The Kallarawa massacre was carried out by the

LTTE The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; , ; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam ...

, an organisation which has been banned in 33 countries including the US, Australia, EU, India and Canada due to its terrorist activities. This

massacre A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians Glossary of French words and expressions in English#En masse, en masse by an armed ...

occurred at a small fishing village called Kallarawa located on the Eastern seaboard of

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. Kallarawa is located 35 kilometres away from

Trincomalee Trincomalee (; , ; , ), historically known as Gokanna and Gokarna, is the administrative headquarters of the Trincomalee District and major resort port city of Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. Located on the east coast o ...

town. The village was populated by migrant fishermen at the time of the attack. Kallarawa was known as an area which produces good catches for fishermen.''The Sunday Times'', Lighting a candle in the storm.
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Incident

The Kallarawa massacre is an incident on 25 May 1995 during which

cadres massacred 42 Sinhalese men, women and children in Kallarawa. All the remaining civilian survivors fled the village after this incident leading to its depopulation. However survivors from the Sinhalese and Muslim communities have returned to Kallarawa under the protection of the Sri Lankan Army.

Eyewitness accounts

G. Dayananda, an old fishermen from Kallarawa who survived the massacre, recounted the massacre as follows:

Response

In a letter to

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

, the LTTE seemed to implicitly claim responsibility for the attack, stating that the village was part of the government's war strategy and thus a legitimate target. Amnesty noted that there were no reports of firearms being used by the villagers, and thus concluded the massacre was a violation of international humanitarian law.

Incident

Eyewitness accounts

Response

References

Further reading