Families of forcibly disappeared Sri Lankan Tamils seek justice; grieving mothers meet on August 30

When the Sri Lankan military crushed the Tamil Tigers in 2009, Anuraj Anandanataraja, one of its fighters, flung his battle fatigues and weapon and left the battlefield by mingling with the mass of civilians.

The perilous journey took him past several military checkpoints, all the way to Omanthai in Sri Lanka’s north where the government had opened a large camp for civilian internees.

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That is where someone squealed on the 34-year-old, saying he was a key member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was pretending to be a non-combatant.

The military took him away. He has never been seen again.

A mother speaks

The family which had given him cover all the way to Omanthai in Vavuniya district immediately alerted his mother, Leeladevi Anandanataraja, an officer in the government’s labour department.

“I began a frantic search for him, and I have been looking for him ever since,” a distraught Leeladevi, 73, said over telephone from the northern town of Kilinochchi where she lives with her husband, four years her senior.

“For many years I prayed and hoped that he must be in detention somewhere,” she said. “But I admit that I have more or less lost all hope of seeing him in flesh and blood.”

Conference in Jaffna on August 30

It is the same conclusion that large numbers of distressed families in Sri Lanka’s north and east, the former war theatre, have reached about their spouses, siblings and children who went missing during the long Tamil separatist drive.

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On August 30, scores of such suffering Tamil families are preparing to hold a conference in Jaffna, coinciding with the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

According to the organisers, foreign diplomats and others involved in human rights issues have been invited to the gathering where relatives would describe their agonising experiences over their missing kin.

Yogarasa Kanagaranjini, president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared in the North and East, says Colombo is using its Office of Missing Persons (OMS) to give fiscal assistance to the grieving families.

“The government is working vigorously to provide death certificates and compensation,” she said. “We do not want compensation. We do not want death certificates. We want our children.”

Sri Lanka’s record of forcible disappearances

Data monitored by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances says Sri Lanka has recorded the second-highest number of forcible disappearances globally after Iraq.

The trend began in 1971 after the first of the two major insurrections unleashed by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, People’s Liberation Front), a Marxist group which now rules Sri Lanka.

No one seems to have kept statistics of those turbulent times.

Tamils began to disappear after being detained on the slightest suspicion of links with Tamil militants in the 1980s. At times, entire families were never seen again after being taken to military camps.

There were also occasions when Tamils were pulled into shadowy state-run white colour vans in Colombo and other urban centres. Such people simply vanished from the earth.

60,000 to 1 lakh disappearances

The gruesome crime reached a peak during the final stages of the war against the LTTE and after fighting halted in 2009 when hundreds, mostly men but also women, were either caught or surrendered to the armed forces.

Amnesty International estimates the total disappearances since the 1980s at between 60,000 and 100,000.

“No one knows the exact figure,” Leeladevi told The Federal. “I believe the figure of 60,000 should be accurate. But it could be more.”

Leeladevi, of course, admits that her 1975-born son, whose nom de guerre in the LTTE was Mayuran, joined the Tigers in 1993 while still a teenager and was with them till the armed conflict ended in 2009.

Jailed, tortured and killed

What pushed the young man, who was studying to be an engineer, to embrace militancy?

In July 1993, Leeladevi was visiting Colombo with three other Tamil colleagues from the labour department on official work when all of them were detained on suspicion of being linked to the Tigers. They were freed only after 18 days.

“The police officers asked me if any of my sons were in the LTTE,” she said. “’No, not so far,’ I told them. ‘But after this brazen injustice to me, maybe one of them will sign up with the Tigers.”

That is exactly what happened.

But unlike Leeladevi’s eldest son, most Tamils who have disappeared had nothing to do with the Tigers, Tamil activists say. They were picked up merely on suspicion – like Leeladevi – and jailed, tortured and, if unlucky, killed.

Sri Lanka’s Office on Missing Persons database had more than 23,000 cases linked to the civil war as well as JVP insurrections.

International law defines enforced disappearances as the arrest or detention of a person followed by a refusal by the authorities to acknowledge the loss of liberty or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

2017 protest

Two years ago, the UN Sri Lanka Accountability Project, established in 2021 to collect evidence of international crimes for use in future prosecutions, said there had been no tangible progress on the question of the disappeared.

It was in February 2017, eight years after the end of the war, that many women-led families of the disappeared staged a protest by the roadside in the town of Kilinochchi to demand answers regarding their loved ones.

This in turn sparked off similar demonstrations by equally aggrieved women in Vavuniya, Trincomalee and Mullaitivu. Many grandmothers were among the protesting women who clutched photos of their missing kin.

One of their demands was that the government release the names of all those who surrendered to the military in 2009. Colombo refuses to do that.

According to Tamil activists, nearly 60 family members have died due to age or illness while campaigning over the years to know the truth of what happened to their family members.

Human rights activists admit that Tamil militant groups, including the Tigers, were also guilty of disappearances but their record was nothing compared to the activities of the government and trigger-happy security forces.

Since 2009, the initial hope has given way to lasting despair.

JVP’s poll promise

When President Anura Dissanayake campaigned in Tamil areas in 2024, he promised justice, stating a similar fate had also fallen on innumerable members of his own JVP.

Believing him, a vast number of Tamils voted for the JVP-led alliance. Now, the Tamil community feels badly let down.

“We have no more faith in this government,” lamented Leeladevi. “Seeing our sorrow, a true leader should have spoken to us. He didn’t do that. He doesn’t have time to meet us.”

“We realise that no government in this country will help the Tamils. This is the real truth,” she added.

Yet, hoping against hope, scores of grieving mothers will gather in Jaffna the coming Sunday, August 30.

“The struggle for truth and justice is a genuine struggle directed towards the international community. It is a long journey,” Kanagaranjini said.