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 The police have suggested that the Tamil Tiger rebels it defeated
five years ago could be responsible for the burial, uncovered near a
historic Hindu temple in the district of Mannar.
Sri Lanka is already under international pressure to address alleged
wartime human rights violations. A failure to probe the discovery
could fuel the anger of Western nations demanding an independent
international investigation into suspected abuses.
The remains, which workers stumbled on as they dug up roadside
paving for a water project, are yet to be identified. The first mass
grave to be found in the former war zone, it is spread over an area
measuring about 400 square feet (37 square meters) and is 5 feet
deep.
"The bodies are buried in several layers. Unfortunately, the top
layer of the bodies have been destroyed by the road construction
work," said Dhanajaya Waidyaratne, the Judicial Medical Officer in
charge of the excavation.
More than 100,000 people were killed in the war between the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government military
since it started in 1983 and thousands, mainly ethnic- minority
Tamils, are still unaccounted for or missing.
A U.N. panel has said around 40,000 mainly Tamil civilians died in
the ferocious final months of the conflict, but Sri Lanka has
disputed that figure. Both sides committed atrocities, but army
shelling killed most victims, it concluded.
Police Spokesman Ajith Rohana said initial forensic evidence
suggested the bodies may have been buried at least 15 years ago.
"This area was controlled by the LTTE for over 20 years and there
are reports that hundreds of soldiers went missing in this area. But
we don't know for sure. The investigations are continuing," Rohana
told Reuters.
THOUSANDS MORE
Residents and a religious leader in Mannar say, however, that the
area was controlled mainly by the army from 1990.
"This grave has grown-up people and children, and there are some
holes in the skulls believed to be from gunshots," the Catholic
Bishop of Mannar, Rayappu Joseph, who went to inspect the mass grave
and the skeletons, told Reuters.
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"We don't know who killed these people. This is an area that was
held by army for a long time. Wherever there has been LTTE or army
camps, we must dig."
A top military official denied that the area was under army control
during the war. "The area changed hands between the LTTE, the Indian
Peacekeeping Force and army over time," he said, declining to be
named.
The former political proxy of the Tigers, the Tamil National
Alliance (TNA), which was voted to power in northern provincial
polls last September, said the mass grave was the tip of an iceberg
and there must be many more.
"The loss of lives, according to us, is between 75,000 to 150,000.
Where are those remains?" TNA legislator M.A. Sumanthiran told
Reuters. "They must be somewhere. If they were put into incinerators
and destroyed, we don't know. But we don't think more than 100,000
would have been dealt with like that."
Last year, Sri Lanka set up a presidential commission to investigate
a mass grave with remains of more than 150 people in a central
province. The evidence was sent to China for forensic investigations
and so far there has been no conclusion.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said it may be true
that the LTTE was responsible for the latest find.
"Unless there is real transparency in the forensic investigation,
we'll never be sure," he said in an emailed comment. "But we know
they won't want to open a Pandora's Box that would incriminate many
senior figures."
(Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal in Colombo;
editing by Ron Popeski)
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