Sri Lanka Reconciliation Commission holds hearings in LTTE attacked border village

Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) probing the events during the seven years before the end of the war in May 2009 will be holding public hearings this weekend in Weli Oya, the northernmost settlement of the majority Sinhalese community during the LTTE occupation of the North and East.

The LLRC appointed by the President Mahinda Rajapaksa to report on lessons to be learnt from the events in the period, February 2002 to May 2009 visited Weli Oya Saturday to hear the villagers' accounts during the period the border villages of north were under LTTE threats.

Giving evidence before the commission, Buddhist monks and civilians of Weli-Oya villages have recounted their terrible experiences and enormous hardships they encountered due to LTTE terrorist activities.

Remote villages in this area dwelt by Sinhalese people have come under the most brutal ethnic cleansing raids by the Tamil Tigers during the 2 decades before the group's defeat in 2009.

Several mortar attacks by the Tamil Tigers have killed a number of civilians and injured many others in this northern most edge of the Sinhalese settlements. In May 2008, Tamil Tigers fired mortars to the Athawetunaweva village in the Welioya Defense Colony displacing 1,118 individuals belonged to 310 families of the village.

The Commission expects to wrap up its hearings in Weli Oya tomorrow and plan to gather views from the people in worst affected villages of [...]