‘India’s My Lai’, Tamils mark 37 years since IPKF massacre in Valvettithurai

Tamils gathered in Valvettithurai on Sunday to commemorate 37 years since the 1989 Valvettithurai massacre, in which Indian Peace Keeping Force soldiers killed scores of Tamil civilians in an assault that came to be known as "Indias My Lai".

The remembrance event was held in Valvettithurai town on 2 August and organised by the Tamil National Party and the Tamil National Peoples Front. The Tamil National Party leader N. Srikantha and the TNPF general secretary Selvarajah Kajendren were among those who attended, alongside party members and local residents. Participants lit a common flame and laid flowers in memory of the 72 Tamil civilians reported killed.

The commemoration marks one of the most notorious atrocities committed by the Indian Peace Keeping Force during its deployment in the Tamil homeland. The force had arrived in 1987 under the Indo-Lanka Accord ostensibly to keep the peace, but was soon drawn into a bloody counter-insurgency against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The massacre began on 2 August 1989, after Tamil Tiger fighters allegedly ambushed an Indian patrol near Valvettithurai. Indian forces subsequently imposed a curfew and launched reprisals across the town, embarking on a systematic killing spree, shooting Tamil civilians and ransacking and burning property. Men, women and children were among those killed.

Contemporary eyewitness accounts documented IPKF soldiers entering homes and executing civilians. One survivor recalled soldiers separating men and women before opening fire, while another described her husband being dragged outside and shot despite relatives pleading for his life.

A fourteen-year-old girl witnessed Indian soldiers ordering a group of men to kneel before opening fire, killing four of them and seriously wounding another four.

The destruction continued as Valvettithurai remained under curfew and surrounded by Indian troops. Contemporary accounts documented scores of homes and shops being burnt and extensive damage to vehicles, bicycles and fishing equipment, in what was then a modest fishing town.

India sought to downplay the massacre, maintaining that civilians had been caught in crossfire following the LTTE ambush. Accounts gathered from survivors and from journalists who subsequently entered Valvettithurai challenged that explanation.

The Financial Times journalist David Housego, who visited the town following the massacre, reported that the official Indian account that civilians had died in crossfire had "no credibility". He documented killings in the hours after the ambush, followed by days of burning and ransacking while the town remained under Indian military control.

The massacre was later compared to the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam. George Fernandes, then an Indian opposition parliamentarian who would go on to become Indias defence minister, described the killings as Indias own "My Lai", citing reports that the violence appeared systematic, with victims forced to the ground before being shot. Schoolchildren were among those indiscriminately targeted during the assault.

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Despite maintaining a diplomatic presence in Jaffna through the Consulate General of India, Indian officials did not attend Sundays commemoration or issue any statement marking the 37th anniversary of the massacre.

Thirty-seven years on, Tamils in Valvettithurai continue to remember those killed by the IPKF and to preserve the memory of the massacre.