Personal data
Name
Gopishana Thevaranjan
Date of birth
17.04.2004
Age
5
Place of birth
Paranthan – Kilinochchi
Biographical details
Gopishana Thevaranjan was born on 17.04.2004 and came from Paranthan, a town of the district Kilinochchi. She was killed at the age of 5.
Indcident
Date
16.05.2009
Location
Mullivaikkaal
Description
During the closing stages of the civil war, the Sri Lankan military forced with by bombardments and shootings about 300,000 Tamil civilians to move to the government-delcared “no-fire zones”.
But these safety zones were continuously under brutal attacks of the Sri Lankan forces without any differentiation between military targets and civilians. Gopishana Theveranjan had also to flee with her family toward north-east coast in the final stage of the civil war and reached the safety zone mullivaikaal. On 16.05.2009, Gopishana was killed along with her father and her elder sister in an indiscriminate shelling in Mullivaikaal carried out by Sri Lankan forces. In the final days, Mullivaikaal was for numerous civilian the last possible area to flee. In this tiny area, the Sri Lankan government ended the civil war by a genocide on Tamils in May 2009. About 40,000 entrapped Tamil civilians were killed in the last days in Mullivaikaall. At that time, the Secretary of the Ministry of Defence was Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Currently, he is the president of Sri Lanka.
Legal situation (investigation/criminal proceedings)
To data, no one of the responsible persons were held accountable – neither soldiers nor their chief commander, who were involved in this attack. There was no investigation, court hearings or other criminal proceedings.