37 years since the Katuwana Massacre by Sri Lanka Army

Today marks the 37th annual commemoration of the Katuwana Massacre (1989).

It has been 37 years since the bloodthirsty state military murdered them as part of the Sri Lankan capitalist state's killing program. That night, they bombed their house, destroying the entire family including the young girl, the mother, and the native physician father, while the four young women were raped for days at the military camp, murdered, and forcibly disappeared. This was merely one massacre committed during that period of terror. Dozens of such massacres can be found in the Southern Province alone. Almost all of these were massacres carried out in an extremely brutal manner. The monsters, invading with full state privileges, destroyed and set fire to homes and all accumulated belongings overnight, hacked and stabbed people, dashed children on the ground, cut open the bellies of pregnant mothers, dragged out the fetus, smashed it on the ground, sliced fetus into pieces, cut off his penis, and stuffed it into the dying mother's mouth. The Asian Human Rights Commission analyzed that all of this was carried out with extreme systematic training and formality, representing the implementation of the "Jakarta" method, for which the government received assistance from the Israeli Mossad. Its aim was to terrorize workers, villagers, and youth, to abruptly end the youth uprising, and to consolidate the military-dictatorial regime.

Family commemorated the massacred relatives 36 years after on 27 August 2025 at the crime site 

To learn about any of these killings back then, the public had only foreign media such as "Veritas." Journalists were killed and all media was suppressed, while mainstream corporate media and state media acted as trumpets for the Premadasa regime. Although the massacres in Gaza are visible before our eyes today, poor Sri Lankan villagers back then had no facilities such as social media, photography, or video recording.

Every government that subsequently came to power in Sri Lanka acted to cover up the scale and nature of these crimes. None of the commission reports published after 1994 refer to or report these massacres as such. The Manouri Muttetuwegama Commission sent the President a “confidential” list containing the names of the killers, including the military leaders responsible for these crimes, but no government—including the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) government—has made these names public to this day. No organization claiming to stand for the disappeared has acted to write down, record, publish, and preserve these cruel experiences and stories of the relatives of the disappeared, nor to convey this historical knowledge to future generations. Governments are afraid of this history because historical truth stands against the capitalist state.

This is also the policy of governments of the South regarding the crimes committed in the North. They turn the crimes of the LTTE to their advantage while concealing the crimes of state armed forces and state-backed paramilitary groups in the North and East, as well as the crimes—including massacres—of the JVP or UNP in the South. They do so to prevent the young working class from being educated by it and to prevent the exposure of their own crimes.

Preserving the living testimony of this historical experience in both southern and northern societies, without letting it die out and fade away, is an essential necessity for the consciousness of the working class. Let us preserve the records of these crimes committed against your relatives and families in the North, East, and South. Write your story to us at theSocialist.lk.

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Katuwana Massacre: Relatives commemorate victims after 36 years of intimidation and continuing impunity