The Jaffna hospital massacre occurred on October 21 and 22, 1987, during the Sri Lankan Civil War, when troops of the Indian Peace Keeping Force entered the premises of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, an island nation in South Asia, and killed between 60–70 patients and staff. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the government of Sri Lanka, and independent observers such as the University Teachers for Human Rights and others have called it a massacre of civilians.
However, the Indian Army maintains that the soldiers were fired upon and the Indian army officer in charge of the military operations, Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh, claimed that these civilians were killed in a crossfire between soldiers and rebels. Soldiers responsible for this massacre were not prosecuted by the Indian government.
Background information
During the 1950s, around 50% of civil service jobs in Ceylon were held by the Tamil minority, who comprised approximately 23% of the population. This was enabled partly because of the availability of western-style education provided by American missionaries and others in the Tamil-dominant Jaffna peninsula. The preponderance of Tamils over their proportionate share of the population was an issue for populist majority Sinhalese politicians, who came to political power by promising to elevate the Sinhalese people. The resultant discriminative measures such as the Sinhala Only Act and the policy of standardisation, as well as riots and pogroms that targeted the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, led to the formation of a number of rebel groups advocating independence for Sri Lankan Tamils. Following the 1983 Black July pogrom full-scale civil war began between the government and rebel groups.
In 1987 the governments of Sri Lanka and India entered into an agreement and invited the Indian Army to be used as peacekeepers. Eventually the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) came into conflict with one of the rebel groups, namely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). By October 1987 Indian forces were trying to wrest control of the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE.
Attack
The Jaffna hospital, also known as the Jaffna Teaching Hospital and Jaffna General Hospital, is the premier healthcare providing institution within the densely populated Jaffna peninsula, situated in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It had functioned throughout the period of civil war as a sanctuary that was out of bounds for combatants. After the deterioration of the relationship between the rebel LTTE and the IPKF, an attempt by the IPKF to capture Jaffna town was expected. Because of fears of a military operation by the Indian Army, some staff of the hospital had kept away from duty, but others had reported to work assuming that the Indian Army would be considerate because of assurances provided by the Indian Embassy in Colombo to a group of prominent Jaffna citizens that a major military action was not imminent. By October 21, 1987, which was Diwali, a high Hindu holiday, over 70 dead bodies had accumulated in the mortuary as a result of shelling and other military activities.
Eyewitness accounts
One eyewitness recalled the following:
Another eyewitness, Mr Sivagurunathan, recounted the following: