Where the Earth Refuses to Stay Silent: Chemmani is Speaking Again
Photo courtesy Kumanan Kanapathippillai
As the Chemmani mass graves are uncovered once more, Sri Lanka stands at a decisive crossroads between confronting painful truths and succumbing to the comfort of forgetting.
“Beneath the Oleander flower tree,
You fell and bled from your chest.
You were lost,not to this country, but to the earth itself…”
These haunting words by Rathna Sri Wijesinghe, written during a time of war, return now as a grim prophecy. In July 2025, I stood before a freshly unearthed grave in Chemmani, Jaffna. There, curled beside a school bag printed with English and Tamil alphabets, lay the fragile skeleton of a child. Nestled within was a rubber toddler doll,an emblem of lost innocence.
This is no mere memory of conflict. It is a testament to the brutal continuity of impunity. The silence here is shattered not by justice but by the persistent cries of the dead. Chemmani is not echoing the past; it is rupturing the present. The earth itself refuses to stay silent.
More than bones: the unraveling of a conscience
The 2025 re-excavation of Chemmani’s mass graves was not born from national resolve or moral clarity. It began almost by accident, a construction project unearthed bones that could no longer be ignored. Yet what followed was a slow, fragmented process marked by scarce resources, political ambivalence and fractured accountability.
To date, fewer than 40 percent of the identified burial grounds have been fully examined. Forensic archaeologist Professor Raj Somadeva confirmed the grim tally: over 40 skeletons, including infants less than 10 months old, have been uncovered, silent witnesses to unspeakable cruelty.
This is no simple archaeological dig. It is an excavation of collective trauma, a painful unveiling of a nation’s buried truths.Hundreds of families from Jaffna still search desperately for the remains of their disappeared loved ones. They do not merely watch this process from afar; they are active custodians of memory, holding the fragile thread of justice in their hands. Their hope is shadowed by the scars of past betrayals: incomplete exhumations, judicial dead ends and political silence.
The history of mass grave investigations from Mannar to Kalavanchikudy, Sooriyakanda to Matale, reads like a catalogue of obstruction and neglect. Bodies are unearthed, only to vanish again into bureaucratic limbo. Names remain unconfirmed. Perpetrators unpunished. Families unhealed. This is not just procedural failure. It is a profound ethical collapse.
A global mirror of moral failure: from Chemmani to Gaza
The tragedy unearthed in Chemmani is not an isolated wound. It mirrors a global unraveling of conscience and accountability. In 2025, the world watches as war crimes unfold live in Gaza, children’s deaths tallied in real time while international law lies paralysed under the weight of great-power vetoes at the UN.
Genocide is no longer concealed in the shadows. It plays out in broad daylight, witnessed but unpunished. Institutions created after the horrors of World War II to safeguard peace and human dignity have been rendered impotent. The UN Human Rights Council may speak but its words ring hollow against geopolitical impunity.
Against this grim backdrop, the visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk to Chemmani in late June 2025 was both poignant and symbolic. Türk saw the freshly disturbed soil where infant remains lay exposed. He met with grieving families and advocates pleading for transparent, international oversight of the exhumations. Laying flowers at the Unextinguished Flame vigil, he offered solidarity and a stark reminder that Sri Lanka’s painful legacy is part of a global story of broken promises and denied justice.
Chemmani’s soil, cracked open again, bears witness not only to local horrors but to a world where truth and accountability are vanishing.
Transitional Justice buried in bureaucratic silence
The first grave at Chemmani was not uncovered by the state’s will but by the confession of a whistleblower. In 1998, Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, facing execution for his role in the rape and murder of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, revealed the location of mass graves and named those responsible. Instead of justice, his revelations were met with a campaign of denial and defamation. When the exhumations finally began in 1999, only 15 bodies were recovered, most blindfolded, hands tied, execution-style burials. The remaining graves were left untouched, a deliberate erasure.
Successive governments, regardless of party or ideology, have practiced willful forgetting. Chains of evidence were broken, highranking officers shielded, witnesses threatened or disappeared. Soldiers convicted of these crimes have vanished from accountability, some resurfacing in public life under presidential pardons. As legal scholar Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena has noted, “Transitional justice here has not failed for lack of evidence, but because truth was deliberately buried under layers of bureaucracy and fear.”
The deafening silence of the new government
In 2024, the NPP party rode a wave of public outrage into power, promising to uproot corruption, demilitarise governance and end elite impunity. Their victory was historic not only in the Sinhala dominated south but in the Tamil majority North and East where hope for justice ran deep.Yet, eight months into their tenure, Chemmani remains a site of silence from those who pledged change. No official visits. No public statements. No gestures of acknowledgment.
The very ground where the bones of the disappeared emerge again is met with political indifference, an eerie quiet from a government elected on a platform of truth and reconciliation. Some argue that at least the judiciary is being allowed space to act. But the government’s silence speaks volumes. It is not neutrality. It is a betrayal.
Many in the NPP leadership have themselves suffered under the machinery of state terror. They understand the cost of violence and impunity intimately. And yet, they appear paralysed. Is this political caution or a quiet complicity creeping in?
The NPP holds a rare moral space, a trust earned across ethnic divides. This is their moment to establish a transparent, participatory truth seeking mechanism grounded in dignity and justice. But time is running out. The longer silence reigns, the louder it screams, drowning out hope and deepening wounds.
Two narratives, one grave: the deepening media divide
The 2025 re-excavation at Chemmani revealed more than just bones; it exposed the raw fault lines cleaving the media landscape.Tamil media outlets immersed themselves in the story with unwavering commitment. Day after day, they brought the voices of grieving families to the forefront, aired raw footage of unearthed skeletal remains and featured painstaking forensic analyses. Their reporting was relentless, humanising the victims and demanding attention to the truth buried beneath the soil.
In stark contrast, the Sinhala mainstream media responded with near total silence. When Chemmani was mentioned, it was only in passing, hidden in the margins or obscured behind euphemisms centered on “security concerns.” This was no accidental oversight. It was a calculated editorial decision, a form of institutionalised denial.
This silence is far from neutral. It is a carefully maintained veil that protects decades of militarised nationalism and cultural dominance. Acknowledging these mass graves, tied to the state’s own forces, threatens the sacred myths of national heroism and patriotism that have been fiercely guarded.
To confront these harsh truths is to risk being branded a traitor, a sympathiser of the LTTE or worse.Yet the contents of that child’s school bag, a frayed sandal, a simple toy, cut through the political noise. They strike at the very conscience of the nation.To look away, to deny this reality, is an act of moral cowardice. It is complicated. It allows a culture to persist that views justice as betrayal rather than necessity.
International oversight: a vital lifeline, not a threat
Sri Lanka today lacks the necessary technical expertise, financial resources and moral will to conduct exhumations that meet international standards of transparency and rigor. The Office of Missing Persons (OMP), initially established to fill this void, has become a hollow institution, chronically underfunded, crippled by political interference and widely mistrusted by victims’ families.
The demand from those families for international oversight is not a surrender of sovereignty; it is a desperate plea for justice and truth. Without independent and impartial monitoring, Chemmani risks becoming yet another deep wound hastily covered over,never fully opened, never truly healed. To those who resist international involvement on grounds of sovereignty, the response is unequivocal: sovereignty without justice is no sovereignty at all; it is tyranny cloaked in nationalism.
Will the government heed the people’s call?
The sweeping victory of the NPP in 2024 was more than a political shift; it was a resounding mandate for profound change, a cross-ethnic demand for justice, truth and reconciliation. The people have done their part. They have cast their votes, raised their voices, borne their grief. Now the state must rise to the occasion.
The government possesses the political capital to act decisively. The crucial question is whether it possesses the courage. It can establish a credible, transparent truth commission backed by international guarantees. It can offer reparations to the victims’ families. It can hold perpetrators accountable through meaningful prosecutions. It can fully support forensic experts and provide the dignity the dead deserve. Above all, it can break the silence because Chemmani is speaking, its voice is growing louder with every bone unearthed. And now, the silence belongs to those in power.
Chemmani: a mirror held up to the state
Chemmani is not merely a mass grave; it is a searing reflection of the moral crisis confronting Sri Lanka today. It forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: What kind of country do we aspire to be? One built on the foundations of truth, justice and inclusion or one propped up by convenient lies and selective memory?
The bones resting beneath Jaffna’s soil are not the remains of enemies. They are citizens. Children. Beloved members of communities torn apart by conflict. They are the responsibility of a state that vowed to protect all its people, equally and without discrimination.
A new mandate for accountability and healing
As the painstaking work at Chemmani continues, the government stands at a critical juncture. It must act not out of political expediency or convenience but from a profound sense of historical responsibility. The NPP has been entrusted with a rare and precious mandate from the wounded communities of the south to the grieving families of the north.
That trust is fragile. It cannot be squandered. Accountability is not the enemy of national unity. On the contrary, it is the very foundation upon which genuine unity and reconciliation must be built. To forge a new Sri Lanka, one that honours its past and embraces its diversity, the state must first lay to rest its lies with the enduring power of truth for the people.
