Personal data
Name
Sobhika Pathmanathan
Date of birth
1998
Age
10
Place of birth
Palai, Jaffna
Biographical details
Sobhika Pathmanathan was a 10-year-old child from the Palai (District Jaffna) and the daughter of Vinasithamby Pathmanathan (33) and Ketheeswary Pathmanathan (31). She had a little brother Vithusan (5) and two little sisters Thamilini (8) und Nila (6).
Indcident
Date
02.02.2009
Location
Puthukudiyiruppu
Description
In the middle of January 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared the first areas of the north province as “no-fire zones” and called on the Tamil civilians to move in these areas for their safety. Several hundred thousand of civilians fled there for fear of being killed. However, these “safety zones” were continuously under brutal attacks of the Sri Lankan forces without any differentiation between military targets and civilians.
On 02.02.2009, Sobhika Pathmanathan and her family were killed in a bombardment carried out by Sri Lankan air force in Puthukudiyiruppu. At that time, Puthukudiyiruppu was already part of the government-declared safety zones. For this attack, the SL air force used banned munitions like cluster munitions. Sobhika is one of many innocent children, which were victims of the war crime carried out by the Sri Lankan government. 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.