Manal Aru massacres | |
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Location | Mullaitivu District, Northern Province & Trincomalee District, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka |
Date | November–December 1984 (+8 GMT) |
Target | Sri Lankan Tamil Civilians |
Deaths | Unconfirmed (Hundreds) |
Injured | Unknown |
Perpetrators | Sri Lanka Army |
Motive | Ethnic cleansing |
The Manal Aru massacres of 1984 refers to a series of massacres of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military across numerous traditional Tamil villages in the Manal Aru region which spans across the Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts. The motive behind the massacres was to drive out the local Tamil population from their villages, in order to replace them with thousands of Sinhala settlers.[1][2][3][4]
Over the period from 1 December 1984 till 15 December 1984 the area surrounding the region that connects Mullaitivu to Trincomalee saw three well planned massacres, property destruction and forced eviction of Tamils from this region by the Sri Lankan military. The result was that the Tamil people who were expelled remain permanently uprooted from their land, and a Sinhala colony called Weli Oya was formed in their place.[5]