Saththurukkondaan massacre remembered

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 September 2002, 16:59 GMT]
The twelfth annual remembrance of the Saththurukkondaan massacre was observed Monday at Panichchaiyadi junction near Batticaloa town Monday. Sri Lanka army soldiers and Muslim home guards murdered 186 Tamils, mostly women and children, in the villages of Saththurukkondaan, Panichchaiyadi, Kokkuvil and Pillaiyaradi on the northern outskirts of Batticaloa town on 9 September 1990. A memorial for the victims was unveiled near the scene of the massacre.

More than a hundred auto rickshaws drove in a procession from the Gandhi Square in Batticaloa town to the Panichchaiyadi Junction. A sacrificial flame for the victims was lit by local community leaders, relatives of the massacre victims and officials of the Liberation Tigers in Batticaloa.

“The Sri Lankan state had granted its army the right to take the lives of our people at that time. No able to question this then. We were living in fear. But things have changed now because of the Liberation Tigers. They sacrificed their lives to get this peace for us,” Rev. Deva, the local parish priest of the Catholic Church, speaking at the remembrance function.

“The Sri Lanka army massacred hundreds of innocent people to scare the public away from us. But they could not break our people’s determination through terror. Our people refused to give up their rights and to fall at the feet of the outsider,” said Mr. Senathy, the head of the LTTE’s political division in Batticaloa town, addressing the function Monday.

Two commissions of inquiry appointed by the UNP and PA governments inquired into the massacre and recorded evidence from the sole survivor and relatives of the victims. However, none of the perpetrators in the SLA were brought to book.