No accountability for murders at Mullivaikal

AN ESTIMATED 40 000 civilians lost their lives in the Mullivaikal Massacre on May 18, 2009, when the Sri Lankan military surrounded a village of 300 000 Tamil civilians, displaced persons and surviving members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

- 

It was the final days of the long-running civil war from 1983 to 2009 where Sri Lankan Tamils were campaigning for an independent Eelam homeland.

This past Sunday, the Arutpa Kazhagam on Lenny Naidu Drive in Chatsworth gathered to honour the memory of the dead and those brutalised in the conflict.

The street is named in recognition of another martyr, who was kidnapped and murdered by apartheid security forces at the height of the Struggle for South African freedom in 1998.

At the time when war crime atrocities were committed against the Sri Lankan Tamil community, Arutpa Kazhagam was at the centre of South African relief efforts and solidarity activism.

A delegation that included South African Tamil leaders like Dr Kisten Chinappan travelled abroad to meet with Velupillai Prabhakaran, founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Deputy foreign minister and one of the first armed combatants of uMkhonto we Sizwe, Ebrahim Ebrahim, was also key to efforts to broker a dialogue between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government.

Their efforts were constantly stonewalled by the authorities in Columbo.

Another constant voice of conscience was the humanitarian movement, Amnesty International, whose primary focus has historically been on the welfare of political prisoners.