Gotabaya Rajapaksa accused of destroying police records of mass graves during Marxist insurrection in 1989

Sri Lanka’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa reportedly destroyed police records of mass graves discovered in the country when he was the military coordinator during the Marxist rebellion of 1988-89, an international rights group has alleged.

Sri Lanka’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa reportedly destroyed police records of mass graves discovered in the country when he was the military coordinator during the Marxist rebellion of 1988-89, an international rights group has alleged.

The report titled ‘Mass graves and failed exhumations in Sri Lanka’, authored by four organisations Centre for Human Rights Development (CHRD), Families of the Disappeared (FOD), International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) was released on Thursday.

“Gotabaya Rajapaksa, then Secretary to the Ministry of Defence (who had been Military Coordinating Officer of Matale district between July 1989 and January 1990, and who later became President of Sri Lanka) was reported to have ordered the destruction of all police registers and records older than 5 years at police stations in the Central Province including Matale.

This report was never denied by officials”, a report from the rights group, the International Truth and Justice Project has said.