A Sri Lankan Tamil woman reacts as she takes part in a ceremony at Mullaivaukkal on the outskirts of Jaffna. — AFP photos
MULLAITTIVU, Sri Lanka: Still reeling from the Easter terror attacks, Sri Lanka commemorates this weekend 10 years since the end of a bloody civil war that killed at least 100,000 people, from which the scars are still not healed.
Security was tight in the north of the island, home to Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils, ahead of solemn ceremonies.
Sri Lanka’s government and top military brass were due to hold their own commemoration in Colombo on Sunday.
On May 18, 2009 government forces brought their no-holds-barred military offensive to an end at a lagoon in the northern coastal district of Mullaittivu with the killing of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers.
A Sri Lankan trooper stops a vehicle for security check during a road block in the district of Mullaittivu.
Sri Lanka’s then-president Mahinda Rajapakse declared an end to the 37-year separatist conflict – marked by massacres, suicide bombings and assassinations – between Tamil militants and the central government, which is dominated by the majority Sinhalese.
But for thousands of war widows and other victims on both sides, this marked the start of a new struggle: to find out the fate of their loved ones.
About 20,000 people are still missing, including 5,000 government troops.
Nagaraja Sureshamma, 65, who lost one son and is still looking for the other, recalled the horrors of the final months and how civilians scrambled to escape indiscriminate attacks and shelling.
“We were all going together, but my son happened to go on a different route… Ever since, we have not been able to find him,” Sureshamma said.
Sri Lankan forces have been accused of killing about 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the war, a charge successive governments have denied.
Several mass graves containing skeletal remains have been found in the past two decades, but only a handful of those buried have ever been formally identified.
Until recently, even remembering the war dead was considered subversive and annual memorial services by Tamils were trashed by government forces.
Government forces have set up memorials in the north for fallen security forces and bulldozed Tiger cemeteries, obliterating any sign of the rebels who at their zenith controlled a third of Sri Lanka.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a recent report that the new government’s promised political reforms and accountability for wartime atrocities have failed to materialise.
“For many Sri Lankans living in the bitterly contested north and east, the war has never quite ended,” it said. — AFP