Chemmani lights up with 427 torches to remember the victims of mass graves

A peaceful public mobilisation titled Urimaippantham, or Right of Bond, was held at Chemmani on Sunday, as Tamils gathered to remember the hundreds of victims whose remains have been recovered from the mass grave site.

The event, organised by the Makkal Seyal movement, took place at around 4pm at the Anaiyaa Vilakku grounds in Chemmani.

During the mobilisation, participants laid a flower garland over the Anaiyaa Vilakku memorial, lit a memorial flame and paid floral tributes.

They then lit 427 torches in memory of the victims.

The number represented the 412 sets of skeletal remains identified so far during the ongoing Chemmani excavations, together with the 15 sets recovered during excavations carried out in 1999.

The mobilisation came as excavation work at Chemmani remains temporarily halted, with officials expected to resume work around 15 July.

The dig has so far identified 412 sets of skeletal remains, of which 409 have been exhumed, making Chemmani the largest mass grave uncovered on the island.

More than 100 artefacts and other items of evidentiary value have also been recovered during the court-supervised process.

The latest phase of excavation has revealed multiple sets of remains found in clusters, while a substantial number are believed to be those of infants and children.

Officials have not yet released a full breakdown of the men, women and children among the dead, as the necessary forensic examinations have not been completed.

Despite the scale of the discoveries, the work of identifying the victims has still not begun.

Attorney-at-law Ranitha Gnanarajah has previously stressed that excavation and DNA analysis are separate stages, and that the identification of skeletal remains is only one part of the wider process.

She said further examination would be required before details such as age, sex and cause of death could be established, and that DNA testing would depend on relatives of the disappeared coming forward to seek answers. She also noted that no effort had yet been made by the Office on Missing Persons or other relevant authorities to collect and preserve DNA samples from families searching for missing loved ones.

For families of the disappeared and Tamil civil society groups, the absence of a victim identification process remains a major concern.

While excavation and exhumation have continued across several phases, there have been no reported efforts to establish who the dead are, how they were killed or who was responsible for burying them at Chemmani.

The Chemmani site first drew international attention in 1998, when a Sri Lankan soldier testified that hundreds of Tamils forcibly disappeared during the military’s occupation of Jaffna had been buried there.

Since then, Tamil families and human rights advocates have repeatedly called for international oversight, citing decades of failed domestic processes and the continued absence of accountability for enforced disappearances and mass graves in the Tamil homeland.