The Duraiappa stadium mass grave (also spelled Duraiyappah or Thuraiappa) was discovered and excavated at the Duraiappah Sports Stadium (named after

Alfred Duraiappah Alfred Thangarajah Duraiappah (15 June 1926 – 27 July 1975) was a Sri Lankan Tamil lawyer, politician, Mayor of Jaffna and Member of Parliament. Early life and family Duraiappah was born on 15 June 1926. He was the son of an ice and aerated wa ...

) in the formerly embattled northern city of

Jaffna Jaffna (, ) is the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a peninsula of the same name. With a population of 88,138 in 2012, Jaffna is Sri Lanka's 12th mo ...

, Sri Lanka, during a period of relative calm between civil conflicts. The

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

was unearthed in stages between April 4 and 10 of 1999.

Discovery

Renovation of the stadium, which was damaged and neglected during the course of the various phases of the Sri Lankan civil war, began in 1999. The attempt was hailed as a sign that normalcy had returned to the Jaffna peninsula, the battle-scarred heartland of the Tamils by the then government. Instead, it exposed one of the many secret mass graves created during the conflict between the

Sinhalese Sinhala may refer to: * Something of or related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka * Sinhalese people * Sinhala language, one of the three official languages used in Sri Lanka * Sinhala script, a writing system for the Sinhala language ** Sinha ...

majority dominated military forces and the minority Sri Lankan Tamil dominated rebel group the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...

, a conflict that has claimed more than 65,000 lives by 2007. As workers sank the foundations for new changing rooms at the Duraiyappah stadium in northern Sri Lanka, their spades struck bones. Eventually 25 skeletons, including those of two children, were unearthed. As the battered skins of six oil drums were pulled back to reveal a pit a few feet across, horrified villagers clutching the identity cards of missing sons and husbands came forward to witness the layers of

skulls The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

and broken

vertebrae The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

crushed into hardened clay 3 feet below the turf.

Eye witness

Paramanthan Selvarajah was one of the witnesses to the unearthing of the mass graves. He was quoted as looking for his son, Pirapakaran, who disappeared in July 1996, age 24, after being taken by the Sri Lankan army as he rode home past a checkpoint in Jaffna. "I saw his bike lying behind a

bunker A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. T ...

and heard him crying inside," he said. "We never saw him again." Pirapakaran, a tailor, is among more than 12,000 predominantly Tamil civilians believed to have disappeared since the war began. Jaffna Additional

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...

S. A. E. Ekanathan sought assistance from

forensic Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal p ...

experts, Ruhuna University’s

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

N. Chandrasiri declared that proper scientific methods were not used in the excavation and vital evidence may have been destroyed. Preliminary reports suggest that the site may be around ten years old, placing the suspicion on the Indian Peace Keeping Force or the rebel LTTE.

UTHR

According to a local

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

group

UTHR *''For the figure in Norse mythology, see Urðr'' The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) or UTHR(J) was formed in 1988 at the University of Jaffna, Jaffna, in Sri Lanka, as part of the national organization University Teachers for Huma ...

the bodies could hardly have been buried there before late 1987. The Indian Army or the

IPKF Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lank ...

was there until the end of 1989. The LTTE was in control of the area from September 1990 to October 1995. Since then the Sri Lankan Army has been in control. According to UTHR the age of the victims had not been ascertained, which would allow the forensic experts to determine as to when they might have died. The organization demanded that an impartial investigation must be conducted and the Magistrate allow exhumations. It was noted that the basic step of issuing a public notice calling upon persons who have reason to believe, or even suspect, that the graves may contain the remains of persons in whom they have an interest, to come forward was not done, and because of this error the field has been left open to interested speculators. The forensic tests alone will not be satisfactory since the gaps between the departure of one armed party and the arrival of the next are small. It demanded that only a public testimony that will be the determining factor. The report concluded that at that time the excavations at Duraiappah Stadium are neither satisfactory nor professional. A local newspaper demanded that as they are several more mass graves in the North-East of the country and they should be investigated impartially as well. Although news agencies reported that the skeletons were sent to capital

Colombo Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo m ...

for further

analysis there is no further information on this mass grave.

Notes

References

External links