Colombo sabotages DNA testing

Colombo sabotages DNA testing on skeletal remains from mass graves

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 December 2013, 17:29 GMT]
A new site of a mass grave was located this week in Mannaar, 75 meters from Maanthai junction towards Thirukkeatheesvaram, in an area that has been under the control of the occupying Sri Lanka Army since 1990 to the end of Vanni war. Such discoveries, which get highlighted as news stories, do not get proper investigative follow-up by the media, complain legal activists in Jaffna. Observing the pattern of systematic sabotage by the Colombo-centric Sri Lankan justice system on similar discoveries of mass graves in North in the past, Tamil lawyers say all requests for forensic examinations forwarded to Colombo by the SL courts in North and East get blocked in Colombo.

“Everything gets stopped in Colombo. There has been no single action on any request for DNA analysis on the recent discoveries of mass graves in Jaffna,” a lawyer who didn’t wish to be named told TamilNet.

There should be efforts by independent groups to send such skeletal remains outside the island for inspections in the future, the lawyers say.

A mechanism should be evolved to do this in a clandestine manner, as the Sri Lankan system would not allow it. However, the process should be credible enough to meet the standards of any future investigation on Sri Lanka at international level.

There is no use of demanding justice from a genocidal system to document the evidences, the lawyers say.

When the water supply workers were laying a pipeline along the roadside near Maanthai junction, they located two skeletal remains. Later, there were more than 10 skeletal remains found at the mass grave.

Similar graves were located in Jaffna inside the former ‘High Security Zone’ surrounding the military bases. Abducted Tamils were taken into cells operated by the SL military intelligence operatives. The victims were tortured and executed and dumped inside the abandoned wells, toilet pits or inside the bunkers dug for the purpose of doing away with the victims.

Chronology:

24.12.13  More skeletons to be exhumed from mass grave in Ma..

22.12.13  Colombo sabotages DNA testing on skeletal remains ..

Mass graves surface along bunkers in Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 October 2012, 22:21 GMT]
An official who recently visited the outskirts of Mu'l'livaaykkaal with the soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army told TamilNet this week that he had personally witnessed skeletal remains of hundreds of slain people surfacing along the few kilometers long, L-shaped bunker, running from Vadduvaakal to northwards along the land of the genocidal onslaught. A vast area is still not cleared and is strictly prohibited from access to anyone except SL military officials. “There are booby traps and UXOs. Rotten automatic rifles and RPG ammunitions are lying around in the area. When I walked across a bunker, I was able to sense that it was a bunker of mass slaughter. As the bodies buried underneath have rotten, the soil was going under as we walked across,” he said. Meanwhile, some other mass graves show the use of chemicals that have burnt even the bones to become ashes, journalists report.

Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

The kilometers-long bunker, which was the last Forward Defence Line position dug by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, was one of the major locations where the genocidal SL military slaughtered thousands of severely wounded cadres and civilians in the final days of the onslaught.

A large number of blindfolded youth, who were filtered away from the people as they crossed the Vadduvaakal Bridge, were taken here after stripping off their clothes and blindfolding them. It is believed that they were photographed here, before the massacre in cold-blood, the official said.

The remains, found inside the bunkers, look as sand bags had been placed on them for cover up, the official said.

Only 21 houses, along the main road, in Ve'l'laam-mu'l'livaaykkaal have been allowed for resettlement and these houses are situated along the road. Even here, one could still witness skeletal remains spread throughout the area, he said providing some of the photographs he had managed to take in the outskirts of the genocidal land.

“Despite the SL military bulldozing and removing the traces, there are still hundreds of skeletal remains scattered all around the lands,” he said adding that the scale of mass slaughter was beyond imagination.

“I knew it was horrible. But, I could sense the mass scale of the slaughter only when I walked through the mass graves,” he said.

Meanwhile, journalists who visited Aananthapuram, adjacent to Mu’l’livaaykkaal, report of seeing mass graves that show evidences for the use of chemicals in burning the dead bodies. Even bones have been burnt to the extent that they become ashes at touch. A kind of chemical sheet was used to cremate the bodies, say journalists who visited the site recently.

Photos managed to be taken inside and at the outskirts of the genocidal land show only a tip of the iceberg:

A skull surfacing from a mass grave. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

Another skull surfaces. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

An assault rifle and fragments of skull coming out at a scratch of the earth in a mass burial area. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

A scattered skull at the mass burial ground. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

SL military personnel manning a post collected bones in the vicinity. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

Rotten pieces of rifles and shells. Mu'l'livaaykkaal bunker area.

A brought-down building at Aananthapuram under which mass cremations are found.

Mass cremations found under the building at Aananthapuram.

Some of the remains of cremations found at Aananthapuram.

‘The siblings’ [TamilNet cartoon]

Sri Lanka exclusion zone likely contains mass graves: British MEP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 December 2011, 15:41 GMT]
Richard Howitt, a British Member of European Parliament (MEP), after leading a delegation socialist MEPs to Sri Lanka where they were allowed to visit to the edge of the demarcated Exclusion zone, said "he believes there are many bodies of dead civilians buried in exclusion zones where the final fighting of the civil war took place in 2009," BBC reported. Howitt said that there should be full access to the exclusion zone.

Richard Howitt MEP

“What everyone says is that it’s because [it is] literally where the bodies are buried, and that if people with forensic skills go in and investigations start, then the true horrors of what happened in those final days with so many innocent civilians said to have been killed absolutely unnecessarily, that that would come out and that the Sri Lankans will do everything to prevent that” BBC quoted MEP Richard Howitt as saying.

According to Mark Skinner, a well known author, a mass grave contains at least half a dozen individuals, while Mant, another domain expert on genocide is more modest regarding numbers: two or more bodies in contact with each other suffice to define a mass grave.

Government of Sri Lanka spokesperson, Minister Rambukwella, responded to the allegation, saying “[t]here had been no landmine deaths since the end of the war and it would be risky to send people into those zones.”

• HR investigation of Mass Graves

• Forensic Archaeology and Genocide

Spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, said "while satellite images and witness accounts indicate nearly 80,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed by Colombo, the accurate figures will remain not fully answered until high technology methods to discover bodies underneath newly constructed military and other structures, and inside deeply dug mass-graves, are made possible through an international investigation unobstructed by Colombo-engineered local obstacles. Newer hand-held spectroscopic technologies are available to forensic anthropologists that will detect concentration of calcium, phosphorus, sodium, and zinc, a chemical signature indicating presence of mass graves even decades after the killing. Sri Lanka will not get away with its short term theatrics to prevent full accountability for its mass atrocity crimes," TAG's spokes person added.

Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Callum Macrae, Malinda Seneviratne, Editor-in-Chief of Sri Lanka's The Nation, and Bob Templer of the International Crisis Group participated in a discussion at the Asia Society on Sri Lanka's Civil war, on 6th December. The discussion was moderated by Tunku Varadarajan, editor of Newsweek International.

External Links:

BBC:		Dead bodies in exclusion zone - British MEP
AS:		Sri Lanka war discussion at Asia Society
ICP:		At UN, Pillay Says Deferring Sri Lanka Visit Until LLRC Report, Won't Count Deaths
AS:		What Are Asian Nations Saying About Sri Lanka’s Conflict?