The 28th anniversary of the Suthanthirapuram massacre was commemorated on Wednesday, marking the deaths of 33 civilians who were killed in aerial bombardment and coordinated shell attacks carried out by the Sri Lankan military in Pudukkudiyiruppu, Mullaitivu, on 10 June 1998.
At least 52 others were injured in the attack.
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The remembrance event was organised by the Thayaga Ninaiventhal Amaippu (Homeland Remembrance Association) and held at a specially arranged memorial site at the Nirojan Sports Club playground.
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A woman who lost her sister in the attack lit the common flame at the start of the event. Participants subsequently paid tribute by lighting candles and laying flowers before the commemorative display. Memorial speeches were also delivered during the commemoration.
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Among those in attendance were Pudukkudiyiruppu Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman V. Karikalan, former Pradeshiya Sabha members, relatives of those who lost family members in the attack, members of the public and well-wishers, who gathered to pay their respects.
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On the morning of 10 June 1998, artillery fire rained down on Suthanthirapuram from three directions, from Mankindimalai, Ampakamam and Elephant Pass, while bombers struck from the air. Among those killed were many children and students sheltering in the area. One survivor, Pushpanathan, lost four of his five children in the attack, recalling how a shell fell on the shed his family had taken refuge in and exploded. "I saw my kids lying in a pool of blood," he said.
No one has been held accountable for the killings. The site of the massacre lies within a wider landscape of military occupation and erasure in Mullaitivu. The 593 Brigade, implicated in the shelling, later established a military camp on the grounds of the Neeraviyadi Pillaiyar Hindu temple in nearby Semmalai, and authorised the construction of a Buddhist temple on the occupied site, renaming a long-standing place of Tamil Hindu worship.
The Suthanthirapuram massacre was one of a series of attacks on Tamil civilians in Mullaitivu in the years before the final phase of the war.
Just over a year later, two Sri Lanka Air Force jets bombed a crowded marketplace in nearby Puthukkudiyiruppu on 15 September 1999, killing at least 21 civilians in an attack the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned at the time. Commemorations of these killings have themselves repeatedly been targeted. In 2020, Sri Lankan police banned the Suthanthirapuram remembrance outright, turning mourners away from the Nirojan sports ground, while in other years intelligence officers have photographed those who attended.