BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka: Seated outside a church, Saradhadevi Thadcanamoorty reads aloud four handwritten pages of names: 124 husbands, fathers and brothers who disappeared during Sri Lanka’s civil war.
The Tamil woman, in her 60s, then picked up a placard and set off with three others on a "march for justice” through the busy eastern city of Batticaloa. It was their 1,604th consecutive day of protest.
From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka was torn apart by war between government forces, representing the Sinhalese majority, and separatist rebels from the largely Hindu Tamil minority. More than 100,000 people were killed, many of them civilians, according to UN estimates. Tens of thousands more disappeared, or were abducted, tortured or killed by security forces or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
More than 15 years after the war ended, the fate of most of the missing is still unknown. Complaints, court appeals, protests, international pressure and repeated government promises have brought little progress.
In July 1992, Thadcanamoorty’s husband Nallathambi, 34, was found shot dead in his field. Witnesses said a soldier had killed him, and she reported the soldier to the police.
"They told me, ‘If you say your husband was killed by a soldier, they will never give him back to you’,” she said. "So I ended up filing a complaint against an unknown person. I recovered his body, received compensation of 50,000 rupees ($151, at current rates), and the investigation stopped.”
In January 2000, her son Navaneethan, 19, disappeared. She believes Tamil rebels abducted him to make him fight for them. "I never saw him again,” she said. "In 2016, I filed a request for information with the authorities. They replied that his fate was unknown. All I was given was a certificate of disappearance -- not the truth.”
Lakshmi Silva’s husband disappeared in July 1990 while traveling by bus to Colombo, taken away by armed men at a checkpoint. "Witnesses told me they were ‘Tigers’,” she said, referring to the rebels. Her appeals to the police and the separatists went unanswered, and she was warned not to make trouble.
In 1994, a magistrate issued a death certificate listing the cause of death as "unknown”. She has heard nothing since. "I no longer think he will come back,” said Silva, now in her 60s. "I live only for my children now.”
Others refuse to give up. "I have always kept hoping,” said Rajeshwari Chithiravadivel, 61. A charcoal portrait on her wall shows her smiling, mustached husband between her and their daughter. He was abducted by masked men while shopping in February 1989.
Authorities issued a death certificate in 1998. Two years later, the Red Cross asked her to identify a body that might be his. "He was unrecognizable,” she said. "So I continue to believe.”
The women’s daily protest echoes Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who marched for years demanding answers about children who disappeared under the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
"We secretly hoped thousands of people would join us, but clearly that is not the case,” said Sarala Emmanuel, a campaigner and one of the most regular marchers. "But nothing has changed -- there is still a great silence.”
Since 2009, Sri Lankan civil society, international rights groups and the United Nations have repeatedly urged successive governments to investigate wartime crimes and bring those responsible to justice.
The election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake as president in 2024 revived hopes. In his manifesto, the country’s first left-wing president promised to investigate "political assassinations, disappearances and assaults” and to set up an independent national prosecutor’s office.
Human Rights Watch said in September that some progress had been made, but that the government had failed to address "the urgent need to end impunity”. The justice ministry did not respond to AFP’s questions about the proposed prosecutor’s office.
"On one or two emblematic cases, there seem to be some investigation... But on the question of enforced disappearances or missing persons, there is zero movement,” said Tamil opposition MP Rasamanikham R. Shanakiyan. "Successive governments are worried to take any steps,” he said, noting that most leaders are Sinhalese Buddhists and that senior security officials were reluctant. "They know that it’ll come back to them.”
The government set up the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) in 2018 to determine the fate of the disappeared. It has 22,000 cases on its books, while the United Nations has cited figures of up to 100,000 disappearances. In the past three years, it has traced just 24 people.
"For families who have been waiting for two, sometimes three decades, it is clear that things are not moving fast enough,” said OMP member Mirak Raheem. "It is becoming difficult to find witnesses. Many documents have disappeared, and people have reconstructed their memories.”
Exhausted but determined, Thadcanamoorty vows to keep marching. "We don’t want money, just the truth and justice,” she said. "I refuse to let our suffering be passed on to the next generation.” — AFP
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