Please use the form below to sign on to a letter to President Joe Biden, asking him to join with the families of disappeared individuals in the North and East of Sri Lanka and to support international justice for mass graves and other atrocity crimes in Sri Lanka.
This effort is being coordinated by Amnesty International Local Group 133 as part of Get on the Bus for Human Rights 2024.
Text of letter
Dear President Biden:
We join with families of the disappeared in the North and East of Sri Lanka in calling for international justice for mass graves and other atrocity crimes in Sri Lanka.
Acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the military and politicians during Sri Lanka’s civil war between Sinhala Buddhists who control state power and the numerically smaller group of ethnic Tamils that ended in May 2009, have gone unpunished. This has contributed to a sense of impunity in the military and the police to continue custodial torture, illegal arrests, and widespread intimidation against nonviolent dissent by Tamils.
More than 20 mass graves have been discovered during and after the end of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war. One grave contained up to 300 bodies, some with their hands shackled behind their backs, and other signs of trauma. Despite the many graves, the Sri Lankan government has not investigated any of them according to standards of international forensic procedure. Families of the enforced disappeared fear that the bodies in the graves in the North and East of Sri Lanka are their children/family members – victims of genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state during the civil war.
The latest mass grave was discovered on June 29, 2023, at Kokkuthoduvai, Mullaitivu District in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province. Typical of their indifference, government authorities have allowed the site to be contaminated so that evidence is compromised. Even though 40 bodies were discovered at the site, and more are feared to be still buried, the government has kept postponing the resumption of exhumations.
In the past too, Sri Lanka’s military has consistently obstructed the course of justice whenever mass graves or evidence of other atrocity crimes have surfaced. Meanwhile, the courts too have almost never convicted military personnel for violence against Tamil civilians. Families of the disappeared have encountered years of impunity by all sections ofthe Sri Lankan state. Although promised justice for more than 10 years, the government has only given the ineffective and failed Office of Missing Persons to families of the disappeared and gaslighted when it comes to dispensing justice. Therefore, they demand international justice.
The U.S. has worked long for peace, stability, and democracy in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is imperative that the U.S. challenge military and judicial impunity in the country and demand the guilty be held accountable by asking for an international investigation into mass graves.
Therefore, we ask you, President Biden, to join with the families of the disappeared in the North and East of Sri Lanka and supporting international justice for mass graves and other atrocity crimes in the country.
Sincerely,
[Action signers]
