Residents gathered in Kurunagar on Wednesday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the killing of 31 local fishermen in the seas off Mandaitivu by the Sri Lankan security forces.
The remembrance event was held at the memorial monument dedicated to the victims.
Following a Holy Mass conducted by the parish priest of the Kurunagar church, members of the public paid tribute by lighting clay lamps and placing flowers at the memorial.
The fishermen had departed from Kurunagar on 10 June 1986 aboard the boat "Thooya Oli" for a fishing expedition. They were killed by the Sri Lankan Navy in the waters off Mandaitivu, an islet off the Jaffna peninsula connected to the city of Jaffna by a causeway.
That morning, Navy personnel dressed in black approached the group of fishermen at sea. The fishermen raised their hands to show that they were civilians. The Navy nonetheless attacked them, destroying their boats and nets. The men were tortured and killed; the eyes of some were gouged out and the stomachs of others cut open. In all, 32 fishermen from Kurunagar and one from Mandaitivu were killed, ranging in age from 13 to 62. Only one man survived. According to the medical evidence led at the inquest, all had died of multiple injuries caused by machine gunfire.
Commemorative events were held at the memorial monument erected in Kurunagar in memory of those who were killed.
The massacre was neither the first nor the last time the Sri Lankan Navy targeted Tamil fishermen in the waters around Jaffna. It came just over a year after the Kumudini boat massacre of May 1985, in which Navy personnel boarded a passenger ferry travelling from Delft to Nainativu and killed at least 23 Tamil men, women and children. The Mandaitivu coast would later become the site of further atrocities, including the enforced disappearance of at least 70 young men from Mandaitivu, Allaipiddy and Mankumban in 1990 , a case that remains before the courts four decades on amid repeated delays.
To date, no one has been held accountable for the killing of the Thooya Oli fishermen.
The commemoration in Kurunagar took place as Tamil fishing communities across the North-East continue to face violence at sea, with the Sri Lankan Navy shooting and critically injuring a 23-year-old fisherman off Trincomalee last year during a so-called anti-poaching operation.
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