Sri Lanka’s forgotten mass graves: Google Earth and remembering the dead in Nandikadal

 Groundviews

The end of war in Sri Lanka, captured for posterity by Google Earth published last week byGroundviews was the first look at the end of the war in Sri Lanka through historical satellite imagery freely accessible via Google Earth. The article was an open invitation for those using Google Earth to scan for and alert others over areas and artefacts of interest, that in turn could strengthen discussions around the hellish final weeks of war in Sri Lanka. Given the nature of imagery from around this period and centred on Nandikadal, the article explicitly noted,

What Google Maps and Earth does NOT enable one to do, given (1) the quality of some of the historical imagery (which sometimes features extensive cloud cover of vast regions) and (2) the large gaps between the available historical imagery (mid March, late May, after the official end of the war and killing of the LTTE’s leader, then mid-June and early August) is any robust analysis on when shelling in a specific region took place, and importantly, by whom.

Shared widely on Facebook, Twitter and via email, the article clearly indicated that one of the best references today for the research and study of the end of war in Sri Lanka is Google Earth. Imagery accessible via Google’s servers simply isn’t available through other sources or archived elsewhere in the public domain.

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