Kodikamam Thuyilum Illam
Kodikamam sits in the flat, fertile agricultural heartland of the Jaffna peninsula, a landscape of rice paddies, palmyra palms, and red earth. It is a place where Tamil families have farmed the same land for generations, where life has always been shaped by the rhythm of the seasons and the deep bonds of community. It was in this quiet, rooted place that one of Jaffna’s Thuyilum Illams was established — a war cemetery where the Maaveerar, the fallen fighters of the Tamil liberation movement, were buried with honour.
The Sacred Grounds
The Thuyilum Illams were unlike any military cemetery in the world. They were not grim or austere. They were gardens of remembrance, maintained with a devotion that reflected the Tamil people’s profound respect for those who gave their lives. At Kodikamam, the cemetery was set among the agricultural lands on the edge of town. Neat rows of granite headstones, each carved with the eternal flame emblem, marked the resting places of fighters who had fallen in the defence of the Tamil homeland. The grounds were planted with flowering shrubs and shaded by trees. Families visited regularly, bringing fresh flowers and lighting oil lamps at the graves of their sons and daughters.
The Kodikamam Thuyilum Illam held particular significance for the farming communities of the eastern Jaffna peninsula. The fighters buried here were their own — young men and women from these very villages who had joined the liberation struggle. The cemetery was not an abstraction. It was woven into the daily life of the community. Grandmothers who tended their paddy fields in the morning would tend their grandchildren’s graves in the afternoon.
Destruction and Erasure
Following the end of the war in 2009, the Sri Lankan military carried out a systematic campaign to destroy every Thuyilum Illam in the Tamil homeland. Kodikamam was not spared. Military bulldozers moved in and levelled the cemetery. Headstones were broken apart. The carefully maintained gardens were destroyed. The land was scraped bare, leaving no trace of the graves that had been there. For the families of Kodikamam, this was a second act of violence — the first had taken their children, and the second took away the place where they could mourn them.
This was not an act of military necessity. The war was over. These were graves. The deliberate destruction of a cemetery is a violation of international humanitarian law and an act of cultural genocide. It was designed to sever the Tamil people from their history, to make it as though the fallen had never existed and had never been honoured.
Visiting Today
The site of the Kodikamam Thuyilum Illam today is an empty stretch of land. There are no markers, no monuments, no signs. The physical evidence of the cemetery has been erased. But the land itself holds memory. Local Tamil residents know exactly where the graves were. They carry the names of every fighter who was buried here. Some families still come quietly to the site, especially around Maaveerar Naal, to pay their respects in the way that only the heart can direct — silently, defiantly, with an oil lamp lit against the darkness.
Visitors to Kodikamam will find a peaceful agricultural town. The violence of the past is not immediately visible. But if you look carefully, and if you speak gently with local people, the layers of history reveal themselves. The absence of the cemetery is itself a presence — a wound in the landscape that the community has not been permitted to heal.
Why These Sites Matter
Every nation honours its war dead. From Arlington to Gallipoli, from the Somme to Stalingrad, the graves of fallen soldiers are treated as sacred. The Tamil Maaveerar deserve that same recognition. They were fighters in a liberation struggle born from decades of state persecution. They fought and died for a people’s right to exist with dignity. The destruction of their graves was intended to strip them of that dignity even in death. It must not be allowed to succeed. Your visit, your awareness, your willingness to remember — these are acts of justice.