Exactly seven years ago as of last Wednesday, five young boys had gathered for a chat in Trincomalee close to the beach.

 

 

A grenade was lobbed towards the area where the students were seated and the ensuing explosion injured several people.

 

The five young boys, who were among those injured, were later found dead with gunshot wounds. The incident sent shockwaves not only in Trincomalee, but around the country.

 

While the incident occurred when the war was at its peak, the shooting drew the attention of human rights groups and the international community at large, with fingers being pointed at various elements over the murder.

 

Subsequently amidst growing pressure, a Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the incident but the final report was never made public.

 

However demands for justice over the murder have not ceased seven years on and human rights groups as well as the family members of at least one victim continue to seek answers.

 

Amnesty International, a human rights group headquartered in London, is carrying out an intense campaign on behalf of the five victims.

 

Jim McDonald, Sri Lanka Country Specialist of Amnesty International USA says after seven years of campaigning by family members, no action has been taken by the Sri Lankan authorities to bring the killers of the Trincomalee youth to justice.
“The failure to properly investigate this case despite a recommendation by a Presidential Commission of Inquiry established in 2006 and repeated in the 2011 report of the LLRC, clearly shows that Sri Lanka is either unable or unwilling to ensure accountability for human rights violations, leading victims and their families to seek justice at the international level,” McDonald told The Sunday Leader.

 

Amnesty International has an online petition demanding justice for the Trincomalee victims while street campaigns have also been held in the US.

 

Ragihar Manoharan was one of the victims and his father, it was reported, had received death threats for giving evidence at an inquest into his son’s killing.

 

Dr Kasippillai Manoharan and his family fled Sri Lanka and have been campaigning from overseas demanding that the perpetrators of his son’s murder be arrested and presented in court.

 

However as the dust settles on the end of the war four years on and normalcy is restored, calls for justice by people like Dr Manoharan seem to be falling on deaf ears.

 

Human Rights Watch (HRW), a US based human rights advocacy group, says there is little reason to believe the government when it assures accountability.

 

“Seven years after the execution-style slaying of five Tamil students on Trincomalee beach, the Sri Lankan government has taken no real action to apprehend the perpetrators, despite compelling evidence of involvement by the security forces. The government has claimed this case is a priority, including it in the now forgotten presidential commission of inquiry and in its response to the UN Human Rights Council, but actual progress in this case is sadly nonexistent. There is little reason to believe government promises of accountability so long as highly publicized cases like the Trinco 5 and the killings of the 17 ACF aid workers go without arrests or prosecutions,” Brad Adams, the Asia Pacific Director of Human Rights Watch told The Sunday Leader.

 

Former Attorney General Mohan Peiris, who is a legal adviser to the President, had told the UN Human Rights Council last year that the government is moving forward towards fresh investigations into two massacres that happened in 2006.

 

The former Attorney General gave this assurance during an interactive session with representatives of countries interested in the Sri Lankan issue in Geneva. Mr. Peiris is reported to have said that the government had in no way swept everything under the carpet. He said the matter had been investigated and the government would reopen the case to ascertain the truth behind some of the allegations.

One relates to the students who were gunned down while they were chatting near the Gandhi statue in Trincomalee.
However the Asian Human Rights Commission says what is of very real interest is that according to a Wikileaks cable the government had informed the former US envoy in Colombo Robert Blake that the security forces were involved in the killing.

 

Meanwhile, Dr Manoharan filed a civil suit in the US saying he will use all judicial instruments now available to him outside Sri Lanka to bring his son’s killers to justice.

In 2010 the US-based pressure group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) submitted an affidavit containing the personal testimony of Dr Manoharan and two detailed reports of evidence collected on the killings by a Rights Group whose members are in self-exile due to threats to their lives, as record of evidence to the Dublin war-crimes tribunal hearing.
The tribunal subsequently urged the government to allow the UN to investigate the killing as well as several other incidents of crimes against humanity. The government however rejected the ruling saying the tribunal was not an accepted body.

Separately in April 2013, a panel of international experts will convene as Judges of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) to examine reports on Sri Lanka including the Trincomalee killing. Among the many PPT panelists are Nobel Prize winners Adolfo Perez, Sean MacBride and George Wald.

 

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2013/01/06/trinco-killings-calls-for-accountability-seven-years-on/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IbKjcXH1Kjc