Fall-Out From The Navaly Bombing: The Mulder Affair

By Rajan Hoole –June 27, 2015 

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Law Enforcement and the Security Services: Politicisation and Demoralisation – 19

In the foregoing sections we have dealt with administrative practices and political pressures that have contributed to the degeneration of the Police Service in the next 5 years after showing fresh signs of hope in mid-1995. We will now concentrate largely on the responsibility of civil society. A series of events beginning with a military operation in Jaffna on 9th July 1995 created a mood in the South that was more chauvinistic, xenophobic and gullible, and hence more tolerant of abuses and falsehood by the Government, the security services and the Police. The Press too surrendered its initiative and succumbed to the same kind of forces whose articulation led to the Southern unrest in 1987.

It began with deception. The Air Force bombed the refugee concentration around the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Navaly, on 9th July killing about 120 civilians. This was on the first day of an offensive in Jaffna. The ICRC in publicising the incident referred to damage to the church. It is the kind of inaccuracy that creeps in when there is an urgent need to publicise a real human tragedy. The President promised an inquiry. Subsequent reports made it clear that 6 to 8 bombs had fallen in the area missing the church, but a large number of people had been killed and several buildings in the vicinity destroyed.

The Military however maintained (Reuters, CDN 29.7.95) that it still was, after more than two weeks, trying to determine if the Air Force bombed the area. It added that it could not tell who was responsible because of a lack of access!

Then at a press conference (CDN 5.8.95), the President harped on the fact that the church building was intact. She said that a bomb had exploded in the compound and some had died, but the cause was not known. As if to suggest a cause, she said that the LTTE had been camped close by and firing mortar shells at the advancing army, but that the latter were firing artillery shells elsewhere. She dismissed reports confirming the aerial bombing. Such reports came from the ICRC and Mr. K. Ponnambalam, Government Agent, Jaffna. The latter she said was a hostage in the hands of the LTTE. This was the beginning of Mr. Ponnambalam’s troubles, a man who was an honest and respected senior administrative officer. Earlier the Foreign Minister had pulled up the ICRC in a rather ungainly manner.

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