Fifteen years after Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war ended, the country’s Tamil minority is still searching for truth, justice, and closure. As newly elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake takes office with promises of reform and reconciliation, many are asking whether his administration will finally deliver accountability for wartime atrocities — or whether, like his predecessors, he will leave the Tamil community’s wounds unhealed.
“We don’t want revenge. We just want to know what happened to our loved ones,” said Thushyanthy, whose husband disappeared in the final months of the war.
🕊️ A Long History of Silence
The Sri Lankan civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009, claimed up to 100,000 lives, with the final months marked by alleged mass atrocities, including indiscriminate shelling, civilian disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. Most victims were Tamil civilians trapped in the north and east of the country as government forces closed in on the Tamil Tigers (LTTE)
