A retired Sri Lankan army general, allegedly responsible for mass extrajudicial killings of Tamil civilians found in the Chemmani mass graves in the North-East of Sri Lanka, is expected to come under pressure to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity in South Africa.
South African activists and lawyers, using a recent constitutional court affirmation extending South Africa’s universal jurisdiction laws to "ensure that perpetrators of international crimes committed by foreign nationals" are held accountable, are likely to push for the arrest and trial of Srilal Weerassoriya, who reportedly arrived in South Africa to attend a Military Christian Fellowship conference on Sunday.
The move comes after activists and lawyers worked on a 2 year informal fact-finding mission to document the Sri Lankan army general’s involvement in extrajudicial killings in the North-East during the 1990’s which have been linked to several mass graves found in the region.
South African activists and lawyers, using a recent constitutional court affirmation extending South Africa’s universal jurisdiction laws to "ensure that perpetrators of international crimes committed by foreign nationals" are held accountable, are likely to push for the arrest and trial of Srilal Weerassoriya, who reportedly arrived in South Africa to attend a Military Christian Fellowship conference on Sunday.
The move comes after activists and lawyers worked on a 2 year informal fact-finding mission to document the Sri Lankan army general’s involvement in extrajudicial killings in the North-East during the 1990’s which have been linked to several mass graves found in the region.
The Chenmai mass graves were first discovered after a Sri Lankan soldier, charged of raping and murdering a Tamil teenager in July 1998, revealed the whereabouts of a mass grave site where he had been tasked with burying over 400 bodies.
The US State department noted, that the Sri Lankan soldier Somaratne Rajapakse, revealed that he had buried dead bodies in Jaffna.
“There are 300 to 400 bodies in this land, almost every evening, dead bodies were brought there and the soldiers were asked to bury them," Rajapakse reportedly said.The previous year, Amnesty International reported that over 600 people in Jaffna had disappeared between 1996-1997, stating “Nearly all of them are likely to have died under torture or been deliberately killed in Sri Lankan military custody.” Amidst government attempts to block access to mass graves from local human rights commissions and foreign experts, Amnesty International made a statement urging the government to allow foreign experts to gather evidence from the mass graves.
The Amnesty statement read,
"Amnesty International today appealed to the Attorney General of Sri Lanka to allow the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRC) to jointly carry out preliminary investigations of the site at Chemmani, Jaffna with the help of leading forensic experts in the country. Chemmani is alleged to be a place where scores of bodies of people who "disappeared" in mid-1996 have been clandestinely buried”
Over 12 months after the discovery of the graves, the Sri Lankan government, in press release citing a domestic investigation, announced,
“experts investigating into the alleged mass graves at Chemmani in Jaffna have reached a unanimous decision that there are no such graves”
Despite government claims that graves didn’t exist, further investigations by foreign experts continued to identify bodies in 2000, resulting in arrest warrants being made by Sri Lankan courts for 7 soldiers linked to the mass graves. The soldiers were released on bail and the official status of the case was described as “pending” by a US state department report in 2006.
The Sri Lankan Military General Sri Lal Weerassoriya, was the chief of staff of the army in Jaffna during the period of the disappearances and discovery of the Chenmai mass graves.