Colombo, Mar 8 (ANI): The Sri Lankan army's move to open it's headquarters in the northern parts of the country on the site of a Tamil Tiger graveyard that was earlier destroyed by the army, has come under criticism across the country.
The army website has a detailed account of the new headquarters which was opened on Friday for the 51 Division near Jaffna. The website said it was declared open "amidst religious rites and rituals".
However, it did not mention that the same site once used to be the Tamil Tiger militants' cemetery, which was destroyed by the army last year, the BBC reports.
A former MP, MK Shivajilingam, said that he was shocked to hear the news because there were about 2,000 bodies of Tiger fighters on the site and there had been twice that number of memorial stones.
"How can the government build national reconciliation like this?" he asked.
Army Chief Jagath Jayasuriya, however, said that 51 Division had vacated its temporary premises in a Jaffna hotel and therefore it had to move to government land.
He said the military had been allocated this site, which was owned by the prisons department, and he was "not aware of people expressing unhappiness", the report said.
In 2010, the government had demolished the ancestral house of the late Tamil Tiger leader, Prabhakaran, citing it's will to wipe out any trace of the Tigers and ensure that their violence is forgotten. (ANI)
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