. According to Sri Lankan media reports, as of August 29, a total of 166 human skeletal remains had been unearthed so far.
On June 25, UN human rights chief Volker Türk stepped over the freshly exposed tibias and told reporters: “The earth here is speaking louder than any witness.” His visit made headlines that Colombo could not ignore.
Soldier’s testimony
The Chemmani story first shook the nation in 1998, when Lance Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse of the Sri Lankan Army, already convicted in the rape and murder of schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, testified that “three to four hundred” Tamils arrested during Operation Riviresa (1995-96) had been trucked to Chemmani and buried under moonlight. The allegation forced a judicial exhumation the next year; 15 bodies were found, two of which were identified as men who had “disappeared” while in Army custody. The government declared the dig complete, insisted that no other graves existed, and quietly let the indictments against seven soldiers wither in legal purgatory.
Also Read | Can Anura Kumara Dissanayake deliver on his promise of systemic change in Sri Lanka?
Amnesty International called those first findings “a positive first step toward truth,” and then watched as the file gathered dust.
Chemmani is only the latest mound in a grim archipelago. Mass graves have surfaced at Matale in 2012, Mannar in 2013 and 2018 (where 346 skeletons were unearthed from a bus terminal lot), and Kalavanchikudy in 2014—almost all uncovered by accident, almost none brought to judicial conclusion.
Rights groups see more than wartime collateral damage in these findings; they see the anatomy of a genocide. Amnesty recorded 648 enforced disappearances in Jaffna alone in the single year when the Army reclaimed the peninsula. In the final months of the civil war at Mullivaikkal, at least 40,000 civilians were killed, the UN says, but Tamil organisations claim the real number is much higher.
Additionally, the excavations have given rise to more analysis on the modus operandi. The bodies, dumped in clustered pits less than 60 centimetres deep, bear the hallmarks of hurried burials designed to obliterate evidence. Further soil disturbances visible nearby led the Magistrate on July 9 to designate an expanded second forensic zone, signalling additional grim discoveries.
On-the-ground problems
Under the 2016 statute that created it, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) can observe any mass grave inquiry, mediate funds, and help identify victims. The OMP says that 14 sites nationwide are under review. Stressing that Chemmani must be read by historians, criminologists, geneticists, and archaeologists together, former Commissioner Mirak Raheem said: “If we silo the evidence, we end up with contradictory reports and no names for the dead.” He warned that Sri Lanka still lacked a national DNA bank and laboratories capable of extracting profiles from highly degraded bone.
The National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, which came to power in November 2024, won a landslide victory in the Tamil-majority northern and eastern regions on promises to end impunity. Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has insisted that the new order has “complete political will”, noting that his party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), “suffered the same” disappearances in the south during the 1980s. Citing the LKR11.7 million already released for Chemmani, he said that “money is not an issue”.
Yet, the symbolism falters. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has not travelled north. His Justice Minister has dismissed calls to investigate other suspected graves on mere “hearsay”.
Work was paused for two weeks in early July—officially to regroup resources—and resumed on July 21, fuelling local suspicion that political heat, not logistics, caused the delay.
Government indifference
Summing up the mood, Groundviews, an independent civic media platform, said: “The very ground where the bones of the disappeared emerge is met with official indifference—a betrayal, not neutrality.”
Even a sympathetic editorial in the Daily Mirror newspaper warned that “time is running out for a government elected on truth and reconciliation”, and urged an immediate invitation to international forensic specialists.
Officials and excavating personnel at the site of the mass graves. More than 150 bodies have been unearthed this year. | Photo Credit: Kumanan Kanapathippillai
In an interview to this writer, human rights advocate Ambika Satkunanathan stressed that Chemmani must be handled as a multi-stage process whose integrity depends on independence and transparency at each stage.
She said: “An investigation into a mass grave consists of many stages. At Chemmani, we are at the initial stage where the remains of persons are being exhumed. This is taking place under judicial oversight and the Office on Missing Persons is observing the process. Following exhumation, the identities of the persons will have to be ascertained, an investigation conducted to identify the perpetrators and gather evidence, and indictments will have to be filed in the long haul to justice.”
She added that the institutions responsible for each stage must be insulated from interference and must communicate clearly with the public.
‘Need for openness’
According to Satkunanathan, credibility now hinges on openness and outside expertise. “During the exhumation process, the government can enlist international experts, such as forensic anthropologists, to assist. At the very least the government should allow international expert observers. In some South American countries, such as Brazil and El Salvador, judicial authorities have even allowed exhumation by international teams.” Families that wish to observe the process should be able to do so “in a methodical and orderly manner”. Instead of being antagonistic to civil society scrutiny, the authorities must issue regular public updates, which would help identify gaps early and build trust, she said.
She also noted that site security must cover both tampering and weather. There were initial concerns about inadequate closed circuit television, which were “later rectified”, but “concerns remain regarding securing the site from the elements”.
The hardest work, she cautioned, lies ahead: it involves identification and prosecution. “Identifying the victims, which involves forensic testing, including DNA testing, is a resource-intensive process, which at present Sri Lanka does not have the capacity to undertake… a separate DNA lab will have to be established to build a DNA bank and conduct testing since the current capacity is severely limited and has contributed to delayed legal proceedings and a backlog of cases.”
Tamils’ trust deficit
Beyond resourcing, there is a legitimacy gap. She said: “There is a general lack of public faith in existing institutions such as the police and the Attorney-General’s Department due to their lack of independence and decades of politicisation… Since the police and security agencies have for several years used investigations into enforced disappearances as an excuse to harass and intimidate families of the disappeared… families will, not surprisingly, be reluctant to undergo the traumatic process of being interrogated yet again.”
This was seen on August 5, when the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) displayed recovered artefacts for identification. “Many families did not visit the site due to the presence of the police and security agencies.”
Tamil women hold portraits of their missing relatives during a protest demanding justice for the missed ones near the Chemmani mass graves in the former war zone of Jaffna on July 26, 2025. Thousands of minority Tamils are still reported missing 16 years after the end of Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatist war. | Photo Credit: AFP
On intimidation and testimony, Satkunanathan is blunt: the security apparatus needs reform and immediate restraint. “The government must issue instructions to the security agencies to stop the constant surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of families of the disappeared, civil society organisations, and journalists. Any violation of this should result in serious consequences.”
Sri Lanka’s current victim-and-witness-protection regime, she adds, is “dismal… flawed… lacking independence, funding and personnel”, with protection too often delivered by the police—the very institution frequently accused of abuse—leaving soldier-insiders especially reluctant to testify.
On legal characterisation, she said: “In Sri Lanka, none of the exhumations of mass graves have resulted in a credible investigation that has led to the compilation of adequate evidence to construct a case for prosecution… At Chemmani, the exhumation is ongoing.”
She also noted that enforced disappearance sits squarely within crimes against humanity in international law. Article 7(1)(i) of the Rome Statute and the Enforced Disappearances Convention recognise that in “certain circumstances” it can be a crime against humanity, and may amount to war crimes if committed during armed conflict; it can also, in concert with other acts, be part of genocide.
Harassment of photojournalist
The dig is being chronicled daily, but documenting Chemmani now comes with a cost. On August 7, Tamil photojournalist Kumanan Kanapathippillai received summons from the Police Counter-Terrorism and Investigation Division (CTID), Mullaitivu sub-office, for an enquiry on his social media reporting. He lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) Jaffna the same day; on August 13, CTID wrote to the HRC citing military intelligence allegations that his posts “cause disrepute to the military”, create “misconceptions” about Army-occupied land and Buddhist shrines, and spread “false information” and “fabricated photographs”.
Kumanan has been at the gravesite every day, supplying pictures and updates since the first trench was opened. He has been in regular touch with this writer and shared his images from the site.
Eight international organisations—namely Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Press Institute (IPI), International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Front Line Defenders, Free Press Unlimited, CIVICUS, and FORUM-ASIA—issued a joint statement condemning the summons as intimidation, urging its withdrawal, and called on authorities to ensure a safe environment for journalists and end the misuse of counter-terror laws against reporters in the north and the east. They also urged the UN Human Rights Council to maintain strong monitoring of Sri Lanka’s accountability record.
Senthilvel Sothiladchumi, an ethnic Sri Lankan Tamil whose son went missing during the Sri Lankan civil war, cries as she leaves the site of a mass grave where authorities exhibited unearthed belongings in an effort to secure the identities of the victims, in Chemmani, Sri Lanka, August 5, 2025. | Photo Credit: ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
The summons to Kumanan illustrates precisely the climate of surveillance and pressure Satkunanathan warns about; when the press is silenced, especially the Tamil media, so is public oversight of a mass grave investigation.
Prof. Somadeva’s team works against an unforgiving clock. Chain of custody protocols are stricter now than in 1999 as artefacts are video logged, sealed, and stored thanks to the court order, but international observers still warn of underfunding and political interference. The larger worry—exposure to the elements—persists as the high water-table seeps into open trenches.
Amnesty International has urged Colombo to call in the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), whose work at Mannar in 2013 and 2018 set gold standards for conflict grave investigations.
Witness security is another fracture line. Somaratne Rajapakse remains on death row, and other potential whistleblowers, some long out of uniform, fear retaliation. According to legal experts, without a credible protection scheme, the testimony trail could vanish faster than DNA in tropical soil.
The trauma of waiting
The mothers came first, decades ago, lining Jaffna’s Kandy Road on the 11th of every month with fading portrait prints and plastic folders of court affidavits. Many will tell you they have spent half their lives in queues: outside morgues, registrar offices, Army camps, now behind police tape at Sindhubathi. When the blue school bag appeared, they rushed forward, convinced the initials on its fabric might match a missing child’s name embossed in an old exercise book at home. For them, the dig is not archaeology; it is the final chapter of a story that began with a knock on the door.
Their trauma, psychologists said, is cyclic: each bone is both vindication and reopened wound, and every pause in the excavation, as happens when budget requests idle in Colombo, often feels like the state is burying their children a second time. Those fears are not abstract. The fact that many families stayed away when the CID displayed the recovered artefacts is a measure of how deep the trust deficit runs.
Also Read | Is Sri Lanka witnessing a shift in its ethnic politics?
Chemmani’s sand has ruptured Sri Lanka’s narrative of post-war normalcy before, and it is doing so again, with a child’s school bag and more than a hundred bodies that contradict every official assurance of the past quarter century. The excavation could become the cornerstone of a genuine reckoning: a merged High Court case combining 1999 and 2025 evidence, a hybrid forensic panel, reparations and public memorials, perhaps even the first convictions for wartime disappearances.
It will also require credible witness protection and explicit guarantees of press freedom, so that neither families nor journalists are punished for telling the truth, and insiders with knowledge of Chemmani feel safe to testify.
Or it could follow the well-worn path of denial, delays, procedural labyrinths, and political amnesia; all this until the pits are filled in, the police tape removed, and the mothers left to watch new weeds grow where their children once lay, as this gets logged as yet another timeline update on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
At the edge of the trench, water has begun to seep through the sand, darkening the soil around the bones. A local resident this writer spoke to was worried that if the rains came early, the site could flood within days. The metaphor is too stark to miss: history is rising to the surface faster than the state’s willingness to face it. What Sri Lanka does next—listen to the earth or hastily cover it again—will decide whether the island’s future stands on truth or sinks further into silence.
Saikiran Kannan is an independent journalist covering counterterrorism, conflicts, global affairs, and data journalism. He is based out of the ASEAN region and tweets from https://x.com/saikirankannan.