3 days ago
Mullivaikkal: Sri Lanka's Gaza Strip — smaller, forgotten, and still bleeding — Che Ran
JUNE 2 — Just an hour ago, I passed through Mullivaikkal. And like every time before, it felt like my lungs forgot how to breathe. The air is too still, too silent, like the entire landscape is holding its breath. Even the wind seems reluctant to move, as though it too remembers what happened here. The coconut trees sway quietly, but there's no music in them — only mourning. The sand is soft underfoot, but it feels wrong, like it's made of ash, not soil. I don't know if ghosts are real, but if they are, they live here — unnamed, unburied, and unatoned for.
You don't walk through Mullivaikkal. You move through it like a funeral procession, even when you're alone. Because this isn't just a village — it's a mass grave. It's a crime scene. It's the final chapter of a war that ended in blood, silence, and shame. In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared this patch of coastline a 'No-Fire Zone.' But what followed was not peace. It was precision slaughter. Shells rained down on hospitals. Civilians were bombed in tents. A makeshift medical station run by doctors was shelled repeatedly — despite its coordinates being handed directly to the military and the Red Cross.
The UN estimates over 40,000 civilians died in those final weeks, though some reports place the number closer to 70,000. Satellite images showed bodies strewn along the lagoon. Mothers clutching their dead children. Fathers carrying the remains of their families, weeping into nothingness. There were stories of people starving, trapped between a narrowing front line and an ocean that offered no escape. The Sri Lankan Army marched forward, and the Liberation Tigers refused to retreat, even as civilians begged for mercy. But there was none. Only fire.
And yet — no one has been held accountable. There has been no independent investigation. No war crimes tribunal. Just flag-waving. Just denial. In the South, they mark May 19 as 'Victory Day.' In the North, it is a day of funeral rites and unfinished prayers.
Every time I pass through Mullivaikkal, I don't feel anger. I feel hollow. Like a part of me was left here in 2009, even though I wasn't physically present. That's the thing about genocide—it brands itself into your DNA. Into your dreams. Into the way your mother cries in her sleep. Into the silence of survivors who still, to this day, whisper their stories in fear.
A Tamil resident points to what is left of a bunker built by civilians to escape fighting between government troops and Tamil rebels during the final stages of the Island's separatist war in Mullivaikkal, in north-eastern Sri Lanka on May 17, 2024. — AFP pic
But here's what they don't tell you about silence: it eventually screams.
The world wants us to 'move on.' To 'forgive.' To 'heal.' But healing without truth is just forgetting with better PR. And forgetfulness is a privilege we, as Sri Lankans, can no longer afford.
This isn't about vengeance. This isn't about division. It's about memory. Because when the last witness dies, so too does the chance of justice. That is why we remember Mullivaikkal. That is why we speak. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.
Mullivaikkal is our Gaza Strip. Smaller. Untelevised. Forgotten. But it still bleeds.
And that blood is on all of us — until we say: Never again. Not to anyone. Not anywhere.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
