Colombo enacts farcical show in Mirusuvil

massacre case
[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 July 2015, 17:21 GMT]
As part of a concerted showdown in its campaign to transform the
Geneva-based OISL investigation discourse into a domestic
investigation, the Sri Lankan legal system was recently deployed to
demonstrate its capacity to 'investigate' what would be
described by the human rights defenders as a mass atrocity crime.
The case, in which one non-commissioned officer of the Sri Lankan
Army, Staff Sergeant Sunil Rathnayake, was sentenced to capital
punishment, was in fact a genocidal crime in which several Sinhala
soldiers, including a captain rank officer having command
responsibility, took part. The main surviving witness in the case,
who narrowly escaped the brutal massacre, had identified in 2001
the culprits, who belonged to the notorious Deep Penetration Unit,
which was trained by Colombo to commit genocidal acts.

[Tamil] Initial eyewitness report from 2001 by the sole survivor of the massacre Ponnuthurai
Maheswa
Today, the sole survivor, Maheswaran and his family, who have been
subjected to severe harassments over a decade, say they are not prepared
to come open and confront the verdict as they fear future reprisal from the
Sri Lankan military system.
However, those close to the victims remarked that it was a crime carried
out by several soldiers together, and the punished soldier was only one
among them. Despite having clear evidences on the direct involvement of
many Sinhala soldiers, all the others except Sgt Sunil Rathnayake have
been protected and even the other four soldiers indicted together with him
have been acquitted from the case by the Sri Lankan legal system.
It was not a matter of a soldier gunning down a group of people and
getting help from other soldiers to hide the massacred civilians into a toilet
pit, commented a Tamil legal source, which was directly involved in the
initial investigations conducted in Jaffna.
The eyewitness report has clearly established the nature of the crime and

the role of several Sinhala-speaking soldiers.

The Sri Lankan system appears to 'sacrifice' one soldier, not only protecting
the other soldiers and the command responsibility behind them. It has also
protected an elite hit squad, which comes under the direct command of
Colombo's military intelligence, the legal source in Jaffna told TamilNet.
The civilians were murdered while they were visiting to inspect their
abandoned houses in Mirusuvil in Thenmaraadchchi division in Jaffna
district in December 2000.

Staff sergeant Sunil Ratnayake was sentenced to death by the Colombo High Court on 25 June
2015. He was part of an elite LRRP squad. The victims, including two teenagers and a 5-yearold child, were tortured and slain on 19 December 2000 at Mirusuvil. The postmortem report
established that the throats of the victims were cut with sharp knives and their arms and legs
had been chopped off. The massacre was definitely not the work of a soldier who had gone
mad, Tamil legal sources who took part in the initial investigations in Jaffna told TamilNet.
[Photo courtesy: Wasitha Patabendege, Daily News]
Finally, after a long process, justice is delivered [...] This also shows that
we definitely have the capacity to conduct a credible investigation, the
prosecutor and Additional Solicitor General Sarath Jayamanna told Reuters
following the verdict on 25 June. The SL Military Spokesman Jayanath
Jayaweera was quick to claim that the verdict showed local legal
mechanisms were working well."
***
The Mirusuvil massacre is only one of more than 150 documented
massacres by the genocidal military of Colombo during the period of
conflict.
In September 2000, the LTTE asked the civilians to leave from SL military

controlled Kodikaamam, Mirusuvil, Kachchaay, Manthuvil, Puththoor and

Va'rani villages in Thenmaraadchi and to find safety in the Vadamaradchi
division of the peninsula.
When normalcy appeared to be returning slowly in December, the families
started to visit their houses to clear their properties after they had
presented themselves with identity at SL military checkposts.
On 19 December, a group of at least 6 Sinhala soldiers brutally tortured
and massacred 8 Eezham Tamils, including three teenagers and a 5-yearold child, when the group of 9 displaced families had gone to look after
their properties and collect firewood near their houses at Mirusuvil.
21-year-old Maheswaran Ponnuthurai, the only survivor, who had managed
to run away from the Sinhala soldiers while he was being tortured, became
the prime witness in the case.
Everyone involved in the initial investigations, except the Judge of the
Point-Pedro District Court Premshankar Annalingam and the District Medical
Officer Dr. S. Kathiravetpillai, were Sinhalese.
The mass grave where 8 victims had been buried was discovered after
initial investigations on 25 December 2000.
16 Sri Lankan soldiers, including two officers, were either arrested or
questioned on the orders of District Judge Premashankar in January 2001.
The post-mortem examinations by Dr Kathiravetpillai revealed the extent of
the massacre. All the victims were between the ages of 5 and 41, and only
two were found with their underwear on. The rest of the bodies were
naked. The skin of the 5-year-old child was peeled and his body was pink.
Throats of the bodies were cut with sharp knives and the arms and legs
were chopped off.
The victims were identified as Vilvarajah Sinniah with his two sons, 16year-old Pratheepan Vilvarajah and 5-year-old Prasath Vilvarajah,
Gnanachandran Kathiran and his son Shanthan Gnanachandran,
Theivakulasingham Sellamuthu, Jeyachchandran Nadesu and Ravivarman
Gnanapalan, who was a close friend of Maheswaran, the sole survivor.
Maheswaran, who had stated that he could identify all the 6 soldiers
involved the massacre, effectively identified 5 Sinhala soldiers including a
Lieutenant and two Lance Corporals.

The sixth person who was already absent in the identification parade was
allegedly a captain rank officer, who had been protected by the Sinhala
military and police, informed legal sources in Jaffna say.
The case was taken over by a three-member bench of the trial-at-bar in
Colombo. The inquiry was taken up by the trial-at-bar, comprising of High
Court Judges I.M. Imam (Chairman), Sarath Ambepitya and Kumar
Ekaratna, on 11 February 2003.
The Attorney General indicted five soldiers of the SLA for massacring eight
Tamil civilians.
The SL soldiers were indicted on nineteen counts, including unlawful
assembly with common intention to cause injury, murder of eight Tamil
civilians and attempted murder on Maheswaran.
Staff Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake, Second Lieutenant R.W.Senaka
Munasinghe, T.M. Jayaratne, S.A.Pushpa Saman Kumara and Gamini
Munasinghe were the indicted soldiers.
The Colombo-based Trial-at-Bar inquiry into the case was put off for various
reasons in past. In 2007, a Sinhala Judge, Upali Abeyaratne, the chairmen
of another bench comprising two other Sinhala judges Deepali Wijesundara
and Sunil Rajapakse, proclaimed that there would be no such
postponement once the inquiry commences in October 2007. But, again
there were postponements for 8 more years till the case was needed for
the Sri Lankan system in connection with the campaign of domestic
mechanism opposed to international investigations right ahead of the OISL
report scheduled to be published in September.
Apart from the non-commissioned rank officer Sunil Ratnayake, all others
including the commissioned rank officers have been systematically
protected from the Sri Lankan legal system in the Mirusuvil massacre
investigation, Tamil legal sources involved in the initial investigations in
Jaffna told TamilNet.
In fact, the Sri Lankan investigations not only protected the offices and
the remaining members of the military squad, but also concealed a lot of
facts about the group of the indicted soldiers and how they were trained by
the Sri Lankan military to carry out genocidal massacres to terrorise
Eezham Tamils.

The involved squad was a notorious covert operation unit of the Sri Lankan
military, known as the Deep Penetration Unit. The squad is officially named
Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) and has a long history of
committing genocidal acts against Eezham Tamils including the targeted
attacks on Tamil humanitarian workers, priests, Tamil politicians and the
medical infrastructure of Eezham Tamils. The LRRP soldiers are handpicked
and subjected to special training by the military intelligence hierarchy.
Therefore, a thorough investigative study is needed to record how the case
has been handled by the Sri Lankan legal system, the legal sources in
Jaffna said.
All the Sinhalese, except the rare exceptions among the Sinhalese, would
be protecting the genocidal culprits. The new regime is trying to showcase
that there is a Tamil appointed as the head of the SL judicial system and
there is a Sinhala soldier punished for a massacre. This is the usual tactic
of the Sinhala State, a legal source involved in the initial proceedings of
Mirusuvil case in Jaffna told TamilNet providing the copy of the first
registered eyewitness account by the prime witness.