1989 Kandy massacre

• Comment: The lede does not say that the events were in Sri Lanka or in the Sri Lanka civil war. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:05, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

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1989 Kandy massacre
Location	Kandy District, Sri Lanka
Coordinates	7°18′N 80°42′E
Date	14 September 1989 (1989-09-14)
Target	civilians (possibly JVP sympathisers)
Deaths	150+
Perpetrators	unknown (possibly members of Army, Police)

The 1989 Kandy massacre was a series of retaliatory attacks on the villages of Menikhinna, Aranagala, Mahawatte, and Kundasale in the Kandy District of the Central Province, Sri Lanka during the 1987-89 JVP Insurrection. While the massacre was officially attributed to the vigilante group Eagles of the Central Hills, other reports and eyewitness accounts claim that it was a joint operation conducted by the army and police.

Background

The Sinhalese-Marxist organization Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna engaged in a low-intensity conflict with the Sri Lankan government in response to the presence of IPKF during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The JVP garnered much sympathy from impoverished Sinhalese and university students, especially young to middle-aged men. In response, the army and police, operating both on-duty and off-duty as vigilante groups, would arrest, torture, and kill anyone who was suspected of being sympathetic to the JVP. Whenever the JVP killed servicemen or their families, vigilante squads, made up of off-duty policemen and soldiers, would kill JVP members or supporters in retaliation.

Incident

On 13 September 1989 the families (sixteen people) of three members of the security forces were allegedly killed by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in Kundasale.

On the following night of 14 September 1989, armed men in uniform torched a number of residential dwellings in Menikhinna, killing about 52 people. The Menikhinna area was a stronghold of the Bathgama caste, who were known to be supporters of the JVP. The group then moved onto the villages of Kundasale and Aranagala, where they killed a further 30 people. Residents of Kandy found over 100 bodies floating in the river, and it was suspected that there were at least 50 additional deaths. It is believed that the killers were pro-government vigilantes seeking vengeance for the earlier murders. Amnesty International later estimated that only 80 villagers were killed.

Aftermath

On 5 October armed vigilantes shot or beheaded fourteen workers at a Peradeniya University residential complex for custodial and clerical staff. Police later received a message from the vigilantes, who called themselves the Eagles of the Central Hills, taking responsibility for the murders, claiming that the victims were JVP supporters who had arranged the murder of engineer the murder of T. E. Nagahawatte, an assistant registrar at the university and a captain in the local army volunteer reserve force.