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  INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA
The Charge is Ethnic Cleansing
EXTRA JUDICIAL KILLINGS AND
TORTURE OF TAMILS - 1984
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[see also The Chunnakam Massacre - Nadesan
Satyendra - "The murder of Tamil civilians
in March 1984, in the busy market town of
Chunnakam, in the Jaffna peninsula, by
personnel of the Sri Lanka air force was an
open and blatant violation of the humanitarian
law of armed conflict. The attempted cover up
by the newly appointed Sinhala Sri Lanka
National Security Minister and ex Oxford Union
President, Lalith Athulathmudali showed the
complicity of a government which had blood on
its hands."]
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 "Amnesty
International was concerned about reports of random
killings of non combatant Tamil civilians by members of
the security forces. It also remained concerned about the
detention of Tamils... it continued to receive reports of
widespread torture of detainees. Several reports of
deaths in custody, allegedly as a result of torture or
shooting were received..." - Amnesty International
Annual Report, 1985 for period January to December
1984
"Most of the dead are admitted to have been passers
by, shot at random by vengeful infantrymen. They
reportedly included men and women in their sixties...when
the security services cannot find known suspects, they
detain their fathers or brothers.." - Guardian 17
April 1984
"..In the past two months at least 100 Tamils in the
northern province of Jaffna have been killed by
security forces. The official explanation is that these
people were all 'terrorists', but this is contradicted
by the accounts of every independent observer who has
visited Jaffna.
One typically disturbing incident occurred on the 28th
of March, when air force personnel opened fire in the
market place at Chunnakkam, a town about 8 miles
outside Jaffna. Eight Tamils were shot dead and 22
others were wounded...
If the victims were really terrorists, one
might expect that fact to come out at the inquest into
the deaths. However no inquest will be held into the
killings in Chunnakkam market place, nor into any of
the other recent deaths of Tamil civilians. This is
because of a rule called Emergency Regulation 15A which
was introduced last June and which allows the security
to dispose of any dead body as they see fit, without
post mortem or inquest
The International Commission of Jurists (in their
report of March 1984) is particularly scathing about
Regulation 15A arguing that it is bound to be regarded
as a 'deliberate device for covering up murder'. But
President Jayawardene will not repeal it; rather, he
and his new Minister of National Security, Lalith
Athulathmudali, actually intend to strengthen the
emergency rules. One of the new rules would effectively
do way with the right of habeas corpus, which according
to an official spokesman ' the Government considers as
an unnecessary exercise.' - Francis Whelan, London
Times 7 May 1984
"In respect of the killings on 28 March 1984,
Amnesty International has concluded that there is strong
evidence that the seven people shot dead in Chunnakam and
the one man later shot dead at Mallakam died as a result
of deliberate random shootings by airforce personnel"
- Amnesty International Report, June 1984
" The crimes committed by the Sri Lankan State against
the Tamil minority - against its physical security,
citizenship rights, and political representation - are of
growing gravity for the international community.
Other countries across the world, which have had to
shelter the thousands of Tamil refugees who have fled and
are still fleeing the island, must increasingly bear the
cost of the denial of the fundamental political rights of
the Tamils of Sri Lanka...
Report after report by impartial bodies - by Amnesty
International, by the International Commission of
Jurists, by parliamentary delegates from the West, by
journalists and scholars - have set out clearly the scale
of the growing degeneration of the political and physical
well being of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka...
...everyone who possesses an elementary sense of
justice has no moral choice but to acquaint himself fully
with the plight of the Tamil people. It is an
international issue of growing importance. Their cause
represents the very essence of the cause of human rights
and justice; and to deny it, debases and reduces us
all." - David Selbourne, Ruskin College, Oxford in
New York, July 1984
"Despite denials by the government there... is
credible evidence that the Sri Lanka security forces have
repeatedly engaged in reprisals against civilian
population centres in the northern province, burning
houses and shops and randomly shooting civilians because
of attacks by Tamil guerillas." - International Herald
Tribune, 14 August 1984
"I left Sri Lanka most concerned that the terrible
breaches of human rights of 1983 could well be repeated.
Sri Lanka managed to stave off a United Nations
investigation of the July 1983 violence by promises that
have not been kept and other democratic nations
should bring pressure to avoid the further outbreaks of
communal hatreds that threaten and that will lead to
further destruction of human rights" - Senator
A.L.Missen, Chairman, Australian Parliamentary Group of
Amnesty International, Report on visit to Sri Lanka,
June-August 1984
"Army authorities conducting operations (in August
1984), asked the local population to produce male teen
agers, undertaking that they would be questioned and
immediately released after checking their identity.
The children were arrested, tortured and transported
like cattle by lorries with barbed wire to unknown
prisons in the South.
Only 32 of the younger children were released. Not even
the government agent has been informed where the children
are being kept... More recently, on the 12th and the 13th
of August, security forces set fire to the town of Mannar
and near by towns in retaliation for a bomb blast some 40
miles away in an uninhabited area. More than 3000 are
said to have lost their homes and the soldiers, according
to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Mannar, rampaged through
the town..." - M.C.Bandare, Indian Expert at Sessions
of the UN Sub Commission on Protection of Minorities,
Geneva 21 August 1984
"...Yes, I believe Amnesty International's conclusions
that there have been extra judicial killings in Sri
Lanka; that the government's anti terrorism laws are
brutal, repressive and inherently anti democratic;
and yes, I believe that the process of disenfranchising
anyone who believes in a potential solution that is not
consistent with the majority view is completely anti
democratic...
The United States cannot simply write off murder and
systematic discrimination as an 'internal matter' when
the country happens to be non aligned and is willing to
say nice things about our country. We should be putting
pressure on President Jayawardene to move to resolve the
terrible, terrible divisions within his country...We must
let the Sri Lanka government know that we will not
tolerate a government that is in any way complicit in the
killing of its own citizens." - Councilman Noach Dear
of the Council of the City of New York, at Congressional
Hearings, August 1984
''Sri Lankan forces are conducting a harsh and
remorseless campaign of intimidation among the islands'
Tamil minority. By means of random murder, indiscriminate
shootings, beatings, torture and plunder, ill disciplined
and trigger happy soldiers keep the Tamils in the North
in a state of constant fear...
Many thousands of people, mostly women and children,
have fled to India and to Europe. Thousands of youths
have been rounded up and held in Army camps. Their
parents do not know where they are: they have become Sri
Lanka's disappeared ones... The army's rampages,
massacres and brutality have swung even moderate Tamil
opinion against the authorities..
There is strong evidence of beating, torture and
murder of young men in Army custody... Troops have been
looting and burning houses. Many women have complained of
being robbed of jewellery...
Military restrictions and the army's savage
response have almost shut down the economy of this
region...The Bishop of Jaffna said:' People live in
fright and despair. They feel helpless. There is no
equality or democracy left here anymore.' ...It is a part
of the Sri Lankan tragedy that the government has come to
define the long smouldering Tamil question as simply one
of terrorist eradication. Sinhalese antipathy to Tamils,
rooted in ancient fears of conquest has been stirred
up.
With emotions running high, the conflict has its
strong element of propaganda and disinformation. The
government's case is that it is acting firmly against a
terrorist threat to the country's integrity. But the
Tamils, who form a fifth of the population, believe that
the army is being used to subjugate them and to settle
historic scores." - Trevor Fishlock, London Times,
31 December 1984
"Allegations have recently reached Amnesty
International of widespread killings in the Mannar area
on 4 December 1984 by personnel of the security forces
apparently in reprisal for the killing of a soldier when
a landmine exploded...the scale of these killings is
unprecedented. It is alleged that at least ninety unarmed
civilians, nearly all Tamils, many of them old men,
women, and children, were shot dead..." - Amnesty
International Report on Sri Lanka, 9 January 1985
"The Mannar massacre is a case in point. On 4
December 1984, a vehicle carrying an army patrol was
blown up by a mine on the road leading through the jungle
to the small northern town. One soldier was killed and 11
wounded.
In the carnage that followed, troops poured out of
their camps and according to the townspeople, killed more
than 100 civilians. One group stopped a bus... and then
shot all the ... male passengers... Another twenty died
when the same treatment was meted out to a busload of
passengers travelling in the opposite direction.
Off the main road, an army jeep drove into the
village of Parappankadal. The soldiers fired
indiscriminately, killing 12 of people including a mother
nursing her infant child. The child survived though three
toes were blow away by the bullet that killed its
mother." (Michael Hamlyn reporting in the London
Times, 18 February 1985)
" Who is a terrorist? Is he the person who uses a gun?
Or is he also not a terrorist who accompanies a terrorist
with a gun? Is he not also a terrorist who gives a house
to a person who has a gun and who wants to kill? Is he
also not a terrorist who watches the movement of the army
and then goes and tells a terrorist: do not go that way,
the army is around?" - Sri Lanka National Security
Minister Lalith Athulathmudali in Sri Lanka Parliament,
December 1984
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