RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Relatives of Missing Civilians Denied Justice?

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

AVISSAWELLA, Sri Lanka, Jul 16 1998 (IPS) - Pandukkavidalage Somawathie, 55, weeps inconsolably as she recalls how a group of men, including Sri Lankan soldiers, took her son away one night in 1988 during a crackdown against left-wing guerrillas.

Her son, 20-year old Premakeerthi, was never seen again and is presumed dead like the thousands of young majority Sinhalese women and men who vanished in this island’s southern villages and towns between 1988 and 1990.

The tragedy is that her son’s killers are still at large and live in the village, and despite a presidential commission probing disappearances, that identified the perpetrators, no government action has been taken against them.

“What do we do? Where do we go from here,” the tired-faced woman lamented, squatting inside her small wattle-and-daub hut at Ihala Talduwa village, near Avissawella, a bustling trading and agriculture post, 40 kms east of Colombo.

Premakeerthi is among 60,000 persons, according to an estimate by the global watchdog Amnesty International, who disappeared during a counter-insurgency operation ordered by the United National Party (UNP) government to crush a revolt by the People’s Liberation Front, better known by its Sinhala acronym JVP.

Tragically most of the victims were unconnected to the JVP, according to evidence of three commissions appointed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga to probe the disappearances. They were forcibly taken away for political reasons or as a result of being involved in small village-type arguments.

Premakeerthi’s case is typical. His mother says he was picked up by soldiers, who had got into an argument with her younger son, Kaluwa, over a cigarette during the Sinhalese New Year celebrations in April 1988. The soldiers came looking for Kaluwa, and not finding him took Premakeerthi away on Sep. 18, 1988.

Information on some 7,000 missing people have been submitted by an organisation of Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared, called OPFMD, founded as an underground movement in 1988 by four trade unionists of the New Socialist Party who travelled incognito from village to village documenting the cases, and passing on information and data to global rights groups like Amnesty and the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

“We realised that there was a plan to systematically kill people and the bodies of young men who were taken away … were left lying on roads to show JVP supporters that this could be their fate,” Chandra Peiris, president of the group told IPS.

Two of the founders, Chandradasa Ranasinghe and Ranjit Pathirana, themselves became victims. Ranasinghe vanished after he was picked up security forces during a “roundup” — random search and detain operations at places like railway stations.

Pathirana was shot dead while he was putting up posters for an OPFMD meeting in May 1990 after the group came out into the open. The police said he was pasting an anti-government poster.

According to Peiris, fresh cases of persons missing since 1988-90 continue to come in. Between 10 and 15 new cases are added to the list every month, by relatives who want to know what happened to sisters, brothers, fathers or sons.

So far, the People’s Alliance government, that swept to power in 1994 ending 17 years of UNP rule, has probed 19,000 cases. Three commissions set up by the government in May 1995 submitted reports to the prime minister in September, the same year, but there has been no further development.

Mohamed Iqbal, a retired civil servant who was secretary of one of the commissions, said he visited, “25 areas in four regions … identified 600 people — soldiers, police, former ministers, members of Parliament and local government officials – — responsible for the disappearances.”

Last month, another commission was appointed to investigate more than 11,000 remaining cases, but like its predecessors, it too does not have punitive powers.

Iqbal, who is again on the new commission, said the government hasn’t taken action even in the 140 cases of “involuntary removal” — people, detained and tortured who were either released or escaped. “The victims are alive, have identified their torturers, … but sadly little is being done,” he said.

According to government sources, special police teams have been assigned to prepare cases against “suspects” named by the commissions — but right activists counter that the government is soft-pedalling the issue, it is taking far too long.

They point to an instance where Kumaratunga ordered the immediate interdiction of 200 police officers, whose names had

figured in one report, but the very next day, the order was cancelled under pressure from the Defence Ministry.

According to political analysts, the government will be careful not to alienate the military and police, since it is trying to end a 15-year civil war. There is a worry that “the guns may be turned on government politicians like Kumaratunga.”

Some 600 civilians have been reported missing in the island’s northern war zone, since the Kumaratunga government took over. Last month, five soldiers and one policeman were sentenced to death for raping and killing an 18-year-old schoolgirl, detained in September 1996.