Trinco 5 commemorated 18 years on, at beach where they were massacred

by Thusiyan
Jan 11, 2024

A commemoration was held in Trincomalee last week, to mark 18 years since five Tamil students were summarily executed by Sri Lanka's Special Task Force, whilst they spent an afternoon on the beach.

The ceremony was held in the evening by the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on Trincomalee’s Dutch Bay beachfront – the same time and place where the five students were murdered.

Locals adorned photographs of the victims with flowers and lamps were lit in remembrance.

The case – known as the 'Trinco 5' – remains one of the highest-profile killings in Sri Lanka to receive international attention, listed in 2014 by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the island as one of four ‘emblematic cases’ of the government's failure to ensure accountability and having been raised repeatedly in international forums.

To date, no one has been held accountable for the murder.

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