The Pulse | Society | South Asia

The Wheels of Justice Are Finally Moving in Sri Lanka’s Civil War-era Cases

Recent developments indicate that domestic mechanisms can confront civil war-era crimes when there is a government serious about the rule of law and good governance.

Sri Lanka has always insisted that domestic mechanisms are capable of dealing with alleged crimes that occurred during the decades of civil war in the country from 1983 to 2009. Activist groups within and outside the country were skeptical of such claims. They had long insisted that it was impossible for the Sri Lankan state to conduct an impartial investigation into these allegations, and until quite recently, the track record of such prosecutions was not promising.

However, in the past few weeks, two of Sri Lanka’s long-running conflict-era criminal cases have seen significant breakthroughs. The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial of six former soldiers acquitted over the 1996 Kumarapuram massacre, while the Attorney General indicted former Eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, also known as Pillayan, and three others over the alleged abduction and murder of a prominent academic in 2006.

Investigations into these two cases began many years ago. However, as in other cases involving powerful people that are now nearing completion, progress was slow, as the accused or their political masters retained influence over the state. Thus, despite having necessary laws, investigators, and courts theoretically capable of pursuing powerful people, political interference and protection prevented those institutions from completing their work.

Since the National People’s Power (NPP) came to power in 2024, investigators and prosecutors have made visible progress in several cases, signaling an important change in Sri Lanka’s political and legal landscape. By weakening political and institutional protection, the NPP has allowed the criminal justice system to display greater independence and determination. It indicates that Sri Lanka, under the NPP administration, can objectively investigate allegations of crimes that took place during the war.

The alleged massacre at Kumarapuram, a Tamil village in Trincomalee District, took place on February 11, 1996. After Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters killed two soldiers, Sri Lankan Army personnel entered the village and killed 24 civilians and injured 25 others, according to the indictment.

The authorities arrested several soldiers, and witnesses identified suspects during an identification parade. The case took 20 years to reach trial and an Anuradhapura High Court jury acquitted six former army corporals in July 2016 after the judge excluded documents connected to the identification parade.

The Attorney General appealed the acquittal that year. A decade later, the Court of Appeal ruled that the High Court had erred by refusing to admit these documents because they lacked an official signature and date. The appellate court ordered a retrial.

Of course, this does not mean the six former soldiers are guilty of the alleged crime or that there is new evidence against them. But the order gives prosecutors another opportunity to present the case and allows a court to consider evidence excluded from the original trial.

The fact that the Rajapaksas installed Pillayan as chief minister of the Eastern Province in itself was a damning indictment of the impunity and lawlessness of the Rajapaksa era. During his tenure as the chief minister, Pillayan was accused of a number of heinous crimes. Among them is the disappearance of Professor Sivasubramaniam Raveendranath, then vice-chancellor of Eastern University, after he attended a scientific conference in Colombo on December 15, 2006. He had previously received death threats and moved from Batticaloa to Colombo after an armed group abducted another university official and demanded Raveendranath’s resignation.

The professor disappeared from an area of Colombo with a heavy security forces presence. At the time,........

© The Diplomat