-By A Special Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -01.July.2025, 8.30 PM) Some truths cannot be suppressed forever. They rise — not through tribunals, not through thunderous speeches — but slowly, inexorably, through the cracks of time, through earth that refuses to be silent. And so, once again, Chemmani speaks. But as the bones of the disappeared cry out for justice, others speak louder — not in mourning or solemnity, but in calculated, convenient outrage.
M.A. Sumanthiran, unelected MP, lawyer, and torchbearer of a tired Tamil political class, has emerged from the shadows with a familiar playbook. With dramatic fervour and high-decibel indignation, he now declares the resumption of Chemmani excavations a national disgrace. His voice, amplified by cameras and clipped hashtags, calls for international tribunals and criminal responsibility. It is a worthy demand. But for many in the north, it is also too little, too late — and, worst of all, politically too convenient.
The Chemmani graves are not new. The story is not new. The outrage is not new. What is new, however, is the political mileage sought from it — now, conveniently, months before a possible general election and amidst a collapsing Tamil political credibility.
In June 2025, after years of silence and state inaction, court-ordered excavations at the Chemmani mass grave site unearthed 19 human skeletons — including three children, one less than a year old. The images — haunting, irrefutable — pierced the national conscience. But even before forensic confirmation, before identification, before mourning could begin, Sumanthiran arrived. Not at the graves, but at the microphones. He spoke, not as a human rights advocate, but as a politician searching for a lifeline in the political wilderness.
Chemmani is not an opportunistic press conference. It is a cemetery. Yet for Sumanthiran and sections of Tamil nationalist politicians, it has become just another bullet point in a career CV of courtroom battles, international lobbying, and performative grief.
In 1998, Sri Lanka was reeling from the grotesque rape and murder of 18-year-old Krishanthi Kumaraswamy — a Tamil schoolgirl stopped at an army checkpoint near Kondavil. Her mother, brother, and neighbour who went looking for her were all found dead, mutilated and discarded. In the courtroom that followed, the accused soldiers unveiled a greater horror. One soldier, Somaratne Rajapakse, confessed that the disappearances of 300 to 400 Tamil civilians after the military’s Jaffna offensive in 1995–1996 were not coincidental. They had been executed and buried in Chemmani.
This admission, under oath, should have triggered a national reckoning. Instead, it triggered a sluggish, reluctant excavation in 1999. Fifteen bodies were exhumed. Two were identified. Seven soldiers were charged. But as ever in Sri Lanka, justice trickled down to a drip. No senior military official was questioned. No systemic command chain was investigated. By 2006, Chemmani had faded into the obscurity of bureaucratic delay and political discomfort.
And Tamil politicians? They held vigils, filed statements, and moved on. Chemmani became a memorial of inaction, an emblem of a war too dangerous to confront and too useful to manipulate.
M.A. Sumanthiran is many things — an articulate orator, an international rights advocate, a savvy constitutional lawyer. But he is also a politician in need of relevance.
Having lost his parliamentary seat in 2025, Sumanthiran remains a floating figure — unelected, unauthorised by popular mandate, yet constantly present in Colombo's NGO circles and Geneva corridors. His activism, admirable as it may seem on paper, often carries the acrid smell of selective engagement. His courtroom battles against PTA abuses or militarisation are commendable. But where was this fervour when the Chemmani files sat dust-covered in government archives for over a decade?
When Mannar’s Sacred Heart Church mass grave yielded over 340 skeletons in 2018 — including children — there were no legal challenges filed by Sumanthiran demanding independent commissions. When witnesses to the Mirusuvil massacre disappeared from public discourse, there was no public outrage from him. His activism, critics say, is curated — timely when international attention peaks, and dormant when political cost outweighs value.
As one human rights activist in Jaffna told Lankaenews, “He turns up when it’s safe to do so. When the cameras arrive, not before.”
Sumanthiran is not alone in this opportunism. Tamil politics, especially post-war, has repeatedly walked a fine line between advocacy and exploitation. The image of grieving mothers, of bone fragments lifted from blood-soaked soil — these have been wielded not just as calls for justice, but as ammunition in political feuds.
Every election season, the disappeared reappear — in posters, rallies, manifestos. But between elections? Their voices fade into the northern wind. Political parties issue statements. Yet few take meaningful legal action. Few engage with the exhumation processes. And fewer still consult with victim families before declaring their truths in public forums.
This performative mourning, critics argue, has hollowed the very concept of justice. “We’re tired of seeing our pain turned into political theatre,” said Gowri Maheswaran, whose husband disappeared in 1996 near Chemmani. “They come, they shout, they leave. But our dead are still under the soil.”
To understand Chemmani in isolation is to miss the pattern. From Mannar to Mullaitivu, Sri Lanka’s soil is a mosaic of unmarked graves. In Mirusuvil, a rare conviction was handed down to a staff sergeant in 2015, 15 years after the murder of eight Tamil civilians. In Mannar, 346 bodies were unearthed in 2018 — one of the largest mass graves in Asia in recent decades. In Murakkoddanchenai and Kokkuthoduvai, skeletal remains were hastily dismissed as “ancient” without scientific analysis.
In each case, the themes remain consistent: delay, denial, erasure.
Tamil politicians, meanwhile, use these tragedies to extract political currency with foreign governments, UN bodies, and diaspora donors — but rarely initiate sustained, community-led truth-seeking.
For example, the absence of local forensic experts and proper chain-of-custody documentation in Chemmani's second phase of excavations has barely been addressed. Why has the Tamil legal community, including Sumanthiran, not filed motions demanding independent oversight? Why no public pressure campaigns for international forensic collaboration? Why no lawsuits against government institutions that delayed testing from 1999 to 2025?
The Sri Lankan state bears ultimate responsibility for these atrocities. The military’s impunity, successive governments’ denialism, and a bureaucracy paralysed by politics have all ensured that the dead remain nameless. The state’s forensic units are under-resourced, politicised, and often pressured to close cases early.
But Tamil politicians do not escape scrutiny. Their failure to institutionalise victim support mechanisms, to consistently push for war crimes documentation, and to stay engaged beyond headlines has weakened the broader Tamil justice movement.
International institutions have also failed. The UNHRC’s resolutions have brought reports, not results. Investigative mechanisms have been watered down by geopolitics. The global fatigue over Sri Lanka’s war crimes is palpable. Into this vacuum walks Sumanthiran — with eloquent English, an international Rolodex, and a political brand carefully crafted around advocacy. But advocacy without community trust is just performance.
Chemmani must not be instrumentalised again. This moment — of raw truth rising from beneath — demands solemnity, structure, and sustained justice. It demands scientific rigor, judicial integrity, and above all, moral consistency.
The dead do not care for political slogans. They do not respond to press releases. They wait — in silence — for truth, for dignity, for memory.
For Tamil politicians, including Sumanthiran, the challenge now is not to speak louder. It is to act deeper. To legalise memory. To institutionalise justice. To listen to families, not just foreign funders. To ensure Chemmani becomes a sacred place of reckoning — not a photo op.
In the weeks ahead, as more remains are unearthed, Sri Lanka faces a crossroads. Will this moment, like so many before, be buried under political opportunism and state neglect? Or will it finally spark an honest national reckoning — one that embraces truth, however painful, and justice, however delayed?
Sumanthiran, for all his legal skill, must choose his legacy. Will he be remembered as a lawyer who fought for Tamil justice — or as a politician who used Tamil grief for political punctuation?
Because Chemmani will remember. The soil does not forget. And the dead, when they rise, ask questions far weightier than any election campaign can bear.
Let this be the last time a mass grave is used as a podium.
“Let justice rise from the soil.”
-By A Special Correspondent
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by (2025-07-01 15:00:45)
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