24th Anniversary of the massacre of 320 Tamils in Batticaloa remembered

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 November 2010, 16:32 GMT]
The massacre of 320 innocent Tamils of Pullumalai in Batticaloa district on 10.11.1986 by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Sinhala thugs was remembered Wednesday by the people of Batticaloa district. The SLA soldiers and the Sinhala thugs who brutally massacred the 320 Tamils were not arrested during the United National Party (UNP) government then and the present United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) too has failed to take action on them or to pay compensation for the affected or find the disappeared persons, sources in Batticaloa said. Complaints made by the victims’ family members to Sri Lanka President’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) recently in Chengkaladi Secretariat were not registered, the sources added.

Pullumalai is one of the fertile Tamil villages in on the western boundary of Batticaloa district along the A5 Chengkaladi-Badulla road in Chengkaladi Divisional Secretariat area.

Following a claymore attack on a SLA vehicle on 10.11.1986, more than 320 Tamils among nearly 1100 families in Pullumalai Grama Sevaka division were massacred, more than 50 injured and young women sexually abused by SLA soldiers and Sinhala thugs.

Hundreds of youths were dragged away by the SLA in front of their parents and their fate still remains a mystery.

SLA occupied the government hospital buildings in 1983 and launched attacks on the Tamils five times after occupation, driving them away from their villages.

During the brutal offensive of the SLA in 1990 the entire residents were uprooted and were forced to live as refugees in camps and with relatives or friends.

Some of the uprooted families have now been resettled in Vipulanantha Village, a location in the middle of the jungle without permanent houses or the basic facilities of medicine, transport, electricity.

Sri Lanka ministers including Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna the Deputy Minister of Rehabilitation, who often visit Batticaloa district have done nothing to fulfill the needs of these families or to trace their relatives gone missing after the massacre and subsequent attacks by SLA.