This study explores the impact of the

ruling elite’s political project through

A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF
the experiences of 87 relatives of the
disappeared. It considers how their own

DISAPPEARANCES
political project to re-establish the

A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF
DISAPPEARANCES

IN SRI LANKA
socio–legal identity of the disappeared
was exploited by the political elite and
their own communities rendering them
socially ostracised. Within this context,

IN SRI LANKA
transitional justice mechanisms
including prosecutions and social
movements were manipulated and
politicised along party lines as part of a
ritual of conspiracy against the victims
to deny state terror and protect those
responsible for it.

About the author:

Jane Thomson-Senanayake, B.A Hons
(NSW), Grad Dip (NSW), Grad Cert
(New England), M.A (Deakin), PhD
(Sydney), is a human rights and social
policy researcher. Her academic
research has focused on political

Jane Thomson-Senanayake
violence, enforced disappearances,
transitional justice and social restoration
in contexts including Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and
East Timor. She was awarded the Lionel
Murphy Postgraduate Scholarship in
2004 and completed her PhD in 2013 at
the University of Sydney. Her doctoral
research, which explored enforced
disapearances over three decades in Sri
Lanka and involved extensive fieldwork
across eight districts, provided the basis
for this publication.
Rs 1000/=
Asian Human Rights Commission,
Jane Thomson-Senanayake
Unit 1 & 2 12/F, Hopeful Factory Centre
10-16 Wo Shing Street,
      Fotan, N.T. ,Hong Kong, China
A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF

DISAPPEARANCES
IN SRI LANKA
''Not even a person, not even a word...''

Jane Thomson-Senanayake
 ii

A sociological exploration of disappearances in Sri Lanka

''Not even a person, not even a word...''

© Jane Thomson-Senanayake 2014

ISBN (Print) : 978-955-4597-04-4

Published by
Asian Human Rights Commission
Unit 1 & 2 12/F.
Hopeful Factory Centre
10-16 Wo Shing Street
Fotan, N.T.
Hong Kong, China

Tel: + (852) 2698 6339

Fax: + (852) 2698 6367
We: www.humanrights.asia

May 2014

Backcover photo: Pictured is a poem by Basil Fernando embossed on the historic monument erected in
memory of all the disappeared in Sri Lanka, the Wall of Mourning – an initiative of the AHRC
working with the families of the disappeared in Sri Lanka, this monument stands today, at the four way
junction at Raddoluwa, Seeduwa Sri Lanka, where two of the remains of the bodies of activists were
found after they have been killed and partially burned.

Layout and Cover design

AHRC Communications Desk

Printed by
Kalyana Mithra Publishers, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
 iii

Not even a person, not even a word. No-one said “go on”. There was
no encouragement.
- Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 2.

During the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency of 1987–1990,

two brothers of Mrs V disappeared after a younger brother was
tortured by the police and hung from a lamppost. Her comments relate
to the social ostracism of her family by relatives, friends and
neighbours following these tragic events.

From 1977 to 1994, we had seventeen years of a ruling UNP

government. During that time they tortured, put down and
discriminated against normal villagers, the poor ... For the vote they
did it.
- Mr W, Kandy District:
Interview 1.

On 30 January 1990, Mr W’s 29-year-old son, a mechanic, was

abducted by unidentified people in the company of a goni billa
(masked informant). He was forced into a white van without number
plates and disappeared. Mr W believed that his son was taken
“because he was a potential leader”.
 iv

Table of Contents

Table of contents……………………………………………….. iv
Acknowledgements…………………………………………….. viii
Acronyms and terms…………………………………………… x
Preface…………………………………………………………... xiv

CHAPTER 1
Disappearance as political competition………………………. 1
1.1 Political construction of violence…………………… 1
1.2 Beyond a human rights dimension…………………. 6
1.3 Transitional justice foregone……………………….. 10
1.4 Scope and methodology……………………………. 12

CHAPTER 2
Disappearances 1971…………………………………………… 16
2.1 Nexus between state welfare, nationalisation and
political patronage……………………………………… 16
2.2 Decline of parliamentary socialism and rise of
revolutionary socialism………………………………… 24
2.3 Unemployment and youth alienation……………….. 26
2.4 Growing intolerance of the state……………………. 28
2.5 “Che Guevara’s” 30
revolution…………………………….
2.6 Emergency Regulations and disappearances………... 32
2.7 Emergency Regulations and the 1972 constitution…. 44
 v

51
CHAPTER 3
Institutionalisation of Political Violence………………………
3.1 Supremacy of the Executive President over the
legislature and judiciary…………………………………. 52
3.2 Suspension of rights and the powers and immunities
of the security forces…………………………………….. 55
3.3 Curtailment of freedom of expression………………. 61
3.4 Circumvention of the democratic process…………... 64
3.5 State responsibility to protect and the Buddha Sasana 67
3.6 Open economy and a righteous society…………….. 69
3.7 Politics of intolerance and polarisation…………….. 79
3.8 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom……………………………. 83

CHAPTER 4
Dealing with the ‘other’………………………………………... 92
4.1 Disappearances and the demographic composition of
the north and east………………………………………. 92
4.2 Political apparatus at work…………………………. 96
4.3 Sources of violence…………………………………. 99
4.4 Politicisation and militarisation of civilians………… 102
4.5 Violence made permissible…………………………. 105

CHAPTER 5
We have the democratic power to do anything—Political
violence and manufactured chaos……………………………... 110
5.1 Political apparatus at work………………………….. 112
5.2 Disappearance of political opponents………………. 116
5.3 Disappearance of those with “potential”……………. 119
5.4 Politicisation of local grievances and tensions……… 123
 vi

5.5 Manufacturing chaos………………………………... 129

5.6 Finishing the “match”……………………………….. 137
CHAPTER 6
War against civilians…………………………………………… 139
6.1 Armed actors and their motives…………………….. 139
6.2 “A war for peace”…………………………………… 149
6.3 Disappearance as the nexus between criminal and
political crimes………………………………………….. 155
6.4 Reliance on extralegal methods…………………….. 158
6.5 Politicians peace process……………………………. 165

CHAPTER 7
No-one even gave us a glass of water—Social positioning and
stigmatisation…………………………………………………… 171
7.1 Dislocation of the social and spiritual worlds………. 171
7.2 Experiences with the state…………………………... 176
7.3 The justice system didn’t give us any hope so we
went to the other side to look for them………………….. 182
7.4 Mistrust, suspicion and social dysfunction…………. 184
7.5 The wives/widows of Sri Lanka's disappeared……… 197
7.6 Keeping them alive in our minds……………………. 207

CHAPTER 8
We can’t open our mouths and tell you in words all that we
have gone through—Political engagement with and the
appropriation of suffering……………………………………... 212
8.1 Movements and organisations established in the
north and east……………………………………………. 214
8.2 Movements and organisations established in the
south…………………………………………………….. 218
8.3 The struggle to remain relevant…………………….. 230
 vii

8.4 Strategic interests and practical needs……………… 236

8.5 Political currency of the disappeared………………. 243
CHAPTER 9
The only voice here is that of a gunshot—Politicisation of due
process and other official mechanisms of inquiry……………. 247
9.1 Emergency legalisation: a policy of the state against
its own people…………………………………………… 250
9.2 Investigation and prosecution of disappearances…… 253
9.2.1 Embilipitiya…………………………………. 263
9.2.2 Krishanthi Kumaraswamy………………….. 265
9.3 Habeas corpus………………………………………. 267
9.4 Disappearance commissions………………………... 276
9.5 Rise of the underworld……………………………… 286

CHAPTER 10
Political imagination…………………………………………… 291
10.1 Stifling political imagination……………………… 294
10.2 Culpability and complicity………………………… 299
10.3 Exclusion and dependence…………………………. 304
10.4 State-centric and politicised truth and justice
initiatives………………………………………………... 306

References………………………………………………………. 311
Appendix—Overview of interviews…………………………… 335
 viii

Acknowledgements
This study would not have been possible without the women and men
who gave up their valuable time to be interviewed. Their honesty and
willingness to talk about the most horrific of events and its traumatic
aftermath demands the greatest respect. Despite the most horrendous
experiences and extraordinary obstacles, these people are far from
“silently dying”, as expressed by Mr D, an interviewee from Matara
District. This study is an attempt to give voice to their experiences
within a wider socio–political context and to put their story, which
serves as historical memory of events officially denied, on the public
record.

I am extremely grateful to the Law and Society Trust for providing

institutional support to this study. I would also like to thank the
following organisations and individuals around Sri Lanka who assisted
in liaising with and supporting the women and men interviewed for
this study:

Amparai District - Affected Women’s Forum; Sowasa Social

Welfare Society; Home for Human Rights.

Batticaloa District - Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies;

Tandaham; Community Development
Foundation; Institute of Human Rights; Ms
Amara Hapuarachchi.

Gampaha District - Organisation of Parents and Family Members

of the Disappeared; Janashakti Women’s
Development Foundation; Families of the
Disappeared.
 ix

Jaffna District - Mothers’ Front; Missing Persons' Guardians

Association of Jaffna; Organisation of Parents
and Family Members of the Disappeared;
HUDEC Jaffna.

Kandy District - Families of the Disappeared.

Kurunegala District - Kurunegala Women’s Development

Foundation.

Matara District - Dr Sarath Amarasinghe, Department of

Sociology, Ruhuna University; Organisation
of Parents and Family Members of the
Disappeared; Mr Ekanayake.

Vavuniya District - Survivors Associated; Home for Human

Rights.

I am also extremely grateful to Mrs CT, a professional and dedicated

interpreter. Thanks also go to the many human rights activists,
academics, psychologists, teachers, retired police officers, lawyers,
government officials, social workers, politicians and other
professionals who provided insight into what is an extremely complex
but captivating subject. Ramani Muttetuwegama of the Law and
Society Trust deserves special acknowledgement.

The study was conducted with the generous support of a Postgraduate

Scholarship from the Lionel Murphy Foundation.

Jane Thomson-Senanayake
 x

Acronyms and Terms

AGA Assistant Government Agent, a post in the Sri

Lanka Administrative Service
AHRC Asian Human Rights Commission
AI Amnesty International
ALRC Asian Legal Resource Centre
Beeshana samaya era of terror
Beeshanaya terror
Central Commission Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the
Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of
Persons in the Central, North Western, North
Central and Uva Provinces
CHRD Centre for Human Rights and Development
CID Criminal Investigation Department, Sri
Lankan Police
Committee on Committee on Disappearances of the Human
Disappearances Rights Commission
CP Communist Party
CRM Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka
DIU Disappearance Investigation Unit, Sri Lankan
Police
DJV Deshapremi Janatha Viyaparaya - Patriotic
Peoples Movement, military wing of JVP
ENDLF Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front
EPDP Eelam People’s Democratic Party
EPRLF Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation
Front
ER Emergency Regulation
 xi

EROS Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of

Students
FP Federal Party
GA Government Agent, a chief administrative
office at district level
Grama Niladhari village official - local level administrative
officer
Grama Sevaka literally ‘servant of the village’ - village level
administrative officer
HHR Home for Human Rights
HRW Human Rights Watch
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights
ICG International Crisis Group
ICJ International Commission of Jurists
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IGP Inspector General of Police
INFORM Sri Lanka Information Monitor
IPKF Indian Peace Keeping Force
JOSSOP Joint Services Special Operations
JSS Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya - National
Workers Union
JVP Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna - People’s
Liberation Front
LSSP Lanka Samasamaja Party - Lanka Social
Equality Party
LST Law and Society Trust
LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
MPU Missing Persons Unit, Attorney General’s
Department
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
 xii

North & East Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the

Commission Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of
Persons in the Northern and Eastern
Provinces
NSSP Nava Samasamaja Party - New Equality
Party
OIC Officer-In-Charge, Police
OPFMD Organisation of Parents and Family
Members of the Disappeared
PA People’s Alliance
Piraccinai natkal troubled times
PLOTE People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil
Eelam
Pradesheya Sabha Regional Committee / Council
PRRA People’s Revolutionary Red Army
PSO Public Security Ordinance
PSTD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
PTA Prevention of Terrorism Act
SMF Southern Mothers’ Front
SLA Sri Lankan Army
SLFP Sri Lanka Freedom Party
SLMM Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission
SLMP Sri Lankan Mahajana Pakshaya - Sri Lanka
People’s Party
Southern Commission Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the
Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of
Persons in the Western, Southern and
Sabaragamuwa Provinces
STF Special Task Force, Police Commando Unit
TELO Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation
TNA Tamil National Alliance
 xiii

TULF Tamil United Liberation Front

UNP United National Party
USDOS United States Department of State
UTHR-J University Teachers for Human
Rights -Jaffna
UNWEGID United Nations Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance
VLSSP Viplavakari Lanka Samasamaja
Party - Revolutionary Lanka Party
 xiv

Preface

The last four decades of political violence in Sri Lanka have

witnessed the enforced disappearance of tens of thousands of
Sri Lankans. While much of the relevant literature has
contextualised disappearance as a counter-insurgency strategy
in the context of armed confrontation, the military defeat of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009 did not
bring about an end to the phenomenon. The hypothesis of this
study is that political competition was the motive behind
disappearances, which served as an integral part of a system of
state power and patronage to enable the political elite to
immobilise all political opposition.

As a central component of this political project, disappearance

enabled the ruling elite to manipulate local grievances which,
when given political expression, led to greater violence in the
permanent removal of local enemies whilst heightening
mistrust within communities. In detailing the first
disappearances in 1971 to the ceasefire agreement with the
LTTE in 2002, this study considers how an alternative
apparatus operated with impunity, due process was totally
dismantled and Sri Lankan society became politicised and
complicit with the regime, leaving survivors of political
violence with no effective remedy for legal redress or common
ground to demand social restoration.
 xv

This study explores the impact of the ruling elite’s political

project through the experiences of 87 relatives of the
disappeared. It considers how their own political project to re-
establish the socio–legal identity of the disappeared was
exploited by the political elite and their own communities
rendering them socially ostracised. Within this context,
transitional justice mechanisms including prosecutions and
social movements were manipulated and politicised along
party lines as part of a ritual of conspiracy against the victims to
deny state terror and protect those responsible for it.

Jane Thomson-Senanayake
 1

CHAPTER 1
Disappearance as political competition

1.1 Political construction of violence

T
he hypothesis of this study is that political competition was
the driving force behind the enforced disappearance of tens of
thousands of Sri Lankans carried out by the state in the
context of two Marxist insurgencies and conflict with Tamil
separatists over three decades from 1971 to 2002. In the Sri Lankan
context, disappearance has served as an integral part of a system of
state power and patronage. Under this regime, political violence was
sanctioned by the political elite with impunity and normal law did not
apply leaving no effective means of legal redress for affected families.
To understand the manner in which disappearance served a political
purpose, this study explores the history of disappearance from 1971,
providing an account of the political, legal and socio–economic
framework that allowed for the establishment of a 'shadow state' under
which disappearances were carried out. While this study focuses on
the state’s response to the 1971 Marxist insurgency as its starting
point, intolerance to political opposition including public protest
emerged as a central characteristic of governance well before the
1970s. Given this fact and the long historical roots of political
violence, this study details some of the characteristics of the state’s
response to public protest and dissent during the 1950s and 1960s to
the extent that they inform discussion about state violence and its
inextricable connection to political patronage. The study’s historical
scope extends to the 2002 peace process, which resulted in a
suspension of direct hostilities between the state and Liberation Tigers
 2

of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but did not halt the disappearances and other
abuses perpetrated both within and outside the context of the conflict.

In an attempt to deconstruct the pervasive effects of disappearance as

a mechanism of terror, the second part of this study considers the
experiences of affected families who embody the convergence of the
political project and its socio–cultural consequences for communities.
Disappearances were highly effective in demobilising all forms of
political opposition to the regime—shown by the experience of these
families whose own attempts to re-establish the socio–legal identity of
the disappeared was exploited by the political elite leaving them
socially ostracised within their own communities and without any
effective remedy. By achieving two primary objectives—rendering
individuals permanently silent and neutralising social mobilisation
against the state—disappearance enabled the ruling elite to manipulate
local grievances and tensions which led to greater violence in the
permanent removal of local enemies and rivals while heightening
mistrust.

Young rural men comprised the overwhelming majority of people

who disappeared in Sri Lanka from 1971. These rural youth, with no
stake in a political system that excluded them, a system that was
nevertheless upheld within their own communities, formed the
respective Marxist insurgencies and Tamil separatist movement—
triggering violence between as well as within communities. The
political elite perceived the country’s rural youth to be such a serious
political threat to itself and the political establishment supporting its
vested interests that it took drastic action. It devised an alternative
‘shadow state’ to secretly suppress the youth movements under the
guise of a counter-insurgency operation and disassemble all forms of
political opposition while subjugating the rural population under the
 3

banner of national security and economic prosperity. While

centralising political power and deliberately undermining the
legislature and judiciary, the ruling elite's shadow state operated with
impunity, targeting and eliminating rural youth considered a political
threat and overpowering the rural majority. The United National Party
(UNP)’s campaign of political violence conducted over 17 years of
rule and recognised as the most violent in the country’s history before
the events of 2009 was justified in the name of state building but had
the effect of state disintegration. The UNP’s overall objective was to
establish a one party state which would bring about national stability
and rapid modernisation. But the coherence of this aim was
undermined by its methods including the subjugation and
disappearance of the country’s rural youth, the displacement of ethnic
Tamils in the north and east, and the total repression of regions under
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or People’s Liberation Front (JVP) and
LTTE influence. The underlying nationalist ideology of the ruling
elite of which political violence was an outward manifestation came
into direct conflict with an alternate ethos represented by the country’s
rural youth who allegedly stood in the way of the country’s future. In
this sense, disappearance served a national security imperative to
nation building.

The politicisation of Sri Lankan society—fuelled by political violence,

dependent on state resources and patronage and coupled with deep
mistrust about the sources of violence—created conditions whereby
communities were effectively coerced by or became complicit with
the regime’s political project. Such coercion was made possible
through interference in the public service recruitment process,
politically driven decisions about the use of state funds, and the
undermining of legislative and judicial independence. At the same
time the democratic process was circumvented and control was
 4

consolidated by referendum, media censorship and bans on opposition

parties, public gatherings and trade unionism. Many Sri Lankans were
forced into polarised political camps and became complicit in the
political project of the ruling elite to avoid their own disappearance.
Some believed the state propaganda that any measure (including
disappearance) was necessary to deal with terrorism. In an
environment in which everyone was seen potentially as an enemy,
disappearance served as a control mechanism to produce a consensus
based on fear. At the same time the disappearance of individuals
became evidence of the threat of subversion and simultaneously
normalised death as the price of political activism and opposition to
the state. Indeed, the military defeat of the LTTE in 2009 did not
result in an end to the ‘white van phenomenon’, the ubiquitous modus
operandi for the abduction and disappearance of people across the
country. The fact that disappearances continue to be regularly reported
only confirms that the act has been far more than merely a counter-
terrorist tactic but rather an institutionalised method of dealing with
all forms of political opposition upon which labels such as ‘terrorist’,
‘subversive’, ‘Tamil militant’, ‘criminal’ are then imposed. Within
this context of continuing terror conducted by the shadow state,
official transitional justice mechanisms including prosecutions, truth
commissions and reparations were strictly controlled and managed to
serve political ends and confirm political divisions rather than provide
a common path towards restorative justice, national unity and
reconciliation.

The characteristics of political violence in Sri Lanka reflect the

specific characteristics of election violence, which became an
entrenched feature of Sri Lankan political life. People with a
grievance generally have not directed their aggression at the
politicians who have historically used state resources to reward their
 5

own with jobs and other resources but rather at villagers and locals
who were provided those jobs and resources (Höglund & Piyarathne
2009:297-298). Similarly state and non-state groups, including the
JVP and LTTE, directed their violence largely at civilians rather than
enemy combatants. And even though families of the disappeared
generally recognised that the state most likely carried out the
disappearance of a loved one, they directed blame towards local
tensions within their own communities. The illogical nature of the
targeting of violence reflects how power was expressed and ordered
through political hierarchies and patronage, affirming the socio-
political division between the political elite and the rest.

The overall impression on the part of many families interviewed for

this study is that the system exists to serve the narrow interests of the
political elite who are untouchable. At the same time there is a tacit
agreement between those wielding power across the political
landscape that they have common vested interests to uphold. This
sentiment was echoed by one interviewee, Mrs S, whose son
disappeared in Jaffna in 1996. She said it was a big injustice that
LTTE activists who denounced the movement were released by the
army while “harm has taken place to our sons [and we get no justice
or recognition]” (Mrs S, Jaffna District: Interview 2). Counter-
insurgency served to centralise political power in the state,
consolidating competition for access to resources, political office, and
patronage. Consequently the state became intensely paternalistic and
interventionist. Sri Lankan politics became transfixed with the
resolution of who gets what (Uyangoda 1992:43). And paradoxically,
therefore, the very institution upon which the majority of the
population depended increasingly became the very source of its
grievances. While Sri Lankan society became highly politicised, most
of the population was excluded from political power structures on
 6

which they depended. A paradigm of dependence and exclusion

within a framework of violence served as a means of coercing and
subjugating the population. Under this scheme, rural youth
represented the greatest threat not only to the vested interests of the
political elite but also to the preservation of the social conditions that
sustained the urban middle class to which the rural majority aspired to
become (Nesiah & Keenan 2004:11). Moreover, as the political elite
harnessed state resources for its own vested interests while upholding
a system of access based on patronage, everyone was “vulnerable
because he or she had something to lose” and became complicit in the
violence (Cohen 2001:155).

1.2 Beyond the human rights dimension

While disappearance is framed under the International Convention for

the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (the
convention) as a serious abuse of human rights carried out by the state,
its influence and power extend well beyond that of a human rights
abuse. However, to date, research on disappearance particularly in the
Sri Lankan context has been approached almost exclusively from a
human rights and legal perspective as a crime against the person. The
convention, to which Sri Lanka is not a signatory, defines a
disappearance as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of
deprivation of liberty by agents of the state or persons/groups acting
with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the state. By
definition, such detention is followed by a “refusal to acknowledge the
deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of
the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the
protection of the law” (Article 2). The United Nations Working Group
on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance (UNWGEID) noted in
1983 that “a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 7

and the International Covenants on Human Rights show that to a

greater or lesser degree practically all basic human rights of … a
person [who suffers enforced or involuntary disappearance] are
infringed” (E/CN.4/1983/14:47). Recognition that disappearance
entails a plethora of abuses against the person implies that the act
might violate a range of socio-cultural and political norms. Also, the
concept of state denial upon which disappearance is based sets this
violation apart from other human rights abuses as relatives will remain
silent in the hope that such action will keep the disappeared person
alive. However, ambiguity regarding the socio-legal status of the
disappeared person makes it impossible for families to secure
pensions, purchase land, take out a loan, or even enrol children in
school let alone seek justice, demand accountability and secure
compensation. Such matters are made even more complicated when
state officials question the very existence of the individual victim.
Furthermore, the concept of disappearance as an “ongoing crime” so
long as the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person remains
unknown indicates that its reach goes beyond the individual affecting
not only the fundamental relationship between citizenry and state but
also the very foundations on which societies are based and ordered—
foundations such as safety, stability and trust. Perhaps more than any
other violation the act of disappearance is not only directed at the
individual but also their community with the purpose of totally
rupturing and undermining social and cultural norms and replacing
any sense of normality in everyday life with fear, insecurity and
mistrust. While the concept of disappearance as an ongoing and
therefore unresolved crime is inextricably linked to the ongoing and
unresolved trauma experienced by the relatives of those disappeared,
it is also directly associated with the ongoing impunity and
untouchable status of those in power who resist efforts to establish the
truth and justice for victims. Disappearances enable a state to turn the
 8

world on its head, the normal into the abnormal and the extraordinary
into the routine by providing a means to act against its own citizenry,
which conceals the identity and motive of the perpetrators and
victimises the victims. Non-violent institutions such as the courts
otherwise responsible for safeguarding rights and protecting victims
are complicit in the process, upholding the impunity of the perpetrator,
and serving the interests of the ruling elite against the population.
Within this context, concepts of human rights and their realisation in
the traditional sense exist in the abstract (Coomaraswamy 1993b:155).

The impact of disappearance, as a socio–political phenomenon,

assaults any sense of community, shared identity or trust and
dismantles communities. Social cleavages based on class, caste, power
and patronage are exploited by the act of disappearance, by
simultaneously deepening such divisions and creating new grievances.
The presence of dumped corpses in public places serves as both a
reminder of the power and impunity of the regime as well as the costs
of political activism. The absence of the disappeared body does
likewise, but also perpetuates an endless psychosis of terror which can
suspend individuals and their communities in a state of acquiescent
silence for fear of inadvertently killing off their missing loved one or
being abducted themselves. At the same time, disappearance assaults
social and cultural norms in both application and consequence as
funeral and mourning are permanently suspended, concepts of natural
justice are totally quashed, the socio–legal status of surviving relatives
remains ambiguous while social relations are distorted by mistrust and
open to manipulation and exploitation. Normalcy of daily life is
completely disrupted with culturally proscribed boundaries between
public and private, victim and perpetrator, life and death eroded.
Relatives of the disappeared as the nexus between the state and the
disappeared are marked as both politically suspect and socially
 9

polluting. A consensus of fear is produced as entire communities

become complicit in a ritual of conspiracy against the victims to avoid
their own disappearance. Inadvertently, their silence serves as a form
of sanction in the denial of state terror and protection of those
responsible for it. In the Sri Lankan experience, the families of the
disappeared have become the polluted excuse with which the state is
able to constantly remind the population of the price of political
opposition.

To identify the reasons why disappearance became a central feature of

state terror and to consider its implications for those immediately
affected and for their communities, this study provides a
comprehensive account of political violence in Sri Lanka and its
aftermath. As a political history of the phenomenon of disappearance,
it is the first study of its kind to establish the connection between the
causes for disappearances, the means by which they were carried out
and the social impact in the Sri Lankan context. It considers how
disappearances on such a significant scale could take place under what
appeared to be a functional democracy and considers the
characteristics of the state which facilitated and concealed such abuses
over decades. It also explores the consequences for families and
communities, surveying and drawing on political, socio–cultural, legal
and economic factors that contributed to and engendered
disappearances. The central tenet of the thesis is that, the underlying
intention behind disappearance is political competition which has
served as an integral part of a political project directed at preserving
the interests and power base of the country’s political elite. This study
reveals that a democratic system based on the rule of law was
transformed through the imposition of legal and political measures
that served the interests of the powerful elite intent on demobilising
alternative politics and destroying the ‘other’ regardless of the costs.
 10

As democratic practices were curtailed and due process was

politicised and dismantled, an alternative political apparatus or
shadow state flourished. As an expression of the benefits of winning,
disappearances served as a constant reminder of the untouchability of
those in power while amplifying for political rivals the costs of
political activism. As an integral part of a national project to
demobilise collective politics by destroying all possible alternatives,
disappearances were carried out to eliminate rivals and politicise
prevailing divisions within communities to exclude, repress and target
particular categories of society.

1.3 Transitional justice foregone

This study considers the experiences of families of the disappeared in

relation to the state and their communities to establish an
understanding of the impact of the political project at the societal level.
It also considers the various transitional justice mechanisms in relation
to disappearance including prosecutions, presidential commissions of
inquiry into disappearances and reparations including compensation,
as well as efforts to establish the truth and prevent further abuses as
expressed by mothers’ movements and disappearance organisations.
In placing disappearance within the framework of a highly politicised
and divided Sri Lankan society, this study determines that transitional
justice mechanisms were systemically politicised to the point where
they confirmed social divisions, widened mistrust, further polarised
communities and victimised the victims. Such mechanisms merely
served a political imperative to uphold the legitimacy of the ruling
party, ensuring that neither unification nor political inclusion was
achieved.
 11

In the field of transitional justice, disappearance as a serious and

ongoing violation against the individual and their families became a
catalyst for local protest, international mobilisation and the creation of
the convention. The introduction of human rights into international
politics though these mechanisms made accountability for such crimes
a condition of international respectability. However, in the Sri Lankan
experience, human rights were manipulated as the commissions of
inquiry into disappearance established by the ruling elite served a
political rather than reconciliatory purpose. The commissions enabled
the ruling elite to maintain a façade of accountability while tightly
controlling the commissions’ work, politicising their findings to
delegitimise opponents and ignoring their recommendations for
legislative and political reform.

Commissions of inquiry, which have become the state’s preferred

means of transitional justice discourse, have served as a forum to
silence victims and ridicule opponents. Situated between state and
non-state violence on the one hand, and the state and the disappeared
on the other, the families of the disappeared have been positioned as
guilty by the very fact of their victimhood. Further, any appeals for
national reconciliation were politically motivated and designed to
polarise Sri Lankan society by emphasising that aspirations such as
the decentralisation of political power or separatism had to be totally
abandoned as the prerequisite for reconciliation.

The theoretical approach of this thesis is inductive. It investigates the

disappearance event and its aftermath through the experience of
individual survivors in order to theorise the logic, aims and
consequences of the practice. The event of disappearance and both
institutional and societal responses including the failure of
accountability as well as intimidation, silencing and ostracism provide
 12

the empirical basis for developing a grounded theory on disappearance

in Sri Lanka. By detailing the various legislative provisions that
facilitated disappearance and its concealment including the emergence
of a shadow state, the study builds a body of evidence to demonstrate
that disappearances were carried out with the intention of producing
impunity.

1.4 Scope and methodology

Studies on political violence in Sri Lanka usually mention

disappearance but without providing insight into how or why
disappearance became so widespread (Ponnambalam 1983;
Chandraprema 1991; Wijesinha 1991; de Silva 1998; Gunaratna 2001;
Dias 2003; Human Rights Watch 2008). Most studies rarely go
beyond outlining the way the emergency powers provided impunity
for the perpetrators and overlook the social impact of the phenomenon.
The focus has largely rested on the legislative mechanics rather than
the political intent behind the abuse. However this thesis, by
recognising and contextualising disappearance as a counter-
insurgency strategy deployed in response to the violence of the
Marxist JVP and separatist LTTE, analyses the wider political
landscape of which disappearance was an integral part. It contributes
to a more comprehensive understanding of its impact on individuals,
communities and their relationship with the state. However this study
does not attempt a comparative analysis of disappearance in the Sri
Lankan context with its practice in Latin America or elsewhere. It
focuses specifically on the Sri Lankan experience to address the
lacuna of the lack of comprehensive study of disappearance in that
country which needed to be filled. By locating the study of
disappearance in the experiences of the families of the disappeared
who served as the nexus between the state, affected communities and
 13

the disappeared individual, this study contributes to an understanding

of the sociology of disappearance. It attempts to provide the fullest
account of how and why the practice of disappearance became
widespread in an otherwise apparently functional democracy together
with its legacy on individuals, communities and democratic
institutions.

The research methods applied in this study include 87 open and semi-
structured interviews in eight districts across Sri Lanka with people
whose relatives had disappeared over three decades. As the
overwhelming majority of disappearances occurred in two specific
contexts, the JVP insurgency centred in the southern, western and
central provinces from 1987–1990 (commonly referred to as the south)
and the conflict with the LTTE focused in the north and east from
1983–2002, interviews were conducted in four districts in the south,
west and central provinces and four districts in the north and east
provinces. The appendix provides an overview of the interviews.
While women and men of all ages have been subject to disappearance,
overwhelmingly the disappeared comprise young rural men. This fact
is reflected in the interviews conducted for this study, which focuses
on the disappearance of this demographic group.

Disappearances affected all communities across Sri Lanka including

that of the Muslim community primarily located in the east. However,
this study is focused on those that took place in Sinhalese and Tamil
communities. The last national census in 1981 revealed that the
Sinhalese comprised 74 percent of the then population of 14.8 million
(which is now estimated at 21 million), Sri Lankan Tamils 13 percent
and Muslims 7 per cent (ICG 2011:1). Sinhalese were concentrated
largely in the southwest and central parts of the island while Tamils
primarily occupied the north and east of the country and Muslims the
 14

east. While impacting all ethnic groups, disappearances were almost

exclusively carried out in rural communities where, according to a
2001 census, 80 percent of the Sri Lankan population resided.

There is no official estimate of the number of people who have

disappeared in Sri Lanka since 1971. The reports of the Presidential
Commissions of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or
Disappearance of Persons established by the People's Alliance
government in 1994 serve as the official record of disappearances
carried out from 1 June 1988. The four commissions established the
disappearance of 23,087 persons. However, estimates provided by
disappearance organisations including the Organisation of Parents and
Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD) suggest that over
60,000 people disappeared between 1987 and 1991 alone (Kumarage
2005).

This study serves as a series of counter-narratives to that of the

official version offered by the respective political parties and the elite
of what happened during a period of political violence. While it deals
with a specific period of 1971 to 2002, it challenges the simple ethnic
conflict construction of violence, which remains the official position
on the conflict with the LTTE, by recognising it in the contexts of the
political elite and their manipulation of political constituencies,
particularly middle class fear and anxiety. Given the fact that it was
men who disappeared and women who were left to deal with the
ramifications, these counter-narratives reflect a collective memory of
a gendered crime. However, with a few key exceptions including
within the country’s leadership, Sri Lankan women have not been
recognised in the country’s history outside the symbolic as mothers in
a master narrative of the nation (de Alwis 1995; de Mel 2001).
 15

Rather than focus on some of the more well-known and therefore well
documented cases of disappearance such as that of Richard de Zoya or
the Embilipitiya disappearances, this study documents the experiences
of people whose stories had yet to be documented or heard. Such
stories, which remain ignored, undermined or overlooked in the
anthology of political violence in Sri Lanka, are central to
understanding both the impact of the violence and its aftermath.
Interviews were conducted in 2004 and yet, the modus operandi for
disappearances which continue to be reported has remained largely the
same while the victims continue to be criminalised and demonised and
their surviving relations socially ostracised. As an institutionalised
form of repression which continues to be used against political
opposition, disappearances are still carried out with impunity under
the cover of anti-terrorist legislation and on the pretext of re-
establishing law and order.
 16

CHAPTER 2
Disappearances 1971

T
he first recorded cases of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka
took place in the context of an armed insurrection in 1971. In
response to a JVP insurrection, the United Front (UF)
coalition government imposed a state of emergency that facilitated
disappearances and paved the way for the institutionalisation of
political violence. Prolonged recourse to Emergency Regulations
under which the police and security forces were granted wide powers
of arrest and detention extended the power, reach and control of the
state. This was to become a central feature of governance over the
following decades. The JVP’s “one day revolution” was a reaction to
patronage politics that served the interests of the urban political elite
at the expense of the country’s majority. However, rather than address
the grievances that triggered the insurrection, the UF government used
emergency powers and introduced the 1972 constitution to
institutionalise patronage within the political system. By declaring
Parliament the supreme repository of power rather than the law, the
UF was able to concentrate power in the hands of the executive for the
benefit of its own vested interests.

2.1 Nexus between state welfare, nationalisation and

political patronage

The roots of political authoritarianism in Sri Lanka can be traced to a

range of political and constitutional developments (Warnapala
1994:161). While the country gained full political independence from
Britain in 1948 without bloodshed, the British transferred power into
 17

the hands of the Western-educated, highly urbanised, high caste elite

(Singer 1964:37 cited in Ponnambalam 1983:71). In short, the socio–
economic class who most closely resembled the British in terms of
values, attitudes and interests. This exclusive class “set” had,
moreover, dominated Sri Lanka’s political establishment before
independence as restricted franchise until the mid-1930s had
permitted only men of wealth and education to vote (de Silva 1993:4;
Vijayalakshmi 2001:12). The ruling class was made up of two groups
of bourgeoisie, the traditional bourgeoisie represented by the
Govigama (cultivators) and other upper castes along with traditional
land holders, and the new rich or colonial bourgeoisie largely
comprising Karāva caste elites. This group built their wealth on newly
created industries such as graphite mining and bolstered their prestige
through a Western education—an important attribute and
determination of status (Roberts 1995:279). Historical rivalry and
conflict between these two sets of elites over resources grew in
intensity from the 1900s, exploding into open and violent attacks by
the Karāva on the prestige, power and alleged caste superiority of the
Govigama. However, this conflict had been temporarily put aside in
favour of common vested interest in the economic continuity of
British rule and the colonial patronage system on which it was based
(Roberts 1995:291; Jayawardena 2000:299,316-7). Subsequent
transfer of power was one of continuity of leadership between the last
stage of colonial rule and the early stages of independence with the
elite set to dominate Sri Lankan politics and political life (de Silva
1993:8-9; Ivan 1989:6). Rupesinghe argued that the post-colonial state
was created by the colonial power “as a supreme political and legal
authority to manage and maintain the political economy of
colonialism” (2000:19). No genuine cultural or socio–political
transformation took place at the time of independence, therefore, as
the ruling elite sought to maintain the socio–political and economic
 18

status quo. Moreover, rather than forming the basis of a national

movement for full independence, the bourgeoisie gained both power
and privilege over the rest of the local population by using a patronage
system based on the use of English with an English education as the
primary means of social advancement. They had, therefore, a vested
interest in the preservation of the colonial structure (Ponnambalam
1983:43-44).

In the post-colonial period, Sri Lanka’s ruling class set about

transforming some of its wealth into social and political capital
(Jayawardena 2000:349). Initially part of the United National Party
(UNP) established by the colonial bourgeoisie to form government at
the time of independence, in 1951 the traditional bourgeoisie broke
away and established the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in pursuit
of its own class-based interests. When their conflict re-emerged
following independence, it found common expression in a form of a
populist nationalism or Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that became the
ruling ideology of both sets of bourgeoisie (Jayasundara-Smits
2011:83). The centralised political system that evolved led to the
emergence of a “dynastic democracy” whereby political power was
recognised as the means through which class and clan interests could
be advanced by a few competitive and highly powerful elite few
(Jayasundara-Smits 2011:76).

While the elite committed themselves to the continuation of a colonial

economic structure, the presence of a strong alternative political
movement represented by the two Marxist parties restrained their
ambitions. The “popular, democratic political tradition” already
established in the country represented by a politically active and
unionised urban workforce effectively forced the hand of the ruling
elite to divert a substantial proportion of government revenue into
 19

welfare, health and education (Hettige 1999:301). Throughout the

1940s and 1950s, Sri Lankan governance was characterised by a
welfare ideology (Kloos 1999) with 56 per cent of government
revenue absorbed by the main welfare services of the state at
independence (Peiris 1993:181). Such services and measures
including colonisation schemes enhanced and extended the
government’s role over almost all basic aspects of life including food,
health and education. The manner in which decisions were made
about the allocation of resources and the identification of beneficiaries
were of critical importance, therefore, to the lives of the majority.
Conversely, in light of the importance of state subsidies and grants,
securing control over such activities through the political process
provided opportunity to wield considerable power (Peiris 1993:182).
According to Ponnambalam, the economic policies of the UNP regime
of 1947–1956 were directed towards promoting and securing the
party’s own vested interests and power using state control and
English-language based patronage networks (1983:85). The use of
state resources to solidify its power base became an entrenched
characteristic of governance. It contributed to the high stakes involved
for the public (which held a deeply rooted expectation of state
assistance) creating a dynamic in which the majority became
dependent on state resources while at the same time excluded from but
complicit in the political process through which such resources were
apportioned. This emerging dynamic found expression in public
protest on the one hand and intolerance towards such protest by the
state on the other. In 1953, when the masses came out to peacefully
demonstrate against the abolition of the national rice subsidy and
increased prices on essential goods and services, Prime Minister
Dudley Senanayake deployed the army against them under a state of
emergency, which he extended for more than 1000 days
(Ponnambalam 1983:86; Vijayalakshmi 2001:27). The public
 20

backlash to the abolition of the subsidy was so great that Mr

Senanayake was forced to resign and the subsidy promptly restored.
The existence of a significant alternative political movement
represented by the two Marxist parties, the Lanka Samasamaja Party
(LSSP) and Communist Party (CP) which enjoyed a large unionised
labour support base prevented efforts by the UNP to adopt free market
policies until 1977 when the UNP launched an extensive package of
liberal economic policies (Hettige 1999:301). From 1953 to 1977,
food policy was guided by electoral considerations as food subsidies
became a deeply rooted public expectation (Peiris 1993b:209). At the
same time, the state had demonstrated a total lack of proportionality in
response to the protest, a reality that characterised governance from
that time on (Wimal Fernando, personal communication). 1

The 1956 election won on the basis of the “Sinhala only” language
policy of the SLFP-led coalition brought communal identity to the
fore where it remained. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s victory represented
a rejection of Sri Lankan nationalism, recognising pluralism as a
fundamental feature of the democratic political system and embracing
Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, which was “fundamentally divisive in
its impact on the country” because of its “Sinhalese and Buddhist
orientation” (de Silva 1993:11). Emphasis placed on a Sinhala-
Buddhist rather than multi-ethnic polity was reinforced by the
importance given to Buddhism above all other religions by the state
(de Silva 1993:13). In the face of deteriorating economic conditions
and heightened conflict over resource allocations, Buddhism was
placed at the forefront of national affairs to legitimise a narrow self-

1
Wimal Fernando established the Movement for the Defence of Democratic
Rights in the 1980s and formed the Movement for Free and Fair Elections in
the 1990s.
 21

interested and discriminatory policy agenda and derive prestige for the
regime (Warnapala 1994:8; Jayasundara-Smits 2011:81). Political
power and language reform became the tools through which the self-
proclaimed Sinhalese SLFP government of 1956 was able to “change
the terms on which ethnic groups competed for jobs” in the
government sector (Roberts 1994:260). Indeed, during its nine-year
tenure (1956–1965), the SLFP played the race and religion “card” in
pursuit of its own economic interests with Sinhalese-Buddhism
confirmed as the dominant ideology of the ruling elite (Bastian 1999:
7). When Minister of Agriculture, Philip Gunawardena, then sought to
introduce mildly radical agrarian reform legislation, 10 ministers had
him expelled from the cabinet (Ponnambalam 1983:100).
Considerable parliamentary majorities enjoyed by both parties at
various times further entrenched a “pervasive role for the government
in all areas of economic, social or cultural activity” (Wanasinghe
1994:61) and led to a situation whereby the state became highly
antagonistic to minority and opposition opinion. State control became
an end in itself—the Sinhalisation of the government service resulting
from the implementation of the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956
(“Sinhala only” Act) provided the government with an opportunity to
stack the public service with its own supporters, paving the way for
the politicisation of the bureaucracy (de Silva 1993:19-20; Roberts
1994:260).

In the early 1960s, the SLFP government responded to a shortfall in

foreign exchange by extending state control over many industries and
continuing its nationalisation program by channelling an even wider
range of consumer goods through government-sponsored cooperatives.
Life insurance was made a state monopoly and the only local bank in
the country was nationalised along with the distribution of petroleum
and kerosene. Similarly the assets of oil companies operating in the
 22

country were taken over by the state (de Silva 1981:535). In 1963 the
traditional village headman system was replaced by the state’s
imposed Grama Sevaka (village level administrator) system. The
Grama Sevaka functioned as the lowest level of state administration.
Underlying this move was a desire by the SLFP to erode the support
base of the UNP within the state bureaucracy by stacking it with its
own supporters (de Silva 1993c:89). The politicisation of the public
service and the manner in which recruitment, promotion, transfer and
dismissal depended on political power led to the erosion of its
independence, reaching a point in the 1980s when it was totally
compromised and committed solely to serving the interests of the
government of the day (de Silva 1993c:90; Presidential Commission
on Youth 1990:2).

The UNP attempted to reverse the nationalisation program of the

previous government when it returned to power in 1965. However, its
reluctance to hand over control of key aspects of the economy led to
few substantial reforms. The nationalisation program then returned in
earnest under the 1970-elected SLFP government. The SLFP ruled for
16 of the 21 years between 1956 and 1977, and its nationalisation
policies entrenched state dominance over all areas of social and
economic life (Wanasinghe 1994:61). As a result, the electorate
became increasingly dependent and expectant upon the state for
services, goods and employment (Wimal Fernando, personal
communication). Given the scarcity of resources, the political system
and thus the political parties within it, became the primary means of
access to and control over such resources. Thus, political affiliation
became a key criterion for the distribution of state benefits, and access
to political power became the principle means of obtaining wealth and
controlling resources, controlled through the plethora of licences and
permits managed by members of parliament (MPs). Securing the
 23

patronage of powerful politicians became the primary means of

securing state resources and services. The relationship that began to
emerge between state and citizenry was one of exclusion from the
political process, which served the interests of the political elite, and
dependence on state resources managed by MPs. As the
nationalisation of key industries strengthened state power and
influence, new jobs became available as did greater opportunities for
politicians and middle-persons to enjoy kickbacks (de Silva 1993:20-
21). Indeed, according to de Silva, the successive increase in the
voting population since 1960 can be explained not just by population
growth but also by the emerging phenomena of the state through MPs
becoming the primary source of employment in a society which
already placed a high premium on state sector employment (de Silva
1993:20-21).

MPs evidently favoured their own supporters in the distribution of

state resources, which predictably intensified antagonism among
opposition parties and their supporters. Elections became a
battleground between the two major parties and their supporters as an
election win provided the means to capture political power and secure
control over national resources and wealth but also to undermine
enemies, ridicule rivals and secure revenge. As power shifted over the
years between the two main parties and the elite families they
represented, politics became both increasingly personal and violent
(de Silva 1993:23). In a winner takes all system in which both major
parties came to power with considerable majorities, negotiation was
seen as demeaning, a form of unnecessary compromise while the
election victory was an opportunity to humiliate opponents
(Coomaraswamy 1993b:159). By the time of the 1971 insurrection,
successive governments had used election victories to exact revenge
on rivals and to reward supporters with employment and state
 24

concessions, thereby securing support for future elections. Securing

political power through patronage and election violence became
accepted political practice. Thus, while patronage was a key
determinant of power in Sri Lanka long before independence, it
became increasingly entrenched from 1970 to the point where it began
to undermine the democratic process (Wimal Fernando, personal
communication).

2.2 Decline of parliamentary socialism and rise of

revolutionary socialism

The leftist parties, including the Troskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP) and CP, enjoyed considerable working class support and
emerged as the most serious challenge to the UNP government in
1956 when the head of the LSSP, Dr NM Perera became the leader of
the opposition. By the 1960 election, however, Sinhalese Buddhist
populism represented by the “Sinhala only” Act and upheld by both
major parties of the day effectively cut across class and caste
differences within the Sinhalese community decimating the leftist
parties at the polls. Indeed, the ethos of “Sinhala only” had permeated
all aspects of Sri Lankan politics while sectionalist claims by religious
and ethnic groups were labelled “communalist” and subsequently
denied legitimacy (Roberts 1994:251). In a context where any form of
negotiation with “communalists” was seen as a weakness rather than
strength, the multi-ethnic secular policies of the leftist parties were
politically disadvantageous. The LSSP’s adoption of “Sinhala only” as
official policy in June 1964 for reasons of political expedience marked
a political turning point after which no major party in Sinhalese-
dominated regions upheld equal language and other rights of both
ethnic Tamils and Sinhalese (de Silva 1993:15; Ponnambalam
 25

1983:129). Compromising on the issue of language and injection of

Sinhalese chauvinistic policies into their mandate to gain popularity
with the country’s working class actually had the opposite effect.
They lost their multi-ethnic support base, political influence and
relevance and left a representation gap in national politics for the
country’s working class. After 1964, generations of Tamil voters who
had previously backed the leftist parties redirected their support to the
Tamil-dominated Federal Party or withdrew from the democratic
process and formed militant organisations in pursuit of a separate
Tamil state (Roberts 1994:9-10; Bopage 2003).

The vacuum created by the demise of the “traditional” left parties

including the LSSP and CP and disillusionment with their inability to
affect social reform was to be filled by the “new” left JVP who
mobilised in rural areas and among the school and university student
population. Uyangoda observed that the demise of socialist political
discourse coincided with or provided the opportunity for the rise of
nationalist politics among both Sinhalese and Tamil youth (Uyangoda
1992:47). The formation of the JVP coincided, moreover, with the re-
emergence of the parliamentary democracy versus revolution debate
within the left movement (Hoole 2001:9). Given the failure of the
democratic system to initiate equitable change and improvement in the
quality of life for the majority and with the traditional leftist parties
split, divided and compromised, there was growing acceptance
amongst Sinhalese youth of the idea that violence was a legitimate
means through which genuine social reform could be achieved
(Wimal Fernando, personal communication).
 26

2.3 Unemployment and youth alienation

The economic policies of both the 1965 UNP and 1970 SLFP-led
governments failed to make any significant impact on the
unemployment crisis which emerged as the key socio–economic issue
of the country in the 1960s (de Silva 1981:537). The unemployment
crisis was fuelled by a dramatic rise in the country’s population. From
1946 to 1960, the number of people between 15 and 65 years of age
(who comprised the working population) increased from 5.25 million
to over 7.5 million. A July 1972 International Labour Organisation
report stated that 64 per cent of the country’s 750,000 unemployed
were between 19 and 25 years of age (cited in Vijayalakshmi 2001:25).
At the same time, the unemployed workforce amounted to one-
twentieth of the country’s population (de Silva 1981:538). Thus, a
vast proportion of the country’s population was young and
unemployed. Up to 42 per cent of the total population was under 15
years of age, many of whom would have made up the country’s 65 per
cent living below the poverty line (Ponnambalam 1983:153;
Selvaratnam cited in Alles 1976:237).

Increasing youth unemployment in turn placed additional pressure on

the university system, as secondary school leavers sought university
entrance. University of Ceylon enrolments rose from 2,000 in 1950 to
12,000 in 1970 (Peiris 1993b:198). Countrywide, students seeking
university admission rose from 5,377 in 1960 to 30,445 in 1970 and
yet the number of university places only increased marginally from
1,812 to 3,471 over the same period (Ponnambalam 1983:175).
Similarly, with free education and the swabhasha (local languages)
policy of the 1950s, secondary school enrolment rose from 65,000 in
1950 to 225,000 in 1960 (Ponnambalam 1983:175). Because the
country’s education system and wider society encouraged a university
 27

education and white-collar employment at the expense of vocational

alternatives, considerably more school students aspired to a university
education than the system could handle. There was, moreover, a heavy
expectation on the state to provide educational opportunities and
subsequent employment given its dominance in all aspects of the
economic, social and political life. However, few of the 250,000
students who graduated from the country’s schools and universities
each year were able to obtain meaningful employment (Nadesan
1988). University students graduated with skills that were unmatched
by the requirements of the economy. They found the manual jobs that
were available in fishing, plantations, mining and agriculture totally
unappealing, expecting instead the state to provide public sector
employment (Bopage 2003; de Silva 1981:538; Hettige 1999:305).
The UNP's social welfare and agricultural policies were out of touch
with the expectations of the young generation which sought white-
collar employment (Gunatilleke, Tiruchelvam & Coomaraswamy
cited in Marino 1989:11). Moreover, the government’s “green
revolution” of 1967 which primarily focused on rice and potato
cultivation as well as other state agricultural production schemes were
mismanaged and misdirected, providing opportunities for village
middle-men to get rich and thereby exacerbating the gap between the
rural rich and poor and ultimately contributing to the massive swing
against the UNP at the 1970 election (Vijayalakshmi 2001:8).

At the time of the 1971 insurrection, a substantial proportion of the

country’s youth found themselves educated but without the means to
access employment or the patronage system it provided for. When the
newly-elected United Front-coalition government of 1970 not only
failed to deliver on its promise of social reform and employment
within three months of coming to power but also openly appointed its
own loyalists and supporters to scarce positions, it further alienated
 28

rural graduates and students. An increasingly disenfranchised youth

concluded that the UF had behaved no better than the previous UNP
regime. They took the view that state power under the self-declared
socialist government of Mrs Bandaranaike and those before her
simply served as a means by which the ruling elite protected and
promoted its own vested interests. In stark contrast, many Sinhalese
youths were attracted to the JVP because its “five lectures” sought to
address the daily problems specifically facing rural communities. 2 The
JVP asserted that the social oppression of villagers and inequalities
that rural youths faced resulted from government malpractice—and
that armed revolution was the only means of liberation from such
constraints (Gunaratna 2001:62). The fact that the “traditional” left
parties saw the movement as a threat to their support base, legitimacy
and power, merely made the JVP more attractive to rural youths.

2.4 Growing intolerance of the state

In 1947 the State Council passed the repressive Public Security

Ordinance No. 25, 1947 (PSO) in response to a massive but peaceful
demonstration of the country’s working class against colonial rule and
transfer of power to the local elite (Ponnambalam 1983:65-66; Hoole
2001:15). Under the PSO, emergency laws could be enacted in
pursuance of powers granted by the ordinance. The demonstration
shook the establishment which relied on the security forces and
repressive legislation to stifle the public unrest. Thereafter, the
political elite systematically set about destroying the solidarity

2
While the five lectures were developed and adapted over time, in the late
1980s, the five lectures included “The crisis of the capitalist system”, “There
is no solution to the old leftist and capitalist systems”, “How can we solve
this crisis”, “The history of the JVP” and “The path to socialism in Sri
Lanka” (Gunaratna 2001:62).
 29

between the Sinhalese, Tamil and Indian Tamil plantation working

classes that threatened the elite’s control over political power and state
resources. This was achieved by the enactment of the Ceylon
Citizenship Act No. 18 of 1948 and the Indian and Pakistani Residents
(Citizenship) Act of 1949 which denied citizenship to Indian Tamils
coupled with the Ceylon Parliamentary Elections Amendment Act No.
48 of 1949 which disenfranchised them (Ponnambalam 1983: Kloos
1999; Hoole 2001; Warnapala 1994).

The imposition of the PSO in 1947 marked a key moment in Sri

Lankan history, given that rule by emergency legislation was to
become a feature of every administration thereafter. The combination
of Emergency Regulations (ERs) and military force was the preferred
means of dealing with dissent rather than addressing the structural
inequalities and grievances that had given rise to it. While the
imposition of ERs was often justified as a response to hostilities such
as the anti-Tamil violence in 1956, the regulations were also misused
by the state to enforce its own will on the Sri Lankan public and in
particular the Tamil community (Hoole 2001:15). A contradictory
trend began to emerge. When concessions to the Tamil community
were considered by the government of the day, anti-Tamil riots
instigated by the political opposition followed. Thereafter, a state of
emergency would be imposed leading to the suppression of citizens
who advocated for Tamil rights. In 1958, under a state of emergency
imposed in the wake of anti-Tamil riots, 150 Tamils including 10
Federal Party MPs were arrested while 10,000 Tamils displaced by the
riots were shipped off to Jaffna (Ponnambalam 1983:113; Roberts
1994:331). In 1961 the Federal Party launched a peaceful
disobedience campaign against the SLFP government which had
declared Sinhala to be the national language of administration,
paralysing government administration in Tamil areas (Ponnambalam
 30

1983:121-2). Mrs Bandaranaike’s government responded by imposing

a state of emergency, as previous governments had done in the wake
of peaceful action, and deploying the army to occupy the north and
east provinces. According to Ponnambalam, the repression that
followed in the north and east was of such severity that an official
inquiry was established to probe into the actions of the security forces
(1983:122). From 1953, successive governments were increasingly
reliant upon emergency rule which was imposed on at least eight
separate occasions and for increasingly extended periods before the
1971 JVP insurgency (Tamilnation 15 November 2007). The UNP
government of 1965–1970 imposed emergency regulations and
thereby suspended normal law for three-and-a-half years of a five-year
term (Halliday 1971:8).

2.5 “Che Guevara’s” revolution

In 1965 Rohana Wijeweera formed the JVP which mainly attracted

educated and unemployed rural youth intent on becoming
revolutionaries modelled on Che Guevara. The Che Kalliya (Che
Guaras) as they were known enjoyed a membership of 100,000 by
early 1971 comprising university staff, students, workers and bhikkus
(Buddhist monks) most of whom were Sinhalese Buddhists and
between 16 and 25 years of age (Gunasekara 1988:24; Gunaratna
2001:9; Alles 1976:247). While the JVP kept its activities out of the
public eye, thousands of youths are believed to have attended JVP
lectures. Some were simply curious, but others were genuinely
interested, providing assistance to the movement and its membership.

The JVP initially endorsed the UF-coalition campaign at the 1970

election. However, in May it withdrew its support for the new
government and by August the same year, launched a campaign of
 31

intimidation against the UF, threatening violent action unless state

policies were reformed (Alles 1976:64). In response, the Secretary of
the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs, Mr Ratnavale stated on
9 August that the JVP should be eradicated given that its main
objective was to overthrow the government (Alles 1976:207). Four
days later, he publicly declared that the JVP was “the government’s
public enemy No.1 and one which had to be relentlessly pursued and
eradicated”—an exercise for which, Mr Ratnavale noted, the
government was considering amending the law (cited in Gunaratna
2001:86). By late August, JVP members and supporters across the 19
districts where the movement was active were assaulted by the police
with thousands arrested over the following months (Gunaratna
2001:86). According to official records, some 5,067 persons were held
in detention in 18 police divisions before the JVP insurgency of 5
April 1971, including 263 held in Jaffna (Gunaratna 2001:105).

On 13 March 1971 the JVP leader, Rohana Wijeweera, was arrested in

Amparai District. The JVP was proscribed, ERs imposed and security
forces deployed with the intention of “wiping out” the movement
(Alles 1976:106; Gunaratna 2001:105; Nadesan 1988:20). With
hundreds of members including its leader in detention, the JVP
launched its revolution on 5 April, attacking 93 police stations around
the country (Criminal Justice Commission 1976:409). The state’s
response was brutal. Deployed with extraordinary powers under the
ERs and a mandate to crush the insurgency, the state security forces
and police abducted, tortured and extrajudicially executed suspected
JVP members (JVPers) while also engaging in helicopter bombing
and mortar shell attacks. Despite the fact that most police stations
were re-captured in less than a week, the state’s response to the “one-
day revolution” was not only totally disproportionate to the risk posed
 32

by the JVP but was to amount to years of repression (Alles 1976:145;

Gunaratna 2001:99).

2.6 Emergency Regulations and disappearances

The ERs imposed in March 1971 to deal with the JVP threat provided
the police and security forces with wide powers of arrest and detention
without the normal checks on their actions or safeguards for those
held by them. The elements contained in the 1971 ERs had the effect
of placing both the detainee and the officer responsible for their arrest
and detention outside the reach of judicial review.

The 1971 ERs gave power to police to arrest without a warrant and
detain on suspicion for up to 15 days at any location designated by the
Inspector General of Police (IGP) without having to bring the detainee
before a magistrate. The police could, therefore, take someone off the
streets, detain them incommunicado in police custody without charge
or trial and not report that detention to any authority or the family of
the detainee for 15 days (Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka (CRM)
1979:16). As the use and threat of violence and other forms of
harassment were already well-established police practice (CRM 1979;
Nadesan 1988), the ERs gave the police considerable scope to
brutalise and abuse those within their custody. Indeed, allegations of
police brutality by those detained under the ERs were still being made
up to four years after the insurrection (Amnesty International (AI)
1975:50). At the end of 15 days, detainees were supposed to be
automatically transferred to prison under a mandatory remand order
issued by a magistrate, at which time prison authorities would notify
their next-of-kin (Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Justice cited
in AI 1975:2). In many instances, however, detainees were never
 33

brought before a magistrate at the time the warrant of committal to

prison was signed (AI 1975:4).

The ERs further facilitated the violation of human rights by state

officials by the admissibility of statements made in police custody as
evidence in court. The deliberate removal of the safeguard under
normal law against forced confessions and the implied accompanying
abuses used to extract them effectively gave the police licence to
detain arbitrarily and torture. As police brutality was already an
“undeniable feature of our society” (CRM 1979:17), the ERs were
deliberately drafted to provide a framework for the prolonged
detention of suspects without accompanying legal safeguards
including the writ of habeas corpus which was suspended. In addition,
the ERs removed the power of the courts to grant bail, which could
only be granted by order of the executive (CRM 1979:91). By
removing magisterial powers in favour of political power, the function
of magistrates was eroded to that of a rubber-stamp on the police
application (CRM 1979:91&96). Finally, the lawfulness of the
detention order issued by the Defence Minister could not be
challenged in court. In this manner, decisions about arrest, detention
and bail were placed beyond the normal controls of the courts and put
in the hands of the police and executive.

In addition to the power to arrest on suspicion without a warrant and

effectively hold an individual incommunicado on political rather than
legal grounds, the ERs gave the Assistant Superintendent or Officer-
in-Charge or any personnel authorised by them the authority to
dispose of bodies (Nadesan 1988:25; Bopage 2003). Bodies could be
disposed of without adhering to any requirements under normal law
about independent inquest, or the issuing of a death certificate or any
other record of death. There was also no requirement under the ERs to
 34

retain a record of the identity of the person who died (Nadesan

1988:25; CRM 1979:16-17). In fact, when somebody died in state
custody, the only legal requirement under the ERs was to dispose of
the body. These provisions placed the life and death of a detainee in
the hands of a politicised police force which was renowned for its
violence during periods of normalcy (Police Commission 1970;
Nadesan 1988:2).

As early as 1946, a Police Commission established for a 12-month

period to inquire into and report on the police service and identify
methods to improve public confidence in the force held that the
system of promotions and transfers within the police force lent itself
to “favouritism, nepotism and corruption” (Police Commission 1946).
By 1970, a second Police Commission highlighted the level of
political interference in appointments and promotions and the
obligations upon police officers to their political patrons (Police
Commission 1970). Furthermore, immediately before the imposition
of the ERs and as part of the government’s preparations to crackdown
on the JVP, the UF had withdrawn commissions from a number of
military officers, replacing them with officials with the same political
affiliations as those of the ruling parties (de Silva 1993e:356). The
combined effect of the ERs, politicisation of the key positions with the
police and security forces and government rhetoric regarding the need
to do what was necessary to protect the nation from the JVP gave
official sanction to the torture, disappearance, killing and disposal of
suspected JVPers while enabling the authorities responsible to legally
conceal their actions.

As bail and other matters pertaining to criminal justice process

became political rather than legal decisions, opportunities arose for
those with personal vendettas to make accusations against their
 35

enemies and have them detained on the basis of a complaint alone

(CRM 1979:89; Obeysekera cited in Alles 1976:247). Regulation 60
of the ERs effectively encouraged such a practice as it permitted as
evidence a statement made by one person against another. This led to
scores of arrests following the insurgency “on the sole basis of
denunciation of personal enemies” (AI 1971:3-4). In this way, the
imposition of a state of emergency and the extraordinary powers
bestowed on the police and security forces provided the perfect cover
for dealing with the government’s political and personal rivalries from
the highest to lowest levels of power.

Under the guise of fighting an insurgency, the ruling alliance targeted

members of opposition parties and other opponents (Marino 1989:14).
Thousands of suspected JVPers and other opponents of the ruling
parties disappeared following arrest (Lord Avebury cited in
Gunasekara 1988). Deployed as a counter-insurgency tactic,
disappearance was facilitated by the combined effect of the
abandonment of normal safeguards regarding arrest, detention and
constraints on police action, the extension of police powers to dispose
of dead bodies without inquest and the suspension of the writ of
habeas corpus. The government’s pronouncements about the need to
crush the JVP served as a signal to state officials that they would
enjoy impunity for their actions. Reports emerged of captured and
surrendered JVPers being executed, either immediately after
skirmishes or following interrogation, torture and forced confession
(Nadesan 1988:28-31). Youths were hanged, beaten to death and shot,
and their bodies were often publicly displayed (Gunaratna 2001:106).
According to Nadesan, the police justified shooting such persons “on
the ground that there was no way of keeping them in prison and that
there were no facilities for transporting them or for accommodating
them” (Nadesan 1988:29). The same argument evidently applied in
 36

relation to those who disappeared in state custody. In one reported

case of state abuse, police officers arrested scores of youths and took
them to the Dadalla cemetery where they were summarily executed
after being forced to dig their own graves (Gunaratna 2001:100).
Given the strategy of repression employed by the government which
permitted the disposal of dead bodies without any form of official
documentation, the actual figure of those who disappeared and were
killed in state custody will never be known. At the same time, no
independent inquiry has been conducted into state violations in the
context of the 1971 insurgency. For these reasons, the actual scale of
the abuses is unknown. Official records acknowledge that 41 civilians
and approximately 1,000 JVPers and law enforcement personnel
(including 63 security officials) were killed during the insurrection
(Kearney 1977:517-518). However, other estimates of casualties range
from 8,000 to 10,000 (Gunaratna 2001:105; Criminal Justice
Commission 1976:435).

Without a complete official record, estimates of the number of people

who disappeared vary. According to Lord Avebury, “thousands”
disappeared in 1971 while approximately 15,000 were held in
detention without trial (cited in Gunasekara 1988). Gunasekara noted
that tens of thousands were killed or disappeared (Gunasekara 1988:6).
Amnesty International stated that while approximately 18,000 people
were held in detention, “an unknown number” disappeared (37/08/86).
Kumarage argued that 17,000 persons disappeared during the 1971
insurgency (2005:116).

Along with those who were killed or disappeared, thousands more

were held in prolonged pre-trial detention in deplorable conditions at
considerable risk of disappearing in state custody. Statistics on
detention, like that of disappearances, varies. In December 1971,
 37

according to statements in Parliament, approximately 16,000 persons

were in custody (CRM 1979). In January 1972, however, 7,703 were
reportedly released from detention followed by the release of 13,500
in mid-1973 leaving an estimated 4,500 in detention at the time
(Gunaratna 2001:119). By January 1975, reports suggest that 2,000
persons were still held in detention and having not gone before the
Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), faced the distinct possibility of
indefinite detention (AI 1975: ii &14). As the ERs provided for
detention for extended periods without charge or trial, most suspected
JVPers did not know what charges would, if ever, be brought against
them. Even if detainees were informed of their charges, they were
denied access to legal representation (AI 1971:6). Under such
circumstances where the writ of habeas corpus was suspended,
families of people forcibly abducted by the security forces or simply
missing during the insurrection had no legal recourse available to
them (Gunaratna 2001:106). Because the government did not establish
a central registry or official body to assist families of missing people
trace their whereabouts (AI 1971:7), it was extremely difficult if not
impossible to locate individuals taken into state custody let alone to
discover their fate. The task for civil society organisations such as the
Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka of establishing whether powers
provided to the police and security forces under the ERs had been
utilised in an extrajudicial manner to torture, kill and dispose of
bodies to cover up such offences was made, therefore, equally
impossible. In fact, the ERs effectively quashed any public complaint
against police abuse as the spread of ‘false allegations’ was made an
offence. Any person who made a complaint against a police officer
faced the risk of arrest for making a false allegation. To cover up such
an arrest, the police could resort to killing the complainant and
disposing of their body without the knowledge of any other party
(Nadesan 1988:32).
 38

Under mounting pressure from the international human rights

community to deal expeditiously and humanely with the substantial
pre-trial population of JVP suspects, the government enacted the
Criminal Justice Commission Act of 1972. It was one of the most
controversial pieces of legislation introduced by the UF government
because it compromised the internationally accepted standards of
criminal justice and long-standing legal procedures, amounting to a
“distortion of the criminal trial” (de Silva 1981:559: AI 1975:8-11).
Established outside of common law, the Act recognised as admissible
hearsay evidence and accomplice evidence without corroboration, and
gave greater weight to statements made in police custody (many of
which were extracted under torture) than those made before the CJC
established under the act. Although it argued that some complaints of
police abuse were “exaggerated”, the CJC recognised that excesses on
the part of the police had taken place. At the same time, however, the
commission accepted every statement made by suspects in detention
as an “authentic record” of their involvement in the insurrection and
JVP movement (CJC 1976:110). While the CJC had sole discretion to
decide what procedure to undertake during the trial, those found guilty
of the charges against them were handed a sentence with no right to
appeal.

The CJC charged 2,919 people with criminal offences of whom 2,322
were released on suspended sentences (AI 1975:ii&6). Forty-one JVP
leaders and suspected architects of the insurgency (only one of whom
actually participated in the events of 5 April) were charged with
treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government (CJC 1976:2;
Alexander cited in Marino 1989:12). Their trial lasted over two and a
half years and key JVP leaders including the supreme leader, Rohana
Wijeweera were found guilty of attempting to overthrow the
government and sentenced to life imprisonment (Gunasekara
 39

1988:7&36). However, central questions about the charge of

conspiracy to overthrow the state were deliberately precluded from the
CJC’s inquiry as it was debarred from concluding that no insurrection
took place. In essence, therefore, a central tenet of the prosecutor’s
case was proven before the trial—that a conspiracy occurred.
Moreover, state officials only appeared before the CJC to assist with
inquiries rather than to account for their actions. Rather than serve the
cause of justice, the entire process served political interests (AI
1975:9-11).

There is very little analysis of the 1971 disappearances because of the

lack of information about the insurrection and deliberate efforts on the
part of the state to conceal its activities. ERs imposed in September
1971 prohibited reporting on evidence in criminal prosecutions
against police and armed force personnel. According to Amnesty
International, this regulation was introduced specifically to prevent the
public from knowing the facts about a murder case in which soldiers
had killed a famous beauty queen (AI 1971:3). Evidently, this is the
only legal case that came to light. It may represent the totality of legal
and disciplinary sanctions imposed on state officials for extrajudicial
activities carried out under the ERs. Therefore, fundamental questions
about disappearances carried out during this period remain. At their
core is the reason behind the UF-government’s compulsion to draft
and impose ERs which facilitated resort to extrajudicial acts including
disappearances against what was a poorly equipped and trained group,
let alone those arrested on mere suspicion of attending JVP lectures.
The disproportionate violence imposed by state forces demonstrated
the extent to which the UF parties recognised the JVP, or more
critically the ever-growing ranks of discontented unemployed
educated youth of which the JVP represented only a small proportion,
as a real threat to their power and vested interests. At the same time,
 40

the ideologies espoused by the JVP regarding social oppression, and

the need to destroy the social order and bring down the political
system on which it was based represented the greatest threat to the
legitimacy and power base of the socialist SLFP and its Marxist
coalition partners. The UF decided on an extraordinarily violent
counter-insurgency approach to destroy the JVP and its youth base
and thereby eradicate the possibility of an alternative national anti-
state political movement (Halliday 1971:18).

The insurgency was a struggle of mostly poor, unemployed rural

students—without the establishment’s “old boys club” elite English
school political connections—against the ruling urban elite and those
who benefited from its patronage (Obeyesekere 1974:379-380). In this
sense, the “one-day revolution” was an expression of a generational
war focused on eradicating a colonial status and order that had
remained largely untouched (de Silva 1981:541; Chandraprema
1991:31). It also gave expression to historical class tensions over
resources and power traditionally associated with the two bourgeoisie
elites (the traditional bourgeoisie and the colonial or new rich
bourgeoisie).

A survey conducted by Alexander of 11,400 suspected JVPers found

that many were the sons of rural Sinhalese-speaking mudalali (traders,
capitalists) who reacted to the dominance of the English-speaking and
Westernised pelantiya (landlords) in rural communities and their
“complete control of goods and services provided by the central
government” (cited in Marino 1989:13). Nationalisation and state
monopolies over goods and services marginalised the socio–economic
power of the mudalali in rural areas making them dependent upon
licences and political relationships with the pelantiya. Therefore, at
the local level, the insurgency was a rebellion against pelantiya
 41

control over the local power structure in a highly centralised economy.

At the national level, it was a violent reaction of marginalised rural
youth to the political and economic domination of the urban English-
speaking ruling elite (Jiggins 1979:126). It was an attack on the elites
who made up the political and bureaucratic leadership of the country
“irrespective of their political or ideological commitments”
(Obeyesekere 1974:378). As the insurgency was a reaction to the
political system upheld within local villages, violence was directed
between as well as within communities. JVPers attacked police
stations which symbolised the system ruled by the local pelantiya and
national political elite while pelantiya members of both government
and opposition parties fully supported the counter-insurgency by
accompanying the army on patrol, drawing on local knowledge to
provide names of suspected JVPers to the police and engaging in
reprisals (Alexander cited in Marino 1989:14).

By calling into question the efficacy of the social reforms introduced

by the self-proclaimed socialist SLFP, the JVP and its youth support
base threatened the very basis on which the SLFP-led coalition had
come to power, not to mention the political structure on which its
power rested. The JVP, therefore, had to be totally eliminated. Given
its growing popularity among rural communities where support for the
two major parties was weakest, it was the potential for popular
revolution and alternative politics that the JVP represented which had
to be repressed. Indeed, two years after the insurrection, the IGP as the
highest police authority in the country, admitted that the police force
had been used as the strong arm of colonial power to “keep down the
aspirations of the people of our country” (cited in CRM 1979:78).

While the army and police had no experience in armed combat let
alone guerrilla warfare when they were deployed by the state to quell
 42

public protests, they had had exposure to counter-insurgency tactics.

Before the imposition of the ERs, the army’s head, Major-General
Attygalle, had undergone military training in Yugoslavia where
Marshal Tito operated as a “dictator of a police state” and imposed
harsh repressive measures against dissent (Muttukumarn 1987 cited in
Marino 1989:11; Lees 1997:54; Rizman 2009: 46-47). Similarly,
senior army officers had been sent to Malaysia to undergo training
with General Sir Gerald Templer whose counter-insurgency tactics
against the Malaysian communist insurgents had included the public
display of corpses (Muttukumarn 1987 cited in Marino 1989:11). In
1970 special agents from Israel’s intelligence organisations, Mossad
and Shin Bet, assisted the Sri Lankan security forces in undercover
and intelligence operations. Keeny Meeny Services, an off-shore
British security firm, made available former Special Air Service (SAS)
soldiers to train Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force, an elite police force
which later used disappearance as a primary counter-insurgency tactic
in the east against the LTTE (Hoole et al., 1990:196). Indeed, during
the 1971 insurgency, the military coordinator of Kegalle District,
Lieutenant Corporal Cyril Ranatunga, was reported as stating that:
“We have learnt too many lessons from Vietnam and Malaysia. We
must destroy them completely” (International Herald Tribune 20 April
1971 cited in Bopage 2003). Ranatunga went on to be appointed as a
diplomat.

In the aftermath of the insurrection, no assistance was provided to the

families of detainees or compensation given to families of those
extrajudicially executed or who disappeared in state custody (AI
1971:7). While many such families were left destitute with the
imprisonment or death of a primary breadwinner, surviving relatives
including the children of suspected JVPers were stigmatised and
marginalised. The effect of such discrimination and appalling
 43

disregard was to last for generations and ultimately led to a second

JVP insurgency. For ex-detainees, many of whom were never tried on
the charges against them, discrimination by the state coupled with
social alienation made life extremely difficult. Directives were issued
to state departments and public corporations not to employ anyone
released from detention unless they had been previously in their
employment. Cabinet also barred from teaching at least 183 teachers
who had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the insurrection
and subsequently released for re-employment (AI 1975:20-21). In
other cases, ex-detainees were ordered to report regularly to local
police stations while restrictions were placed on their freedom of
movement and political activity. In one case, an ex-detainee who had
been acquitted by the CJC was barred from participating in political
activity, entering university and leaving the vicinity of his home
without police permission (AI 1975:20-21). Many detainees released
on suspended sentences had the guilty verdict noted in their criminal
records which only further impeded their ability to secure employment
(AI 1975:6). Yet, many had pleaded guilty before the CJC in order to
secure their own release when it became known that suspended
sentences resulted in immediate discharge.

Such deliberate acts of discrimination designed to exclude ex-

detainees from public life forced scores of JVP suspects and activists
into a state of permanent unemployment and socio–political
marginalisation (AI 1971:9). Indeed, many of those who surrendered
to the police had only attended one or two of the JVP’s lectures at
most and were advised by their families to surrender rather than face
arrest or had been informed upon by others—and although
subsequently forced to the socio–economic periphery had nothing to
do with the insurgency itself (Obeyesekere 1974:368; Perera
2001:198). The government freely admitted that it had detained many
 44

people who had no connection whatsoever with the violence of the

insurgency. This was made all the more probable given that the public
was urged to provide information on suspects for which monetary
rewards were offered by the government. This further alienated the
rural youth from democratic governance and was ultimately a tragedy
of the government’s own making (AI 1971:2; Obeyesekere 1974:368).
The impact on the involved youths was profound as Jayatunge
observed. Even 38 years after the event, some JVPers were still
experiencing the post-traumatic reactions including “intrusions,
avoidance and emotional numbing” (Jayatunge 2010).

2.7 Emergency Regulations and the 1972 Constitution

The regulation empowering police to dispose of dead bodies was

withdrawn in May 1972. However, the state of emergency imposed in
1971 to deal with the JVP remained in place for the rest of the SLFP-
led government's rule and provided the means through which the party
retained total power (Gunasekara 1988:6). As the threat of the
insurrection had passed, the prolonged imposition of the ERs was used
for purposes well outside the context that had justified their original
imposition. Whereas historically ERs were imposed to suppress
freedom of expression and popular protest, the SLFP government
went a step further by artificially extending the life of existing elected
bodies under a state of emergency and thereby undermining the
democratic process. Under the ERs, the life of at least 15 village
councils, five urban councils, four town councils and two municipal
councils were extended by decree rather than democratic election and
were then stacked with state appointees (CRM 1979:73). Emergency
powers were used to curtail all forms of democratic practice including
freedom of expression, the right to bargain collectively, the right to
demonstrate peacefully and the right to impartial information from an
 45

independent media. Before September 1972 when the regulation was

withdrawn, public meetings and processions, which served as one of
the few avenues for free expression of dissent, were not allowed to
take place without government approval. Furthermore, the Prime
Minister was empowered to proscribe any organisation and publishing
institutions had to submit material to the state for clearance before
publication (AI 1971:2-3).

Regulation 21 provided for the death penalty for threatening a

Member of Parliament, Regulation 26 prohibited the distribution or
display of posters and hand bills, and Regulation 30 made the
possession of “subversive literature” an offence (AI 1971:3). The
“Competent Authority” of the state controlled religious gatherings,
which meant that the text of any sermon that was to be delivered by a
Buddhist priest over the radio had to be submitted to the authority in
advance (AI 1971:3). Trade union activity was severely curtailed by
Regulation 38 which permitted the automatic sacking of employees in
major industries who were absent for more than a day. Boards of
Directors and managers of public corporations were given “absolute
discretion” to suspend any worker on suspicion of any activity
prejudicial to the interests of or dangerous to the security of the
government (AI 1971:3; CRM 1979:10). According to the CRM,
suspension from employment could not be challenged before any
court or tribunal and suspended workers were not entitled to their
salary during the period of suspension unless the Board of Directors
decided to pay half (CRM 1979:10). In this manner, the space for
protest and public opposition to UF rule became extremely narrow
and the monthly extensions of ERs served as an effective means of
dealing with dissent (de Silva 1981:546).
 46

In this process of political encroachment during the SLFP’s rule, the

1972 constitution marked the low point as Parliament was made
supreme in the name of the people. The constitution effectively
reversed the supremacy of law under the 1947 Soulbury Constitution
(Hoole 2001:11). Under the new constitution, state power was vested
in the National State Assembly without meaningful constitutional or
institutional checks on executive power (de Silva 1993b:46). Thus,
Parliament became the supreme body with almost unfettered powers
including sole discretion over the promulgation and repeal of ERs
(Coomaraswamy 1993:131-133). The 1972 constitution was
introduced, therefore, as an instrument of the party in power rather
than as the fundamental law of the country (Coomaraswamy
1993:130). Despite the inclusion of a fundamental rights chapter in the
new constitution, article 18(2) allowed for the limitation of such rights
by broad and largely undefined principles including that of state
policy, national economy and public safety. This had the effect that
there was no single case of fundamental rights decided by the courts
during the six-year long tenure of the 1972 constitution
(Coomaraswamy 1993:134). The new constitution affirmed the
Sinhala language as the state language at the expense of minority
languages, made the state the protectorate of the Buddhist religion at
the expense of secularism and provided Buddhism the “foremost
place” at the expense of minority religions. The constitution not only
reflected the dominance of the ideology of Sinhalese-Buddhism in the
Sri Lankan polity but also marked the starting point of a new phase in
communal antagonism in the relationship between the ethnic
Sinhalese and Tamil communities (de Silva 1981:550). The Tamil
community viewed the new constitution as discriminatory, confirming
their second-class status as Tamil speakers and majority Hindus (de
Silva 1981:550). Thus, while the 1972 constitution was seen as a
victory to the Sinhalese–Buddhist community in elevating the status
 47

of both the Sinhala language and Buddhist religion and was for these
reasons unopposed by the opposition UNP, its enactment
simultaneously heralded the beginning of the Tamil separatist struggle
and served as the turning point in Sinhala–Tamil relations
(Coomaraswamy 1993:132).

The 1972 constitution politicised the bureaucracy by removing the

powers of appointment vested in the Public Service Commission, as
well as removing the checks and safeguards protecting appointments
and promotions of public servants from political influence. It did this
by placing appointments, promotions and disciplinary action of public
servants directly under the purview of cabinet or boards appointed by
cabinet (Presidential Commission on Youth 1990:5; de Silva
1993c:89). Political patronage became not only institutionalised
within the bureaucracy but was legitimised by the 1972 constitution
and was a fundamental component of the political culture. Predictably
enough, appointments based on political affiliations and personal
connections cultivated the conditions for corruption to flourish. Thus,
the concept of an independent civil service was obliterated as the
“entire administrative structure of the country” was brought under
cabinet, reducing the public service to a biased instrument of the elite
existing only to serve executive demand (Coomaraswamy 1993:133-
134). At the same time, as power was centralised in the hands of
cabinet, the judiciary was undervalued and increasingly seen as the
protector of the vested interests of the elite from social reform. Thus,
the separation of powers (legislature, executive and judiciary) was
abolished. The constitution placed executive action and parliamentary
bills outside the reach, scrutiny and control of the judiciary while
cabinet was empowered to appoint judges and other state officials
with a former SLFP MP appointed as a Supreme Court judge almost
immediately (Coomaraswamy 1993:134; Ponnambalam 1983:164).
 48

Thereafter, all judges and judicial officers, government employees and

even lawyers in private practices were required to take an oath to
uphold the constitution (Ponnambalam 1983:167 &180). At the same
time, the Interpretation Ordinance of 1972 severely weakened the
power of the courts to hear appeals against mala fide (in bad faith)
administrative decisions “thus removing a meaningful restraint upon
the misuse of administrative power for political purposes by the
government against its opponents” (de Silva 1981:546).

Upon the enactment of the 1972 constitution and complementary

legislation, the government used the machinery of state and political
control of administrative regulations to intimidate political opponents
and reward its own supporters (de Silva 1981:546-547). At the same
time, in response to increasing pressure to provide employment
opportunities particularly for the country’s unemployed youth, the UF
established a number of public corporations across a range of sectors
and stacked them from the top to bottom with its own, an initiative
which not only established a state monopoly in key industries but also
extended state control over a substantial proportion of the economy.
Similarly, within their electorates, disbursement of state benefits gave
MPs tremendous power and influence over issues including land,
housing, electricity, water and employment where they were able to
consolidate their own support base by favouring their supporters.

Bribery and other forms of corruption flourished and became an

integral feature of the vetting process in regard to both politicians and
the bureaucracy (de Silva 1993c:90-91). At the same time, politics at
all levels became extremely personal and acrimonious given the high
stakes involved. As politics affected every aspect of life, society
became extremely politicised rather than politically engaged with the
issues of national importance. The vote was inextricably linked with
 49

party patronage rather than policy. The need to establish and maintain
political connections at a personal and professional level encouraged
voter turn-out at elections on the one hand and the political alignment
of public institutions, associations and bodies to whatever national
leadership was in power on the other (Coomaraswamy 1993:157b; de
Silva 1993c:93-94). The scope to engage in community-based
politically neutral activities and associations became extremely
narrow. The institutionalisation of political patronage across every
facet of life marginalised both the supporters of opposing political
parties and the entire Tamil community and was a key contributing
factor to the political instability and violence of the following decades.
Furthermore, while elections would otherwise provide an opportunity
for the politically marginalised to effect a change of government, the
UF used the 1972 constitution and its two-thirds majority in
Parliament to extend its term of office by two years to May 1977. By
exploiting the political process, the UF had systematically denied Sri
Lankans the opportunity to use the peaceful democratic process to
express their views on the government of the day. At the same time,
additional restrictions were placed on the media with some
independent newspapers closed and legislation introduced to provide
the state with licence to “distort news with impunity” (CRM 1979:58).
Protests held by the UNP and other parties against government action
were met with violence and intimidation from police and army. In
1974 such tactics failed to stop a UNP campaign of protests against
media censorship leading the UF to re-impose emergency regulations
in June under which UNP meetings were banned for a year (de Silva
1993b:48).

In September 1975 the LSSP was dismissed from the government and
launched a series of trade union strikes in retaliation. Given the falling
standard of living, many pro-government trade unions joined the
 50

strikes. By early 1977 the CP had also withdrawn from the

government. Faced with ongoing strikes that were violently repressed
coupled with growing agitation in Parliament, the Prime Minister
announced that elections would take place in July 1977. It would be
the first election with no electoral pact between the SLFP, LSSP and
CP against the UNP since March 1960. The fact that these three
parties were now to compete for votes contributed in no small
measure to their decimation at the 1977 poll and the monopoly on
power enjoyed by the newly elected UNP allowed President
Jayewardene to pursue a form of personal rule branded by the rise of
the ‘shadow state’.

The 1971 JVP insurgency was characterised by two dynamics which

informed political violence for the following decades. First, the
insurgency was a violent reaction to centralised patronage politics and
election violence, which had become entrenched political practice and
undermined the moral authority of the state. Second, the insurgency
provided the ruling elite with an opportunity to destroy the JVP while
crushing the potential for an alternative youth-based national political
movement to emerge. Disappearance as a counter-insurgency strategy
served the purpose of concealing this wider political project of
silencing disaffected youth and immobilising a wider support base.
Thereafter the threat of non-state violence was used as a pretext by
successive governments to crackdown on parliamentary opposition
parties and all forms of dissent from within the community.
 51

CHAPTER 3
Institutionalisation of political violence

T
he first decade of the 17 years of UNP rule was characterised
by the institutionalisation of political violence which fuelled
social radicalisation and culminated in an explosion of non-
state violence. During this period, the UNP established an alternative
political apparatus under which terror was unleashed to destroy legal
and democratic political opposition. While maintaining an appearance
of a democratic and functional state, the political elite’s alternative
apparatus or ‘shadow state’ existed outside the normal legal
framework to extend a system of patronage and power. A radical
program of economic liberalism that coincided with the centralisation
of political power enabled the UNP to abolish the welfare system and
establish new lines of patronage which largely excluded the rural poor.
Dismantling of the democratic process and political violence enabled
the UNP to discipline, coerce and exclude anyone perceived as a
threat to its economic liberalisation agenda. However, by ultimately
widening the gap between the affluent political elite and the rest, the
UNP’s policy agenda caused widespread social instability and
perpetuated the radicalisation of educated Sinhalese and Tamil youths
denied opportunities of social mobility and to express their grievances
through the democratic process.

This chapter details elements, laws and policies, which, when

considered in isolation, violated, deviated from or undermined a
democratic, legal or political norm and when used in combination, set
the conditions for an apparatus of terror or ‘shadow state’ which
 52

operated behind the façade of a democracy.3 Many of these laws were

put in place before the LTTE and JVP amounted to a threat to national
security. Under this new political framework, of which key aspects
have remained in place under successive governments, all traditional
forms of legal and political recourse which would normally apply
were rendered totally ineffectual. Ironically, however, in its efforts to
institute total power, the UNP’s program inadvertently created the
political space and social justification for militant resistance.

3.1 Supremacy of the Executive President over the

legislature and judiciary

In February 1978 a new constitution was promulgated, establishing a

presidential system of governance under which the centre of power
shifted to an Executive President whose powers were almost
untouchable and virtually dictatorial (Sieghart 1984:7; Warnapala
1994:162; Coomaraswamy 1993:136; de Silva 1981:559). Immune
from legal proceedings both in his official and private capacity while
holding office, President JR Jayewardene became both head of state
and cabinet with powers to appoint and dismiss ministers and deputy
ministers, the Attorney-General and all public officials under the
constitution (Hyndman 1985:81).

Given the considerable parliamentary majority enjoyed by the UNP,

such powers provided the distinct possibility that Parliament would

3
William Reno’s definition of the ‘shadow state’ in the context of post-
colonial Africa is informative. This form of personal rule is characterised by
control over the state to “write laws and manipulate regulations to reward
loyal political allies” while maintaining a façade of a functional state to
enable, among other things, receipt of foreign aid and military assistance
(2003:3-4).
 53

serve as the President’s rubber stamp (Warnapala 1994:162;

Wijesinha 1991:26-27). Indeed, the objective of the 1978 constitution
was to provide the President with what President Jayewardene termed
as power “not subject to the whims and fancies of an elected
legislature” (Jayewardene cited in Dissanayake 2002). By-elections
were abolished under the new constitution with any member of the
same party being able to fill a post rendered vacant (Wijesinha
1991:33). In this manner, the government circumvented the
democratic process and undermined the principle that democratically
elected representatives should act according to their conscience and on
behalf of their constituents given that any seat left vacant when an MP
resigned or was expelled would be filled by a (President-endorsed)
nominee (CRM 1979:129).

By making the Executive Presidency supreme, the 1978 constitution

undermined the independence of the judiciary and curtailed its powers.
It granted the President the power to appoint and reappoint the Chief
Justice and judges to the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High
Courts (Wijesinha 1991:32; Hyndman 1985:81). Under Article 163,
all judges ceased to hold office when the new constitution was
promulgated and almost immediately, the UNP moved to stack the
judiciary by removing 13 judges and rapidly promoting their
replacements ahead of more experienced judges (CRM 1979:132;
Wijesinha 1991:32). Furthermore, by requiring judges to take an oath
to uphold and defend the constitution, the UNP placed the question of
the constitution’s legality outside judicial review (Ponnambalam
1993:198). Having politicised the judiciary, the UNP also limited the
power of the courts to provide checks on executive action as
presidential decisions including amendments to the ERs were imposed
without judicial review.
 54

At every stage, the judiciary was “intimidated by executive authority”

(Pinto-Jayawardena 2010:32). Any challenge by the judiciary to state-
sponsored human rights abuses or the legal framework in which they
took place would have amounted to challenging government policy
and the basis on which the legitimacy of the state rested (Fernando
2010). Moreover, during its tenure, the UNP government directly
defied the judiciary by ignoring its rulings, promoted officials who
had been convicted of violating fundamental rights, and subjected
judges and high ranking officials to “indignities which affect the
honour and prestige of office” (Presidential Commission on Youth
1990:2). By November 1982 the Chief Justice stated that executive
action had eroded the position of the Chief Justice and judges of the
Supreme Court to the point whereby they were unable to act as the
bulwark of justice for the country (Ponnambalam 1983:167).

The promulgation of the 1978 constitution coincided with the

implementation of draconian anti-terrorist legislation and recourse to
almost continuous imposition of ERs which further consolidated
political power in the President. ERs were in force nationwide from
1971 to 1977, reimposed in late 1978 and applied almost continuously
to 2001 (Weerakoon 1994:39; Coomaraswamy 1993:133; Tamilnation
15 November 2007; Asian Tribune 2011; Coomaraswamy & de los
Reyes 2004:272). When laws were enacted as an ER, the normal
legislative process was waived and the President became, in effect, the
legislator in place of Parliament (Weliamuna 2002:13). The role of
Parliament to debate and pass laws and the role of the judiciary as a
safeguard against executive action were eroded (Coomaraswamy
1993:133). The President had the power, without needing
parliamentary approval, to introduce regulations authorising any
action deemed necessary or expedient in the interests of “public
security, the preservation of public order and the suppression of
 55

mutiny, riot or civil commotions, or for the maintenance of supplies

and services essential to the life of the community, including the
detention of persons” (Ordinance, sec. 5). The UNP and later
administrations used this provision to impose a diverse range of
regulations, many of which had nothing to do with national security.

3.2 Suspension of rights and the powers and immunities

of the security forces

Although it recognised human rights, the 1978 constitution also

provided for wide restrictions to those rights in the interests of
national security, public order, the protection of public health and
morality, and other matters (CRM 1979:126) with the effect that the
limitations on rights provisions were given the same prominence and
level of constitutional protection as the rights themselves
(Coomaraswamy 1993b:149). Even non-derogable rights (that is,
rights that cannot be suspended even in a state of emergency, as set
out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) such
as freedom from torture could be limited in the name of the “general
welfare of a democratic society” (cited in Coomaraswamy 1993b:149).
Indeed, because they could be suspended by the ERs, fundamental
rights guaranteed under the constitution were severely restricted for
prolonged periods. The combined effect of such provisions and
repeated government declarations of the need to wipe out terrorism
was a general acceptance that excesses on the part of the security
forces were unavoidable, and even acceptable, to preserve national
security, regardless of the context in which they were carried out. At
the same time, with power being centralised in the hands of an
Executive President immune from prosecutorial action and the scope
for state violence widened, the judiciary's ability to provide the checks
 56

and balances on the use of force were deliberately weakened to the

point where the judiciary could provide “only a marginal role in the
protection of civil liberties”. The Executive President was at liberty to
pursue “whatever objective and policies he thinks fit” (Fernando 2010:
25).

The pervasiveness of ERs further weakened the judiciary’s ability to

provide safeguards in relation to detention practices and conditions
given that indefinite detention could take place without reference to
the courts and additional regulations could be promulgated under the
ERs in secret (CRM 1979:111). The ERs often operated in unison
with the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions)
(Amendment) Act No. 10 of 1982 (PTA) introduced in 1979 and made
permanent law in 1982, despite the term “temporary” within its title.
The PTA violated international standards pertaining to arrest and
detention procedures by effectively placing the detainee and the
arresting authority outside the reach of the courts. Under the PTA, any
person involved in any unlawful activity, or even suspected of
connection with it, could be detained for a successive period of three
months and up to a maximum of 18 months at the discretion of the
minister and at a location and in conditions determined by the minister
without the need to bring the detainee before a magistrate.

When the PTA first came into force in July 1979, a state of emergency
was declared in Tamil areas under the Public Security Ordinance.
Thereafter, the government sent an army battalion under the command
of the President’s nephew, Brigadier Weeratunge, to Jaffna to “wipe
out the terrorists” by the end of the year (Ponnambalam 1983:10;
Hoole et al.,1990:26). Within the course of a month, 12 Tamil youth
disappeared after arrest. The bodies of six were later recovered, of
which four had been mutilated and dumped for public display
 57

(Ponnambalam 1983:10, 203; Hoole et al.,1990:26; Sieghart 1984:51).

Thereafter a pattern of arbitrary arrest and detention began to evolve
in which torture was used systematically (AI 1980 cited in
Ponnambalam 1983:203). By 1984, despite the fact that a
Parliamentary Select Committee had recommended in July 1982
further investigation into the disappearance of six of the youths
documented by the International Commission of Jurists, no action had
been taken with regard to the disappearances and killings of the Tamil
youth (Sieghart 1984:81). Instead, one of the police officers named in
the inquest into the death of one of the six was promoted (Nissan
1996:16). Indeed, promotion of state officials responsible for or
implicated in the violation of human rights became a hallmark of the
UNP administration, along with payment of compensation, court costs
and fines imposed on such individuals by the courts (Pinto-
Jayawardena 2007).

The 1979 incidents were the first reported cases of disappearance in

the context of Tamil militancy in the north and east. While at this
stage such incidents were isolated, within five years, disappearance
would be an integral component of a counter-insurgent strategy
against Tamil militants in the north and east provinces. The PTA
effectively facilitated disappearance, providing the security forces
wide powers to arrest without a warrant and without any obligation to
inform relatives of the arrest or place of detention. Moreover, because
detainees could be held at any location determined by the relevant
minister, without charge or judicial review, or access to a lawyer or
relatives, they were effectively placed outside the reach of normal
legal processes (Sieghart 1984:8; Ponnambalam 1983:9). The PTA
further permitted police officers to remove people from prison for
interrogation without judicial oversight, and confessions extracted by
the police under such circumstances were admissible in evidence.
 58

Upon release, anyone previously held under the PTA could be subject
to a range of restrictions by the relevant minister (Nissan 1996:16).
Once the ERs were introduced in July 1979, police could dispose of
the bodies of people who had died in custody without any official
procedure or notification of any authority about their identity or
location of their burial. Together, the ERs and PTA allowed
authorities to arbitrarily arrest, deprive liberty, place individuals
outside the protection of the rule of law and dispose of the bodies
without revealing their fate or whereabouts. When considered in
isolation, each action constituted directly or through its interpretation,
a violation of human rights under normal law. When committed in
combination by politicised personnel, such a series of actions could
constitute an act of disappearance under the International Convention
for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance as
detailed in chapter 1. Indeed, the pattern of disappearance that
emerged in the mid-1980s was consistent with such actions and while
the regulation permitting the disposal of dead bodies was revoked
shortly after introduction in July 1979, during its short life, a number
of disappearances and custodial deaths were reported (CRM 1979b).

The establishment of an alternative political apparatus or shadow state

was strengthened by the existence of a politicised police force
whereby officers took orders directly from politicians. The extension
of the life of Parliament in 1972 and 1982 by referendum rather than
election gave elected MPs an additional six-year term without having
to lobby their constituents and further centralised political power in
the hands of an elite few. While appointments and promotions were
subject to political interference in the 1960s (Police Commission
1970), the respective referenda led to the institutionalisation of
political influence which was an integral part of police investigations,
appointments and promotions (Police Committee 1995 Part V:2).
 59

Indeed, the politicisation of the police force enabled politicians to

subvert the police service in the name of law and order under the guise
of political and vested interests. A politicised police force could also
be drawn on to serve individual politicians’ interests including that of
death squads. At the same time, the Executive President was provided
constitutional power to appoint the heads of the armed forces and all
other public officers. In February 1985, moreover, the President used
his constitutional powers to assign himself the functions of a number
of ministries including Defence, Higher Education, State Plantations
and Power and Energy (Hansard 20 February 1985 cited in Hyndman
1985:81). The country effectively came under the control of a single
individual who was, during his term of office, totally immune from
prosecution.

Compounding the granting of extraordinary powers to (politicised)

security and police personnel, indemnity legislation was introduced
which established a culture of impunity. The Indemnity Act, No.20 of
1982 provided immunity from legal proceedings for violations that
took place in the course of law enforcement activities by the security
forces, MPs, civil servants and anyone operating alongside them. The
legislation provided that no legal proceedings, whether criminal or
civil, could be instituted for an act done or purported to have been
done by a Minister, Deputy Minister, member of the security forces or
any public servants “whether legal or otherwise” for the purpose of
restoring law and order from 1 August to 31 August 1977 (Pinto-
Jayawardena 2010:25). Resort to indemnity legislation contributed to
arbitrary violent behaviour on the part of the security forces and
further undermined the power of the judiciary (Kloos 1999). The
violence of 1977, for which the indemnity was imposed, had taken
place in the context of a parliamentary election and broke out
immediately after the UNP had been declared the winner. While over
 60

5,600 complaints of election violence were reported against UNP

supporters for attacks directed at SLFP supporters, the newly
established UNP government initially suspended law and order,
providing scope for accumulated resentment to be unleashed before
finally imposing a state of emergency some days later (de Silva
1993b:56; Warnapala 1994:168; Gunasekara 1988:7). In 1988, the
Indemnity Act, No. 60 of 1988 was introduced to extend the period of
immunity from 31 August 1977 to 16 December 1988 to cover the
July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom and lead up to the 1988 presidential
elections. Such legislation provided not only a guarantee of protection
from prosecution for past abuses but also served as a signal to state
officials that they operated above the law and had the political backing
and licence to engage in extrajudicial measures to preserve the
government’s vested interests. The legislation was introduced at a
time when regulations permitting the disposal of dead bodies without
inquest remained in force. Moreover, given the extent to which
government officials were involved in the orchestration and
implementation of the July 1983 pogrom including prominent UNP
MPs, the government recognised the necessity for such legislation to
protect its own from prosecution. The fact that no single conviction
was made under the PTA from 1978 to 1981 demonstrates the extent
to which the indemnity provision was relied upon and the arbitrary
manner in which the PTA was applied (Leary 1981:50). The ERs and
PTA allowed practices including arrest without a warrant, failure to
provide identification and to inform families of those arrested of the
location of detention, and use of plain clothes as well as vehicles
without number plates during arrests to disguise the arresting authority
from detainees and their families. Such measures became synonymous
with disappearances under the UNP and the People’s Alliance regime
that followed it. Furthermore, despite the likelihood that state officials
would use their considerable and unchecked powers to abuse and
 61

abduct individuals within their custody, impunity was provided to

security force personnel under Article 26 of the PTA which stated:
“No suit, prosecution or other proceedings, civil or criminal, shall lie
against any officer or person for any act or thing done in good faith
done or purported to be done in pursuance or supposed pursuance of
any order made or direction given under the Act”. Such legislation
facilitated and effectively justified human rights abuses by the armed
forces while enabling the ruling party to subvert the rule of law for its
own political advantage.

3.3 Curtailment of freedom of expression

In response to growing support for autonomy within the Tamil

community which discriminatory government policies inadvertently
fuelled, the UNP took the decision early in its rule that the “Tamil
problem” could be resolved by a low-risk military solution rather than
high-risk and potentially longer-term political engagement and
compromise. The introduction of the PTA provided the means for that
policy to be realised. Described as the “most draconian law ever to
enter the statute book of Sri Lanka”, the PTA enabled the government
to ban any party or group that advocated but didn’t actually engage in
violence (Ponnambalam 1983:9; CRM 1979:118). Proscription could
be imposed on any group and any protest against the ban (for example,
by requesting a hearing) amounted to engaging in an activity
connected with or related to the proscribed organisation, and was
therefore an offence. The intention behind the PTA was to provide
ruling party MPs with the means to detain suspected Tamil militants
unconditionally (Ponnambalam 1983:9). However, the legislation was
later used more widely to undermine the democratic process by
proscribing three leftist parties including the JVP and to detain any
suspected opponents of UNP rule.
 62

Other legislation providing the executive with greater powers than the
judiciary included the Criminal Procedure (Special Provisions) Act,
No. 15 of 1978. It was introduced along with the PTA and imposed
compulsory prison sentences and restricted bail rights. According to
the CRM, the legislation was a clear attempt on the part of the state to
interfere with the exercise of freedom of expression as any form of
discontent or disaffection with the government was grounds for arrest
(CRM 1979:121). The legislative measures introduced in 1979 were a
clear affront to civil and political rights and demonstrated the state’s
intent to protect itself against the people rather than provide protection
to the population against excesses by the state. Indeed, such legal
remedies were imposed to instil fear and silence dissent under the
guise of law and order (CRM 1979b). Whereas previously, democratic
norms were abandoned in isolation and for a specific period on the
grounds of national security and terrorism, under the PTA and related
legislation, such a departure became itself the norm and any voiced
discontent with government policies could be interpreted as anti-state
and therefore a threat to national security.

Provisions denying the right to engage in peaceful assembly,

contained in the 1978 constitution and complementary legislation
were designed to quash demands for Tamil separatism and any other
potential source of dissent including the trade union movement
(Coomaraswamy 1993b:152-3). While the courts upheld the right to
association as a fundamental right, the trade union of the ruling party
dominated working class politics. Independent and opposition-
sponsored trade unions were increasingly undermined by the
prevalence of the UNP’s union and supremacy of its patronage
networks. In 1979, the Essential Public Service Act was introduced to
provide the government with “sweeping powers” to outlaw trade
union activity in the state sector which cemented the position of the
 63

UNP union (de Silva & Wriggins 1994 cited in Dunham & Jayasuriya
2001:6). Membership and patronage of the UNP’s union, the Jatika
Sevaka Sangamaya (JSS), became an important determinant for
employment and promotion (Bastian 1987:175). Efforts by the
opposition party trade unions to challenge state authority (given their
inability to voice opposition to the government in Parliament) led to a
series of strikes which prompted the UNP to dismiss hundreds of
public sector employees who had taken part. In response to one of the
largest strikes held in July 1980 opposing rising inflation and failure
on the part of the government to substantially increase public sector
salaries since 1978, a state of emergency was declared and the army
mobilised (Wijesinha 1991:43). The UNP deployed the JSS, which
was progressively used for political thuggery and came under the
direct authority of the extreme Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist and MP,
Cyril Mathew. Because the JSS kept services operating the strike
collapsed. However, more than 40,000 employees were subsequently
dismissed and the trade union movement never recovered (Moore
1990:364). While the JSS became synonymous with political violence
in the lead up to and during the 1983 pogrom (Obeyesekere 1984b
cited in Spencer 1990:95), the involvement of Mathew ensured that
complaints to the police were almost always totally ineffective
(Hyndman 1985:193).

Other independent civil bodies came under direct government control.

UNP supporters infiltrated the Press Council so that by 1978 it was
staffed by government nominees. In universities, a dramatic rise in
complaints of infringement of academic freedom by way of
interdiction, transfer of academics and administrative staff and the
arbitrary suspension of students reflected the UNP’s encroachment
into the academic environment (CRM 1979:140-1). From 1982, state-
sponsored thugs disrupted and attacked meetings by opposition parties
 64

and religious groups with greater frequency, in an environment in

which organised violence became a feature of life (Hyndman 1985:99).
Thus, violence by politically-sponsored thugs including the JSS was
increasingly relied on to persistently disrupt or break up peaceful
demonstrations, meetings and strikes.

3.4 Circumvention of the democratic process

The consolidation of centralised power made possible under the 1978

constitution not only perpetuated a growing chasm between the
political order and politicised youth but also represented a total
rejection of demands for the devolution of power which might
otherwise have helped address common grievances (Bastian 1999:15;
Uyangoda 1992:44). The 1978 constitution destroyed any last
remaining hope that the country’s power structure could be opened up
and systems of governance restructured in favour of decentralised and
democratic power. Moreover, as the 1978 constitution was an
instrument of the ruling party like that of its 1972 predecessor, a series
of amendments to it began which “circumvented the democratic
process and amounted to a process of delegitimisation”
(Coomaraswamy 1993:143-144). Each amendment was designed to
strengthen the political position of the UNP by undermining the
relative power of opponents.

The first amendment to the 1978 constitution enacted on 16 October

1979 put in place legal provisions which enabled the ruling party to
deprive the Leader of the Opposition and former Prime Minister of her
civic liberties for seven years, effectively neutralising the opposition
(Coomaraswamy 1993:143-144). Given that the SLFP was already in
a weak position having only retained eight seats at the 1977 election,
the effect of the amendment crippled the party and strengthened the
 65

relative position of the UNP (de Silva 1993b:56). The second

amendment gave members of the SLFP the right to join the
government while denying reciprocal rights to government MPs to
join the SLFP opposition (Wijesinha 1991:35). The third amendment
introduced in 1982 enabled the President to seek re-election for a
second six-year term only four years into his first term (Sieghart
1984:8). Given the weakened position of the judiciary from sustained
political interference, when the UNP flouted the electoral process and
substituted the general election with a referendum, the Supreme Court
upheld the government’s decision (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007).
Following the presidential elections, the ruling party enacted a fourth
amendment and used its parliamentary majority to hold a referendum
under a state of emergency to extend the life of Parliament for an extra
six years thereby overriding the need for parliamentary elections
otherwise due in August 1983 (Wijesinha 1991:26-27; Vijayalakshmi
2001:149; Sieghart 1984:8). President Jayewardene claimed that the
referendum was necessary to ensure that the undesirable leftist parties
including the “Naxalite” SLFP (a term used pejoratively to refer to
militant Communist groups) did not enter Parliament (Wijesinha
1991:61-2). At the time of the parliamentary referendum, stringent
censorship was already in place under the ERs which provided for the
pre-censorship of material before publication and banning of
publications (CRM 1983:27). Many newspapers, radio broadcasting
and the country’s two television channels all operated under the
control of the state regardless of the emergency laws (de Silva
1993b:56). Before the referendum, moreover, Jayewardene held that
any UNP MP unable to ensure a win in their constituencies would lose
their posts leading many of them to deploy all means available to
ensure victory. UNP supporters were given free licence to intimidate
those opposed to the referendum (Wijesinha 1991:65-66). After the
referendum Jayewardene demanded undated letters of resignation
 66

from all UNP MPs with a view to dating and dispatching them as and
when required (Wijesinha 1991:34), providing further confirmation of
the total lack of separation of powers between the executive and
legislature.

The referendum, which was beset by widespread malpractice, election

violence and the intimidation of political opponents, secured for the
UNP its two-thirds majority in Parliament (Gunasekara 1988:7-8;
Bastian 1999:15). The JVP’s leader, Rohana Wijeweera, challenged
the results in court but was forced a year later to go underground as
the JVP was proscribed and the case dismissed.

The extension of Parliament using a rigged referendum effectively

brought the legitimacy of the entire election process into question
(Presidential Commission on Youth 1990:2). Public confidence in the
electoral process was totally shattered and the manner in which the
referendum was won eroded the credibility of the party in power and
its mandate to govern (de Silva 1993b:58). Because the referendum,
as the only avenue available for the non-violent transfer of power, was
severely undermined and as key institutions including the judiciary
and legislature were seen to be subject to political influence, the
argument that the only viable means of change was the violent
overthrow of the state gained legitimacy or at least sympathy
(Presidential Commission on Youth 1990:xvii). Indeed, a growing
number of the country’s youth now believed that political power had
to be taken by force as political parties themselves had resorted to
unwarranted methods to retain political power (Presidential
Commission on Youth 1990:xvii). While the rules and norms of
electoral politics had effectively been re-written to suit the party in
power, there was an upsurge in organised violence “in the shadow of
the state”, posing an additional threat to democratic politics in the
 67

country (Spencer 1990:11). The 1982 parliamentary referendum, like

that which extended the term of office of the previous UF
administration in 1972, was a key event triggering a rise in extra-
parliamentary unrest and violence in the south in the late 1980s. It also
demonstrated to the Tamil community how a referendum could be
used to deny concessions to ethnic minorities (Coomaraswamy
1993:141).

3.5 State responsibility to protect and the Buddha

Sasana

The 1978 constitution drew on a tradition of Sinhalese monarchical

society whereby kings were advised by the Sangha (Buddhist clergy)
directing the state to “protect and foster the Buddha Sasana”
(Buddha's teachings). The status accorded to Buddhism in the 1972
constitution and upheld in the 1978 constitution implied that the state
had a special role in relation to both the religion and its clergy.
Politicians and military leaders publicly secured the blessing of the
clergy before elections and military campaigns, a ritual which
symbolically represented a form of spiritual justification for their
actions. At the same time, such rituals gave the clergy a legitimate
role in politics as the custodians of the Buddhist religion and thus the
Sinhala-Buddhist nation. Sacred Buddhist space became the domain
of ruling party politicians and the military hierarchy as both sought
symbolic acceptance as defenders of the Buddhist nation and thus
popular acceptance as the righteous leaders and moral crusaders of the
country. Army regiments began to name themselves after ancient
Sinhalese kings famous for having defeated (Tamil) invaders (Bastian
1999:12). By allowing the military hierarchy to take up an
increasingly active public role in events including Buddhist festivals,
 68

the intention of the government was to establish an understanding that

their actions (extrajudicial or otherwise) were instituted for the greater
Sinhala-Buddhist cause and unquestionably honourable. Anyone who
did question them was thereby rendered as politically and morally
suspect. The military's growing presence in public life also reflected
the government's dependence on state violence to repress and control
the wider community. Finally, the strong association between the
military and Buddhism indicated that the forces had undergone an
almost complete process of Sinhalisation with 90 per cent of all armed
personnel ethnic Sinhalese (Bastian 1999:13).

The 1978 constitution upheld religious rights but made them

conditional on not being in conflict with the secular objectives of the
state and populist Buddhism—the two becoming largely
indistinguishable (Warnapala 1994:8). The 1978 constitution did
however contain three elements which were an attempt to meet Tamil
grievances. Firstly, special status was provided to Tamil as a national
language (even though Sinhala remained the sole official language).
Secondly, the distinction between citizens by descent and registration
was removed thereby providing the same fundamental rights to the
latter, including the right to participate in local government elections
(de Silva 1981:560). Thirdly, the new system of proportional
representation introduced with the constitution was seen as an
assurance that minority parties would have a greater voice in national
politics. Moreover, the strengthened fundamental rights provisions
within the constitution gave minority communities some hope that
their rights would be safeguarded (Bastian 1999:15). This hope was
further strengthened by the fact that the Supreme Court was given
jurisdiction over alleged violations. However, such provisions were to
be systematically undermined by the extensive powers granted to the
security forces in the north and east, coupled with the prolonged
 69

suspension of a number of constitutional safeguards against rights

abuses by way of extraordinary provisions in the wake of growing
Tamil militancy (Nissan 1998).

3.6 Open economy based on a righteous society

To complement the UNP’s legislative and constitutional program to

centralise power and provide for a political apparatus free from the
constraints of normal legal process and democratic practices, a series
of social and economic reforms were introduced. These had the effect
of solidifying the UNP’s support base at the expense of the country’s
poor and marginalised groups. The economic policies of the 1977
UNP government are represented by its two key slogans: nidahas
arthikaya (open economy) and dharmista samajaya (righteous
society). While deliberately drawing on the Sinhala-Buddhist notion
of a “righteous society”, trade liberalisation was for the UNP the
means by which a just, affluent and open society would be achieved.
By adopting religion and, by extension, Sinhala ethnicity as the
cultural symbols underpinning its economic vision, the UNP promoted
the idea that its policies were ideologically driven and would bring
about dignity and economic stability for the Sinhalese majority
(Rogers 1987:583). The UNP argued that the constitutional changes
imposed would perpetuate UNP rule and the security of foreign
investment, which were both in the “nation’s long-run material
interest” (Moore 1990:268). In reality, the constitutional and
legislative reforms implemented to centralise power and circumvent
the democratic process ensured that its economic reforms “could not
be challenged or derailed” (Dunham & Jayasuriya 2001:6). Tax
incentives, liberalising access to foreign exchange, imposing tariffs on
public sector imports, abolishing or raising ownership ceilings on
agricultural land and residential property, abolishing retail price
 70

controls and substantially reducing consumer subsidies while

providing support for direct foreign investment and private sector
provision in health and education were some of the liberalisation
measures pursued (Moore 1990:350-1). The policies were
implemented through a highly politicised system which allowed
corruption to flourish. Ultimately, however, the changes to resource
allocation and benefits were imposed to “ensure and entrench the
party's political domination and settle many ‘old debts’ in the process”
(Dunham & Jayasuriya 2001:3). While promoted as a public good, the
new economic regime fostered rampart consumerism, favouring the
private sector and stringently means testing the welfare payments.
Consequently, the costs of living escalated leading to widespread
strikes (Wijesinha 1991:43).

The two aspirations of an open economy and righteousness found

expression in the government’s development plans which deliberately
invoked the symbols and imagery of a grand Sinhalese–Buddhist past.
The largest and most symbolic was the Accelerated Mahaveli
Development Project, an irrigation and hydro-electric power scheme
involving construction of six reservoirs. This project promised cheap
electricity and new paddy land for farmers as well as the recapture of
the landscape and values of the Buddhist kings of the past (Spencer
2004:5; Bastian 1999:11). This and other large-scale irrigation
schemes were implemented in the dry zone which encompassed parts
of the north and east. However, the ambitious economic agenda of the
UNP represented by these grand development projects also served as a
means to consolidate the ruling party’s substantial parliamentary
majority and support base. Although foreign aid subsidised these
grand schemes, jobs and contracts were given to political supporters to
consolidate party-based patronage, triggering politically-connected
prosperity like never before. Contracts and commissions generated
 71

through projects such as the Mahaveli project offered “almost

unlimited scope for patronage and financial gain” (Dunham &
Jayasuriya 2001:7). Any disruption of the political status quo
threatened a long line of benefactors and, given such stakes, those
who profited from their political position were prepared to do
whatever it took for the ruling party to retain power (Spencer 2004:6).
In this way, the politics of development became synonymous with the
political culture of patronage, exclusion and elitism.

A state-led campaign to reconstitute the present in the image of a

glorious, homogenous Sinhala-Buddhist past, symbolised by the
Mahaveli project, appealed to the Sinhalese–Buddhist community. It
also provided a legitimate means to exclude the rest (Spencer
1990:162). Colonisation of projects, both national and especially those
in the north and east, by ethnic Sinhalese was imbued with the rhetoric
of Sinhala nationalism and the right to reclaim a glorified past.
Stacking the workforce in this way also transformed the electoral
demographics. State-sponsored Sinhalese migration took on a
historical importance to the Sinhalese majority, overriding any
negative social impacts and enabling the UNP to change the
demographic landscape of the country and especially the electoral
power balance in the east (Wijesinha 1991:49). Sinhalese colonisation
schemes and development plans were, in effect, part of a grand UNP
nation-building plan which increasingly found expression in a desire
to divide and rule the country by three policies. The first was to
undermine Tamil dominance in the north and east to prevent
separatism and other expressions of common grievance and anti-
government sentiment while also opening up the economy in the
region. The second was to separate and divide Sinhalese farming
communities in the south to counter any possibility of collective
action based on common grievances. And the third was to establish an
 72

open economy under the patronage of the ruling party allowing for
rapid modernisation and wealth. Disappearance of young rural men
was to become central to achieving these policies. Under the state
resettlement schemes initiated throughout the late 1970s and into the
1980s, the migration of thousands of Sinhalese farmers took place
before the initiative was abruptly suspended in 1984 in the face of a
series of LTTE attacks (Hoole 13 February 2002 & 2001:310; Swamy
1996:137-138).

Having come to power on the promise of establishing a free market

economy and free press under the economic changes instituted by the
UNP, the private sector expanded at the expense of the public sector
(Hettige 1999:305). Given the flow of large volumes of foreign aid
into the economy and extensive development projects on offer, MPs
continued to act as the conduit for the distribution of almost all of the
state’s now considerable resources (Spencer 1990:11; Lakshman
1992:97). Some politicians who were engaged in development
projects compared themselves with the kings who built ancient
irrigation systems (Bastian 1999:11). Political patronage remained the
most important means for socio–economic advancement during the
UNP’s rule—and securing an MP’s recommendation “chit” was the
prerequisite for public service employment. Thus, the “system of
MPs’ chits” became the commonly expressed term for the patronage
system (CRM 1979:101) which rewarded patronage over merit.
Political affiliations became the central focus of the government’s
economic strategy thereby further entrenching socio–economic
inequalities (Lakshman 1992:97-98). Supporters of opposition parties,
the ethnic Tamil community and the country's rural youth were
excluded from this process (Abeyratne 2004:1313).
 73

The UNP freed up access to foreign exchange and foreign goods while
lowering state expenditure on welfare measures. State benefits of
production subsidies, tax incentives and cheap credit were provided to
the affluent on the pretext of encouraging investment, and a restrictive
wage policy was introduced to keep labour costs to a minimum. The
withdrawal of food subsidy entitlements from half the population
(Moore 1990:352) and other changes to welfare expenditure were,
according to Dunham and Jayasuriya, purely ideological and had no
economic basis. They argued that President Jayewardene interpreted
the historical continuation of consumer subsidies as the unwarranted
political power of the left and union movement—by cutting the
entitlements he could destroy the remaining power and influence of
the union movement (2001:5). Moore suggests that the cuts remedied
weakness in the political system whereby “the relatively
indiscriminate and inefficient” distribution of considerable material
patronage purchased “little lasting support for the party in power”
(1990:352). In their place, new forms of patronage were forged in the
form of government contracts and housing schemes (Moore 1990:367)
which could be more easily targeted and managed. The diversion of
state resources through such patronage networks (and justified as a
form of state building) contributed to the development of a shadow
state. This state operated in parallel with the democratic state but
ultimately undermined formal governance structures and institutions
rendering the ruling elite dependent upon disappearance and other
illegitimate forms of violence to maintain power.

Inevitably, the UNP’s economic liberalisation policies weakened the

financial position of the country’s working class and exacerbated the
relative position of the country’s poor (Lakshman 1992:97).
Samarasinghe noted an increase in the “ultra poor” from less than 10
per cent of the population in 1977–78 to 25 per cent in 1981–82 (cited
 74

in Winslow and Wooste 2004:57) By embracing the ideology of

economic liberalism and materialism which coincided with political
centralisation, the UNP further alienated the rural poor from the urban
central government and its elite clientele, cementing their existence on
the socio–economic periphery. The Jayewardene regime widened the
schism in Sri Lanka society, “making the contrast between affluence
and privation more glaring” (Vijayalakshmi 2001:125). Reflecting the
UNP’s orientation to business and middle-class interests, new winners
(in the form of a new business and urban middle class) were created
through shifts in power and “re-alignment of class and ideological
forces” brought about by trade liberalisation while the traditional
“nationally-oriented, rural petty bourgeoisie” that had historically
relied on the state for socio–economic support lost power under the
post-1977 economic regime (Hettige 1999:300). Such policies brought
to the fore historical tensions between the UNP urban English-
speaking ruling elite and the traditional rural elite of nationalist
Sinhala-speaking village teachers, traders, monks and students (Nissan
and Stirrat 1990 cited in de Silva 2006). Nearly half the population
was pushed below the poverty line from 1973 to 1982, as the income
of this new middle class group rose (Bandarage 2009:79). At the same
time, empowered with a range of political and legislative mechanisms
already detailed in this chapter, the UNP could “control, buy or punish
those who may become a problem for the reform agenda” (Bastian
2010:109). They bound the emerging middle class constituents to the
ruling elite by appealing to their newfound status and wealth and
perpetuating fears about anti-state forces such as marginalised rural
youth as a threat to continued prosperity. For the rest of the population,
dependence on state resources and simultaneous exclusion from the
political process created a paradigm of complicity.
 75

By the mid-1970s, the number of educated unemployed youth stood at

over 500,000 (Hettige 1999:305). Many searched for white collar
employment in the state sector, which had contracted with the
expansion of the private sector under the 1977 reforms. At the same
time, the jobs created with the expansion of the urban informal sector
under the liberalisation scheme such as opportunities in trade and
personal services were not those which the educated youth were
looking for (Hettige 1999:306). For these reasons, young mostly
swabhasha (local language) educated rural and property-less lower-
middle class youth joined the Tamil militant movement and JVP. As
Hettige observed, without patronage and English, this single social
stratum could progress up the social ladder “only within a sheltered,
nation-state which protects them from competition” (1999:307).
Gamage also noted that the UNP reform agenda deepened the division
of society between English-speaking and swabhasha-speaking
populations which remained an undercurrent in the violence that was
to follow (1999:331). Unprepared in the new competitive economic
environment, such youths across both Sinhalese and Tamil
communities faced the real prospect of being relegated to the bottom
of the emerging social hierarchy. This was in stark contrast to the
welfare ideology and “ideal, social and moral order that the country’s
nationalist leaders promised to create at the time of independence”
(Hettige 1999:307). However, social and geographic segregation of
Tamil and Sinhalese youth, coupled with the fact that they were
forced into competition over limited opportunities for social
advancement and encouraged to recognise the ‘other’ as the source of
their own grievances, ensured that they remained isolated and would
never unite against the political elite (Hettige 1999:308). The
respective conflicts divided the youth constituencies of the north and
south into the radical camps of the LTTE and JVP. At the same time,
the politicisation of ethnicity had the effect of diluting class
 76

differences within both respective communities. Many poor Sinhalese

youths without employment prospects joined the security forces and
fought and died under a predominantly Sinhalese command while the
LTTE and its leadership were exclusively Tamil (Gamage 1999:335).

Changes to the education standardisation policy introduced by the

UNP in 1978 denied Tamils access to higher education (Ponnambalam
1983:4). State education policy in theory and practice was perceived
by the Tamil community as blocking the last resort they had to
professional employment thereby contributing to the substantial
decline in the employment of Tamils in professional, clerical and
managerial posts (Nithiyanandan 1987:128). Such changes were a
direct consequence of state educational and swabhasha policies
(Manogaran 1987:129 cited in Thangarajah 2002:4-5). By denying
Tamil students entry to university on the basis of standardisation, the
UNP effectively created a generation of politically disillusioned Tamil
youth, many of whom went on to lead or join armed Tamil
secessionist groups (Ponnambalam 1983:4; Gunasinghe 1987:70).
Moreover, Sinhala-only legislation and its underlying discriminatory
ethos continued to have an impact on both educational and
employment opportunities for Tamils, leaving them under-represented
in the public service, public sector corporations, the teaching
profession and in the police and armed forces where recruitment of
ethnic Tamils dwindled to negligible after 1970 (Ponnambalam
1983:174-175). Unemployment of Tamils rose in parallel with a fall in
per capita income across Tamil communities. Unemployment of high
school graduates who had qualified to enter university rose to a
staggering 44.4 per cent of the workforce in 1973, of which a
substantial proportion comprised Tamil students from lower-middle
class families (Nithiyanandan 1987:126-128). They, like higher class
Tamil students, were denied university places, but unlike higher class
 77

students, had no other means of gaining employment. Reflecting the

serious social disruption to the social environment, suicide rates
tripled from 1955 to 1974 from 6.9 to 22.1 per 100,000 population,
with the 15–29 age range and Tamil-dominated communities
including Jaffna, Vavuniya and Batticaloa suffering the highest rates
(Kearney & Miller 1986:5 & 14). From 1977 to 1978, the suicide rate
increased from 2,996 to 3,012. At the same time, use of narcotics
began to skyrocket with an estimated 24,000 users by 1986 from
6,000 in 1980 (Gunaratna 2001:66). Given their socio–economic
insecurity enforced by a series of educational, linguistic and patronage
barriers coupled with an inability to express their grievances by
democratic means and rigid caste and kinship bonds, many such
students were frustrated into active militant engagement (Gunaratna
1987:17; Nithiyanandan 1987:128-9).

The free market economy and society it encouraged provided

opportunities for the affluent to flourish as avenues for advancement,
primarily through education and state employment, were gradually cut
off for the rest of society. The three most important factors to securing
an education and employment became increasingly inaccessible to the
majority—fluent English, an education from an elite school and an
elite family background (Lakshman 1992:96). The politicisation of the
state bureaucracy, which accounted for 25 per cent of the country’s
employment, the extension of its control through state employment
schemes and the political appointment of district and other local-level
administrators led to concentration of state control at the district level.
This enabled the UNP to strengthen its influence, reach and control
over all aspects of people’s lives. While rewarding its own with jobs,
promotions and opportunities for advancement, the UNP imposed a
range of limitations on supporters of opposing parties and others
assumed to be non-compliant with the regime (Gunaratna 2001:64).
 78

Indeed, the legal grievances reflected this reality as the most common
cases taken to court before July 1983 involved education and
employment focused on allegations of discrimination, political
victimisation, and lack of due process in transfers, dismissals and
promotions (Coomaraswamy 1993b:152). Growing social disaffection
with the UNP’s openly discriminatory policies and the pervasiveness
of the patronage system ironically provided the space for discussion
about the very existence and purpose of the state. Rather than call for
elections, therefore, there was growing acceptance among the
disaffected of the argument that because the state was used to widen
the country’s social, political and economic inequalities, it had to be
totally dismantled along with the political system on which it was
based. Indeed, the pervasiveness of the patronage system alone was
recognised as a primary reason for youth disillusionment with the
establishment and a contributing factor to the 1987 JVP insurrection
(Coomaraswamy 1993:131-132).

The combined effect of the constitutional, legislative and socio–

economic policies not only legitimised demands for armed
confrontation but also radicalised youths across both Tamil and
Sinhalese communities for whom a change of government was not
enough. In this context, the JVP and LTTE emerged as movements
against the established political system (Abeyratne 2004:1302). The
accepted view among many rural youths was that the political system
had corroded to the point where it merely existed to serve the narrow
interests of the political urban elite (Presidential Commission on
Youth 1990:1). However, with the prohibition imposed on both the
LTTE and JVP coupled with the politicisation of the judiciary and
legislature which would otherwise serve as the traditional non-violent
means of address, armed revolt became the only way to express the
sense of injustice and socio–political alienation felt by such youth. At
 79

the same time, as anti-government violence escalated, the UNP

increasingly relied on its shadow state or alternative political
apparatus. Rural youth who had already demonstrated a total
disinterest in manual labour such as farming and fishing and following
in their parents' footsteps, were not considered by the ruling elite as
reserve labour force which could help realise its economic aspirations.
Rather rural youth were seen as a potential menace and antagonistic
force which posed as a considerable threat to its economic goals
(Marino 1989:2:3) and wider political aspirations. Disappearance
served as a means by which the ruling party could eliminate such a
threat while upholding its national building agenda and façade of a
functional democratic state.

3.7 Politics of intolerance and polarisation

The Tamil-dominated Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) had

become the main parliamentary opposition at the 1977 election,
winning 18 parliamentary seats. However, the anti-democratic
approach of the UNP and its politics of intolerance effectively
neutralised the TULF’s role (Ponnambalam 1983:193; Nithiyanandan
1987:147). Because the TULF advocated separatism, the UNP found
that the most effective response to any form of opposition was to
claim that such parties sought to destabilise the country as a requisite
for separation (Ponnambalam 1983:194). Thus, parliamentary
confrontations were promptly polarised between the Sinhalese
government and minority Tamil opposition which both perpetuated
and reflected the ethnic polarisation of the country (Bastian 1999:14).
At the same time, mounting UNP antagonism towards Tamil demands
in Parliament coincided with increasingly frequent incidents of
organised violence against the Tamil community (Thangarajah
2002:12; Sieghart 1984:15). The first outbreak of such violence took
 80

place within weeks of the 1977 election as a direct reaction to Tamil

demands for separation and consequent warning not to undertake any
action to separate the country (Leary 1981:20). The violence was
triggered by Tamil youth killing two policemen in the north and led to
widespread attacks on Sri Lankan Tamil and Plantation Tamil
communities and property over a period of two months, leaving
thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced (Orjuela 2011:15;
Nissan 1998). However, both the government and the Sansoni
Commission responsible for investigating the violence concluded that
the rioting was a consequence of Tamil demands for separation and
sheeted the blame onto the Tamil community. The imputation was that
such violence could be avoided if demands for separatism were
abandoned (Wijesinha & Kulatunga 2002:3). Not only were the police
and army complicit in the violence against Tamil civilians but in the
period following the violence, security provided to Tamils in the south
significantly declined (Wijesinha & Kulatunga 2002:3; Ponnambalam
1983:196).

Discriminatory state policies were upheld in a context of growing

intolerance and antagonism not only towards Tamil demands for
separatism but also in relation to the rights and entitlements of the
Tamil community. The UNP’s preference for a military response to
what was gradually perceived as a “Tamil problem” rather than
genuine grievances from within the Sri Lankan community found
expression in various government policies—policies which magnified
rather than understated the differences between the two communities
on the basis of language, religion and ethnicity. The widely held
perception within the Tamil community was that the UNP was
committed to promoting Sinhalese interests at its expense. Although
the first calls for succession made in response to the 1972 constitution
enjoyed support only among a small band of young Tamil extremists,
 81

there is a clear correlation between separatism becoming the principle

objective of the main Tamil party and state policies and practices. In
short, the demand for separation grew in parallel with state repression
as Tamil radicalisation was a response to government policy (Kloos
1997). Tamil youth groups challenged the traditional strategies of
political engagement employed by Tamil parliamentarians such as
compromise and accommodation through the parliamentary process,
and thereby agitated not only against the government but also against
their own leaders (Kloos 1997). But because the TULF and the
militant movement shared a common goal, perception in the north
grew that the political leadership was complicit with the militants
(Hoole et al.,1990:13). It also provided the scope for militants and
particularly the LTTE, once it secured a monopoly over the separatist
cause to justify its violent, anti-democratic and autocratic methods as
the means to achieving the goal of Tamil Eelam.

While there had been a number of low-scale incidents of violence and

theft as well as minor confrontations between the militants and
security forces in the north in the 1970s, the first major incident was
the assassination of the pro-SLFP Jaffna Mayor, Alfred Duraiappa in
Jaffna on 27 July 1975 whom militants had condemned to death as a
traitor to their cause (Wijesinha 1991:25). In response, the security
forces rounded up more than 100 Tamil youths, holding them in
custody for more than a year without charge or trial under the 1971-
imposed emergency which had remained in force (Ponnambalam
1983:184; AI 1975:22). For its part, the TULF had declared a
commitment to resolve the “Tamil question” by advocating autonomy
of land use and settlement in Tamil areas (Hoole et al.,1990:23).
However, the UNP’s determination to solve Tamil demands militarily
provided the opportunity to eradicate all potential threats to the
government’s reform agenda across the Tamil community. Such
 82

aspirations found expression in the PTA and complementary

legislation under which thousands of rural male Tamil youths were
arbitrarily arrested, detained and disappeared. Only a small proportion
of educated unemployed Tamil youths joined the separatist movement.
Similarly, only relatively few Sinhalese youth joined the ranks of the
JVP in the late 1980s. However, as the prospect of a radicalised
generation of Tamil and Sinhalese youths posed a threat to the ruling
elite and the prevailing political structure, the militant movements
themselves merely provided the UNP with a pretext to crack down on
an entire generation.

While Tamil militancy continued to spread, by mid-1983 state

intelligence established that the number of militants stood at a mere
2,000 (Swamy 1996:97; Gunaratna 2001:238). However, when a
series of interventions by the central government to impose political
control in Jaffna and break the power base and prestige of the TULF
totally backfired, the UNP held that the TULF leader, Mr
Amirthalingam MP, was acting against the interests of the country and
brought a no-confidence motion against him. 4 The no-confidence
motion led to a walk out of TULF, SLFP and CP MPs but was passed
with the UNP’s majority in Parliament on 24 July 1981
(Ponnambalam 1983:209). The Tamil community now more readily
recognised that the UNP was disingenuous in its efforts to address

4
The UNP tried to rig the District Development Councils (DCC) elections by
deploying 300 police personnel and 150 UNP loyalists to replace election
officials to supervise the polls. When the UNP candidate for Jaffna and
supporters were shot and the TULF secured all DDC six seats, the security
forces went on a rampage which lasted for days destroying the historically
significant Jaffna Library, shops, houses and TULF headquarters. The DCCs
found themselves with little power and subject to continual government
interference (Nissan 1996:16; Ponnambalam 1983:206; Bastian 1999:16).
 83

Tamil grievances and that without democratic representation, the state

would be used as an instrument of the party in power to violently
suppress their national democratic rights (Rupesinghe 2000:21).

3.8 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom

The violence that had begun in July 1981 spread to other parts of the
country with the UNP’s involvement clearly established
(Ponnambalam 1983:21; Leary 1981:21; Wijesinha 1991). A state of
emergency was eventually declared on 17 August by which time
thousands had fled their homes (Leary 1981:21). The riots of 1981
were a culmination of rising tension between the Tamil community
and the state given militant attacks and military retaliation in the north,
arbitrary use of the PTA primarily against Tamil youth, arson and
looting undertaken by the police, and greater polarisation than ever
before between the state forces and Tamil civilians in Jaffna (Leary
1981:20). It also served as a warning to the Tamil community that
demands for separatism would not be tolerated. Indeed, a pattern had
emerged whereby the UNP repeatedly asserted that violence
perpetrated against Tamils, which became increasingly common
during the early 1980s, was permissible if not a justified response to
Tamil demands for separatism. Such violence was also part of a
pattern of communal violence which had become a deliberate strategy
to deal with the Tamil community (Hoole 2001:41). The
government’s response to the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, which amounted
to a state-sponsored pogrom, was characterised by the same sentiment.
Indeed, the legislation put in place before the riots, the manner in
which the violence was carried out and the indemnity legislation
providing impunity for state officials involved was the turning point in
the country’s history and placed it on a path towards armed
confrontation.
 84

The 1983 pogrom demonstrated the manner in which the various

elements of the UNP’s alternative political apparatus operated in
unison. Evidence suggests that the government was preparing for a
massive use of force against the Tamil community before the riots (Dr
Nesiah, personal communication). A month before the July 1983
events, the 1971 ERs were promulgated to permit the disposal of
bodies by security officials in the north without post-mortem inquiry
with the intention that the armed forces “are in no way harassed by the
law” (government report cited in CRM 1983b). Furthermore,
regulations had been framed to provide powers to state officials to
destroy refugee settlements set up after the 1977 and 1981 violence in
the north and east. During the 1983 violence itself, at least 600 Indian
Plantation Tamils who had fled to the north and east were forcibly
transported back to the hill country in the middle of the carnage
(Hoole et al.,1990:63; Bastian 1990:300). A statement by
Jayewardene less than two weeks before the riots demonstrated the
extent to which the government now openly recognised the Tamil
community as expendable. He emphasised that “we cannot think of
them, nor about their lives or their opinion about us” (cited in
Wijesinha & Kulatunga 2002:2). In this way, the killing of 13 soldiers
in the north by landmine attack provided an opportunity for the
government and its support base to teach Tamils a lesson for holding
separatist aspirations. The anti-Tamil violence broke out in Colombo
and spread across most Sinhalese areas of the country. At the peak of
the riots security regulations were relaxed and Sinhalese gangs could
rampage through Tamil communities with no risk of government
retribution (Bastian 1999:16). Indeed, Dr Nesiah, Government Agent
of Jaffna at the time of the riots, held that they “were not controlled
because there was no longer any need to control—the tie was broken.
It was punishment. It was a warning not to do that again” (personal
communication). Thus the July 1983 violence was not spontaneous
 85

nor a popular response to the killing of the 13 soldiers but rather a

“series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted
plan, conceived and organised well in advance” (Sieghart 1994:76-77).

Many of the gangs engaged in the violence were armed with electoral
lists identifying Tamil properties and houses (Roberts 1994:317). The
lists were provided by high ranking government officials including
cabinet ministers (Cheran et al.,1993) and scores of Tamil men named
on them disappeared (Rubin 1987:31). The JSS, civil servants,
business people and monks linked to government ministries were
involved in initiating and motivating attacks while truckloads of men
were waved through curfew areas by the police at the time of the
violence (Warnapala 1994:166; Piyasasa 1984 cited in Roberts
1994:326-7 endnote; Wijesinha 1991:75). Indeed, given the fact that
the primary target of the riots was not Tamil homes so much as Tamil
commercial establishments, it was clear that those close to the
government with vested interests took part in directing the riots
(Warnapala 1994:166). In many places, the army and police were
either directly involved in the riots or stood by and watched the rioters
do their worst (Nithiyanandan 1987:153). Yet President Jayewardene
justified rather than condemned their role in the riots by stating: “I
think there was a big anti-Tamil feeling amongst the forces. They also
felt that shooting the Sinhalese, who were rioting, would have been
anti-Sinhalese, and actually in some places we saw them encouraging
(rioters)” (cited in Hyndman 1985:183). During two days of targeted
attack, 50 Tamil detainees at Colombo’s maximum security Welikada
prison, including LTTE leader Kuttimani, were killed by army
personnel (Hoole et al., 1990:64; Nissan 1988; Swamy 1996:94).
Evidently, no impartial inquiry was conducted into the killings and no
one was found guilty of the crimes, which were “planned at the
highest levels” (Hoole et al.,1990:64).
 86

On 28 July President Jayewardene addressed the nation sympathising

with the Sinhalese mobs whose violent reaction he lamented was
understandable given Tamil militants’ efforts to divide the country.
Jayewardene concluded that the government had not been adequately
tough with the separatists and legislation was introduced in the form
of the sixth amendment to the 1978 constitution to proscribe any party
that advocated separatism. This reform was backed up by the
requirement that all public servants and MPs take an oath of
allegiance to a unitary state (Wijesinha 1991:76). Those who
advocated separation would now lose their civic rights and face a
prohibition from holding office, practising professions, or joining
movements and organisations (Jayewardene cited in Hyndman
1985:176). Such action effectively rendered advocating separation
through the democratic system null and void and with it the main
parliamentary opposition. When the TULF parliamentarians were
forced to forfeit their parliamentary seats all efforts to achieve Tamil
nationalist aspirations by constitutional means came to an end (Nissan
1998). With Tamil political parties driven out of Parliament and the
wider democratic process, Tamil militants filled the vacuum as the
spokespeople of the Tamil community (Coomaraswamy 1993b:154-
155).

In every subsequent speech on the anti-Tamil violence, the President

played on public fears of anarchy and national division claiming that
the violence was part of a Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the state
requiring the proscription of the three leftist parties: Nava Sama
Samaja Party (NSSP), CP and JVP despite a lack of evidence to
support his claims (Wijesinha 1991:77 Spencer 1990: note 2:261).
Leaders and members of all three parties were arrested and faced
indefinite detention without trial (Hyndman 1985:190). TULF leader
 87

Amithalingham openly challenged the government stating that Cyril

Mathew and the security forces, as well as others close to the
government, were responsible for not only the July events but also the
attacks on the July 1980 strikers and judges’ houses a month before
the July 1983 riots (Hyndman 1985:192). However, consequent
official statements reiterated the government view that the opposition
parties were responsible despite never having provided any evidence
to support the claim (Spencer 1990:235). At the same time senior
UNP ministers appeared on television, radio and in the press declaring
that the response of Sinhalese mobs was understandable and justified
(Bastian 1999:17). As the government dismissed the riots as a normal
response to militant activity (Nissan 1998), there was no investigation
into the killing of an estimated 3,000 Tamils which took place during
the riots and no action was taken on the Welikada prison killings
(Hoole et al.,1990:71). The Secretary of the Ministry of Defence held
that it was not the appropriate time to hold inquiries into complaints
about the failure of the security forces to protect Tamils in the riots as
the government relied on the same troops to deal with militants in the
north (Hyndman 1985:183). Thereafter, the Indemnity (Amendment)
Act No. 60 of 1988 extended the period for which the indemnity
applied to 16 December 1988 to cover the period of the 1983 pogrom
(AI 1990:3). Given the extent to which government officials were
involved in the orchestration and implementation of the riots, the
government recognised the necessity of imposing this blanket
legislation to protect its own from prosecution.

The 1983 riots enabled the UNP to ban or render ineffective the main
parliamentary opposition and three opposition parties. It also gave the
UNP’s support base an opportunity to eliminate rival Tamil businesses
and thus economic competition. The proscription of the JVP, which
immediately forced the movement and its leader underground, was
 88

seen as a direct response to its public opposition to the government

and to its court case challenging the legality of the 1982 referendum.
By shifting responsibility for the violence onto its political rivals and
driving them out of the democratic process, the UNP sought to destroy
the threat that they and particularly the JVP posed to its rule
(Wijesinha 1991:67; Gunasekara 1988:8). The government openly
promoted the idea that anti-UNP forces in the south were linked to the
LTTE in the north as part of common efforts to bring the government
down. By promoting the argument that all political opposition,
especially Tamils and leftist parties, were inherently anti-Sri Lankan,
the UNP created a fear psychosis particularly among its political
constituents in the urban upper and middle class to create complicity
with the regime’s violent aims.

The consequences of the 1983 riots for the Tamil community were
numerous and wide-reaching. First, the moderate Tamil leadership
and civilians were marginalised as the militants took control of the
Tamil response (de Silva 1993b:60). Second, the militant movements
grew substantially in both numbers and resources having gained
support from Tamils abroad. Third, this led to an even greater
diversion of state resources to the defence budget while administrative
reform was perpetually put on the backburner (de Silva 1993b:60;
Swamy 1996:104). For the Tamil community, lack of state protection
let alone direct state involvement in the riots demonstrated a need to
find alternative forms of security (Nithiyanandan 1987:154).
Thereafter, excesses by the security forces usually directed at the
civilian population benefited the militants by driving Tamil civilians
to them for protection during intensive fighting. The militants also
enjoyed growth in membership and community support by way of
sustenance and information (Nithiyanandan 1987:150). The central
Indian government, which sought greater influence over Sri Lankan
 89

policies on the Tamil issue, ordered its national intelligence agency,

the Research and Analysis Wing, to provide arms and training to the
Sri Lankan militant groups (Nissan 1998; Gunaratna 2001:238). With
such funding and support, an estimated 15,000 cadres were trained
over a five-year period in camps near India’s top military academy,
Dehradun (Gunaratna 2001:238).

The UNP’s intolerance of Tamil militancy emanated from the Tamil’s

challenge to the concept of a unitary state, and the threat it posed to
Jayewardene’s personal rule and his economic and political legacy.
Throughout the 1980s, the shadow state typified by the phenomenon
of disappearance operated in parallel with official counter-insurgency
methods to enforce the government’s agenda in relation to the Tamil
militants, leading to an increasing escalation of state and shadow state
violence and counter-violence (Sieghart 1984:17). Having undergone
training with the Israeli forces in 1983, the Sri Lankan security forces
deployed an Israeli strategy of totally decimating areas in which acts
of terrorism had occurred. This was the central tenet of its counter-
insurgency approach (Wijesinha 1991:93). Inferior military equipment
was used to justify military excesses while more frequent militant
attacks were matched with abuses of Tamil civilians and the roundup
and detention of greater numbers of Tamil youth (Wijesinha 1991:93;
Warnapala 1994:184). Civil society and individual attempts to
challenge state violence and demand political leadership were
undermined by media censorship and excessive controls on freedom
of speech. The UNP’s objective to systematically immobilise all
forms of dissent was justified on the grounds that dissent was anti-Sri
Lankan and contrary to the interests of national security. Such
propaganda sought to establish consensus with the state’s project
through fear. Civil society became a target of both government and
subversive violence rendering the price for activism too great
 90

(Muttetuwegama cited in Fernando 1998:4). Tamil academics and

activists who represented an alternative political ethos to state
repression and spoke out against the LTTE's growing authoritarianism
were forced to leave the country or face the threat of state or LTTE
violence for their independent views. At the end of 1983, almost every
section of civil society in Colombo and in the south—from the press
to academia, religious bodies to research groups, human rights
organisations to legal bodies—was compromised, given, on the one
hand, severe state-imposed restrictions and on the other, lack of
common agreement across civil society on the Tamil “problem” which
had become the national question (Hoole 2001:8). At the same time,
changes to the political structure brought about by the 1978
constitution created conditions whereby politics took on a greater
importance than civic engagement given the subordination of popular
institutions to the will of the party in power. Confrontational party
politics rather than restorative community engagement became the
preferred means of resolving private disputes (Spencer 1990:200).
Some civil society groups and organisations managed to continue
operating throughout the violence. They generally contained their
activities to documenting human rights abuses and passing
information to the international community to exert pressure on the
Sri Lankan government, and did so at tremendous risk. The Civil
Rights Movement of Sri Lanka (formed in 1971 after the first JVP
insurrection to safeguard civil and political rights) and the Movement
for Inter-racial Justice and Equality (formed in the late 1970s) also
managed to continue their work. However, the scope of their activities
was confined by legal conditions and tight controls. Organisations
also emerged out of the violence of the 1980s such as the Lawyers for
Human Rights, established in 1986 to provide free legal advice to
victims of human rights abuses. The University Teachers for Human
Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR-J) and the Sri Lanka Information Monitor
 91

(INFORM) were both formed in 1988 and kept a low profile but
managed to operate throughout the terror. However, such activities
had a price. A founding member of the UTHR-J and outspoken human
rights activist in Jaffna, Dr Rajani Thiranagama, who was head of the
Department of Anatomy at the University of Jaffna, was killed
allegedly by the LTTE in September 1989. Other UTHR-J activists
were forced to leave Jaffna in 1990. During years of terror, lawyers
who filed habeas corpus petitions had to leave the country or face
death threats from vigilante groups and, in Tamil areas, academics and
activists were persecuted by the LTTE.

Within a climate of growing state violence and reactive yet still

containable militant violence, the UNP chose to construct a regime of
terror legitimised by the manipulation of historical fears within the
Sinhalese community about Tamil invasion. As the security forces
were deployed to do what was necessary to ‘defend the nation’, wide
powers of arrest and detention coupled with impunity, executive
control and marginalisation of the legislature and judiciary fostered
the conditions for widespread abuses to take place. The centralisation
of power at the expense of the legislature and judiciary enabled the
UNP to push its economic liberalisation agenda forward and impose
sanctions on those opposed to it. While only a small portion of
educated unemployed rural youth from Tamil communities who had
been marginalised by the liberalisation reform agenda took up
weapons against the state, the UNP seized the opportunity to enact
emergency regulations and indemnity legislation, thereby paving the
way for the disappearance of thousands of Sri Lankans.
 92

CHAPTER 4
Dealing with the ‘other’

T
he growth in Tamil militancy in the early 1980s provided a
pretext under which the UNP pursued its political agenda in
the north and east. Intent on diluting the Tamil population in
both areas while pursuing a policy of Sinhalese colonisation, the
political apparatus established by the UNP enabled the government to
camouflage these wider political objectives under the guise of dealing
militarily with the Tamil militants and crushing terrorism. Doing so
escalated the level and intensity of violence which ultimately led to a
civil conflict. Disappearance served as a means by which the ruling
party could achieve its political aspirations of eradicating a militant
threat and permanently altering the demographic composition of the
north and east while upholding the image of a democracy based on the
rule of law. The modus operandi of disappearances became common
across all contexts of violence in the north, east and later in the south.
What changed over time, however, were the range of actors involved
and respective objectives behind the offence.

4.1 Disappearances and the demographic composition of

the north and east

From the 1940s, successive administrations had maintained a program

of Sinhalese colonisation in the north and east under the auspices of
irrigation programs which altered the ethnic composition of the area
(Kapferer 1988:223). In Trincomalee District, the proportion of
Sinhalese rose from 3 per cent in 1946 to 30 per cent by 1971 while
 93

Batticaloa District was divided into two electoral and administrative

divisions in 1963 to accommodate the Sinhalese-dominated Amparai
District (Wijesinha 1991:49). When it came to power in 1977, the
UNP not only continued the colonisation policy but gave it a
Sinhalese nationalist identity to encourage Sinhalese families to
repopulate what it promoted as the ancient territory of Sinhalese
civilisation in the north and east to reclaim and recreate a glorified
Sinhala-Buddhist past. However, the policy directly undermined the
two primary grievances of the eastern Tamil community, namely
population density and proportional representation, and antagonised
Tamils in the north. The settlements established under the policy
became, therefore, a primary target of the LTTE and other separatist
groups (Marino 1989: Part 2:2). The extent to which the policy
affronted the Tamil community at large was explained by
Somasundaram:

A major area of ethnic conflict and one of outstanding grievances of

the Tamils is the change in the demographic pattern of the northeast
by state sponsored Sinhalese colonisation. The Tamils perceive the
influx of Sinhalese as a threat to the integrity of their ‘traditional
homeland’ where they want to retain their voting majority, control
over their own affairs and cultural identity, if not, at least the names
of their villages. The dominant Sinhalese politics on the other hand
does not recognise this claim to exclusive territoriality but looks
upon the whole island as belonging to the Sinhalese (Sinhaladipa).
- Somasundaram 1998:32

With the enforced suspension of Sinhalese resettlement initiatives in

late 1984 following a series of LTTE attacks, the need for a counter-
insurgency response gave the government an opportunity to realise its
political aspirations to undermine Tamil dominance in the region.
 94

Even though Tamils had been forcibly removed from their homes
months before the LTTE attacks, a dual approach of enforced
disappearance and forced eviction was implemented to dilute the
Tamil population and break up militant networks (Hoole 2001:327).
The forced eviction of Tamil families could now be justified as
necessary in the fight against terrorism. Disappearance carried out in
the shadow of the state was denied outright, enabling the government
to also deny the reality of this wider political agenda. Such tactics
were applied in combination with ER provisions including curfews
and restrictions on movement which permitted the security forces to
cordon off Tamil areas from the rest of the country (Mr VS
Ganesalingam and Mr F Xavier, Home for Human Rights, personal
communication). In this manner, various political and economic
objectives merged to facilitate the annihilation of separatists and anti-
government sentiment while also effecting demographic change in the
region.

To advance this political project, public acts of violence perpetrated

against civilians including extrajudicial killings committed by
uniformed security personnel were replaced with clandestine tactics
such as disappearances and blanket denials of arrest and detention
even when they took place in front of witnesses (AI 1994:26). At the
same time, torture became routine practice at Elephant Pass, Palaly,
Vavuniya, Jaffna Fort and Boosa camps leading to deaths in custody
either during or following interrogation (AI 1985:245). Furthermore,
ER 55B-G which permitted disposal of dead bodies without inquest or
the need to inform any party, was promulgated on 14 June 1984. The
provision served as a legal cover for serious transgressions and
remained in place until March 1990. A pattern quickly emerged
whereby people arrested during cordon and search operations or
abducted by state officials without reference to any legal process,
 95

disappeared in state custody. While disappearances had taken place

under the UNP before 1984, they could be dismissed by the state as
“excesses” or individual and undisciplined acts by lower ranked
officers which transgressed a norm. However, the emerging scale and
widespread nature of the crime from 1984 implicated the highest
levels of government. As the following evidence reveals, “excesses”
soon became the norm while the mechanism of terror created by the
alternative political apparatus represented a supreme or ultimate
excess.

The first large-scale incidents of disappearance in the north took place

in retaliation for the 11 November 1984 killing of 62 Sinhalese
civilians who had moved to a new open prison camp at the Kent and
Dollar Farms in Vavuniya. Approximately 100 Tamil men were
subsequently removed from their homes in Vavuniya by the security
forces and disappeared in state custody (AI 37/08/86). While the
violence perpetrated against the Tamil community during the 1980s
was totally disproportionate to the scale and size of the militant threat,
its purpose was to influence the demography of the region in the name
of nation-building and the UNP’s ideology of a righteous society. The
need for a counter-insurgency response to Tamil militancy merely
provided a pretext. By June 1985 about 40,000 predominantly Tamils
had fled their homes in response to the violence (CRM E01/6/85). At
the same time, over 500 complaints of disappearances from Vavuniya,
Mannar, Jaffna and Batticaloa were reported from 1983 to April 1986
(AI 37/08/86:5-6; AI 1987). Thousands of others were held in
detention including an estimated 6,000 “militant suspects” arrested in
Jaffna in 1987 during a military operation and transported to the
Boosa army camp and other detention facilities in the south
(Gunaratna 1987:26). At the end of 1986, moreover, scores of ethnic
Sinhalese had disappeared in the south while hundreds of Sinhalese
 96

and Estate Tamils were held in detention under the PTA and ERs (AI
37/08/86; AI 1987). Now applied well outside the grounds for which
they were initially intended, these extraordinary provisions were to
become the mainstay of state terror. Indeed, once the infrastructure
was in place, it had the potential to be used against any enemy of the
day (Coomaraswamy 1993b:161-2).

4.2 Political apparatus at work

The encroachment of military control upon civil and administrative

functions in the north and east which took place throughout the late
1980s ensured that both regions were, essentially, ruled by the gun
(Coomaraswamy 1993b:155). In October 1983, under Presidential
decree, the Joint Services Special Operations (JOSSOP) was
established with the dual purpose of coordinating all anti-terrorist
activities in Vavuniya, Mannar, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee while
overseeing civil affairs including land settlement (Hoole 2001:313). In
this way, the government was able to interweave its economic and
political agenda into what was officially recognised as a counter-
insurgent strategy. JOSSOP’s second-in-command was the Additional
Secretary for Mahaveli Development—the government’s largest and
most symbolically important land development and resettlement
scheme (Hoole 2001:313; Nissan 1996:24). Official policy was to
settle Sinhalese farmers, fisher folk and prisoners nearing the end of
their sentence to the Mahaveli and dry-zones of the north and east
(Hoole 2001:323). In October 1984 JOSSOP oversaw the forcible
eviction of hundreds of ethnic Tamils from the east while preparations
were made to settle 200,000 Sinhalese in the north as part of an
official publicly announced plan to solve the “Tamil problem”.
However, the LTTE attacked the Kent and Dollar Farms and thereby
 97

forced the suspension of the settlement program triggering a change in

tactics (Hoole 2001:323-326).
With the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, an elite Special
Task Force (STF) commando unit within the police force was formed
to manage security in the east. Established by Ravi Jayewardene, the
President’s son and security advisor, and reporting to him, the STF
was trained by former Special Air Services (SAS) soldiers of the
British military (AI 37/08/86; Hoole et al., 1990:196). The STF was
authorised to operate clandestinely while functioning at the same time
as the primary security agency in the east with restrictions imposed on
the army’s presence in the region under the terms of the accord. In this
way, military control encroached upon civil and administrative
functions with military considerations taking precedence above all
else. Unlike the police force, the STF were not trained in community
relations but rather as an elite commando counter-insurgency unit and
its deployment in the east coincided with reports of scores of
disappearances (AI 37/08/86:3).

In the north, the authority of the local Government Agent (GA) who
represented civil administration at the district level was totally
undermined by the appointment of army officials as Coordinating
Officers with overriding jurisdiction over civilian administration. For
many within the Jaffna community it appeared as though the counter-
insurgency methods were the main mechanism of governance in the
region. In the late 1980s when civilian administrative functions were
limited to relief and rehabilitation and the courts stopped functioning,
the authority of the army as the representative of security and state
administration was further extended to a monopoly over civil affairs
and due process (Coomaraswamy 1993b:155). Responsible for
fulfilling contradictory tasks and devoid of any legitimacy with which
to govern, the army relied on ever-increasing and disproportionate
 98

violence to exert authority. In this way, civil and legal processes,

which provide a legal avenue for airing grievances and seeking
solution without resort to violence, were cut off from the civilian
population (Coomaraswamy 1993b:155).

Complaints about disappearances were met by state officials with an

‘official’ response which changed little over the years regardless of
the circumstances or context in which people went missing. While not
directly acknowledged, disappearances were termed “excesses” by the
government and politically justified as understandable “excesses”
carried out by state officials in the course of defending the nation
(senior member of government cited in Marino 1989:10).
Alternatively, they were described as the result of panic or a
spontaneous reaction on the part of inexperienced security officials to
the pressures of military combat. At the same time, however, the state
legally concealed the scope and manner in which disappearances were
carried out. Security force personnel who engaged in extra-legal
activities, including disappearances and death squads under political
direction, were then responsible to official deny such actions while the
entire state apparatus became complicit in concealing abuses carried
out by shadow forces. While the political leadership admitted to
“excesses” as though they were a natural consequence of the situation,
the victim was either deliberately blamed or it was implied that they
were politically or morally suspect. Given the extent of censorship,
misinformation and rumour, such imputations were directed at
establishing in the mind of the general public the view that the
disappeared must have done something wrong or that their immoral
actions made them somehow unworthy of the state’s protection
anyway. As detailed in chapter 7, families of the disappeared around
the country heard the official response (that the victim was to blame)
repeated by state officials at police stations, army camps, detention
 99

facilities, and in their local MPs’ offices and in Parliament. It served

as an excuse for failing to acknowledge or document their complaint
while also providing an opportunity to bring into question the
character of the disappeared. As the state was reoriented by political
means to engage in the robust concealment and denial of such abuses
rather than to protect the citizenry, enforce the law and thereby
provide remedies to victims of abuses, families found the police, local
administration, courts and political leadership totally ineffectual in
assisting them to establish the truth, let alone bring those responsible
to account. By turning victims into suspects, blurring the distinctions
and boundaries between terrorists and the state and creating a context
in which the sources of violence were impossible to identify, the new
political landscape was defined by impunity.

4.3 Sources of violence

The two main sources of violence in the north and east during the
early 1980s were initially that of the military and police on the one
hand and the various Tamil militant groups on the other. The security
forces were deployed with considerable resources, facilities and scope
by way of extraordinary powers, both constitutional and legislated.
However, the range of groups and actors drawn into the violence grew
as the operations of the shadow state extended to respond to the
escalation of violence. These groups included the STF, as well as
Muslim and Sinhalese civilian Home Guard units. In this way, local
communities were politicised and drawn into the conflict.

The 1983 riots brought about a rise in the membership and strength of
Tamil militant groups, principally the LTTE, Tamil Eelam Liberation
Organisation (TELO), People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil
Eelam (PLOTE), Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front
 100

(EPRLF), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS) and

Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF). In the early
days, they engaged in frequent and violent robberies and extortion as
well as intimidation and assault within the Tamil community (Hoole
et al., 1990:74). However, rivalries and tensions between the
respective groups soon spilt over into internecine warfare for political
supremacy resulting in considerable loss of life and confusion about
the origins of the violence (Thangarajah 2002:16). During this time,
people were forcibly removed off the streets, from their homes, at
their workplaces, and vanished. Whereas initially the LTTE and other
such groups used forced abduction to extract ransoms (Swamy
1996:186), over time and particularly once the LTTE had created its
own proxy state, abductions were carried out to achieve political
rather than material objectives. The emergence of the LTTE as the
dominant group in 1986 coincided with the emergence of a pattern of
violence whereby the LTTE forcibly removed suspected opponents
within the Tamil community including prospective Tamil leaders of
rival groups or anyone suspected of providing support to the security
forces. The LTTE tolerated no dissent within the Tamil community
and maintained its stranglehold on the population through intimidation,
forced abduction and killings. Indeed, once the LTTE had gained its
footing as the dominant separatist group in the Jaffna peninsula, it
refused to permit any other Tamil group or party to operate in areas
under its control (Nissan 1998).

In addition to the array of pro and anti-government groups and militias,

from 1987 to 1990, under the Indo–Lanka Accord, a 6,000 strong
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was deployed in the Jaffna
peninsula. Not only did the IPKF engage in disappearances
themselves, anti-LTTE Tamil militant groups including the EPRLF,
ENDLF and Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which aligned
 101

themselves with the IPFK and took part in joint operations, were also
responsible for a number of abductions which occurred during the
course of roundup operations (North & East Commission 1997b:51-
52). Amnesty International reported the disappearance of 43 people
during the IPKF era, but Hoole et al., maintained that the IPKF was
responsible for the disappearance of at least 300 during this time (AI
37/14/91:4; Hoole et al., 1990:308-9). With the withdrawal of the
IPKF, anti-LTTE militant groups transferred their allegiance to the Sri
Lankan government thereby heightening their influence on the
conflict with some even co-opted into the army as auxiliary units
responsible for identifying LTTE suspects and engaging in joint
operations (Jayatilleke 1999:8-10; Thangarajah 2002:19). At the same
time, disappearance carried out by the pro-government militias
became a feature of counter-LTTE operations. Indeed, during the
IPKF period, an ‘unknown group’ in Jaffna believed by the All Island
Commission to have been the EPRLF was responsible for the
disappearance of many people (2001:57). The EPRLF used its
relationship with the central government to command greater political
influence over the local population leading to its success at the 1988
North-East Provincial Council elections in conditions unconducive to
a free and fair election. The EPRLF consequently exploited the power
which came with such an appointment to engage in the extrajudicial
execution of scores of civilians (UTHR-J 1992:3; Bastian 1999:19). In
this way, an additional mechanism of local government and its
infrastructure was misdirected towards violence in the name of narrow
vested interests rather than meeting the needs of the local population.
Furthermore, the EPRLF and other anti-LTTE militias were able to
embrace parliamentary politics while using their own military factions
to pursue political interests, making it extremely difficult for civilians
to express any political opinion without fear of reprisals from either
side of the conflict.
 102

4.4 Politicisation and militarisation of civilians

The multiplicity of violent groups plus the fact that all sides engaged
in disappearance or abduction made it extremely difficult if not
impossible to establish both the source and motives behind individual
incidents. This situation, compounding the state’s intervention in
everyday life which politicised and polarised social relationships,
provided opportunities for personal and private rivalries and tensions
to find expression in violence. The deliberate use of clandestine tactics
including disappearance encouraged retaliatory abuses against
civilians by both sides. In the early 1980s, the primary counter-
insurgency tactic deployed by the security forces trained by Israeli
soldiers was that of a raid or assault in areas where militants had
previously attacked and killed security force personnel (Nissan
1996:17; Wijesinha 1991:93). From the outset, therefore, civilians
were placed at the centre of the violence as Tamil, Sinhalese and
Muslim villages and homes became the theatre of war. This counter-
insurgency tactic became common practice throughout the early 1980s
in response to the killing of security force personnel and Sinhalese
civilians by the LTTE and other militant groups (Nissan 1996:17).
However, such a strategy inadvertently fuelled rather than disarmed
the militants and by deliberately targeting civilians, entire
communities were drawn into the conflict and forced into political
camps which reflected the ethnic polarisation of the country (Nissan
1998; Nithiyanandan 1987:150; Kearney cited in Warnapala
1994:171).

Sinhalese and Muslim communities in the “border” villages between

LTTE and government-held territory in the north and east were drawn
 103

squarely into the conflict in December 1984 when the government

decided to establish, arm and train “home guards” or civilian defence
forces to be responsible for law and order in their own villages. UNP
MPs became local commanders of the home guard units which
constituted UNP members and supporters almost in their entirety
(Warnapala 1994:186). The consequences of this initiative were
numerous, given that summary justice had effectively been given
political licence. Local disputes and rivalries were couched in the
language of politics and separatism, finding expression in violence
with UNP patrons at a distinct advantage. By formally drawing
civilians into the conflict, villages with home guards became an
attractive target for Tamil militant attacks. In addition, the
Mobilisation and Supplementary Force Act No. 40 of 1985 introduced
a form of conscription where children as young as 16 were eligible for
paramilitary training with some training centres directly controlled by
ruling party politicians (Warnapala 1994:184-186). In this manner, a
range of government-sponsored armed groups came into being under
the direction, control or influence of ruling party MPs. At the same
time, given that approximately 75 per cent of the population lived on
land allotments allocated through government-sponsored settlement
schemes or occupied houses constructed in part or full with
government assistance, the UNP used its patronage networks to wield
considerable influence and power over the country (Peiris 1993c:266-
267). While the UNP had politicised the police force and the President
was empowered to appoint the heads of the armed forces, initiatives
such as the home guards provided greater and more direct political
control over security and reflected the increasing privatisation and
outsourcing of violent means.

In the north and east, life for the civilian population was made
extremely tenuous with the ever-changing dynamics within and
 104

between militant factions and patrons, together with the militarisation

of civilian functions and the inaccessibility of the rule of law. The
volatility of the political temperature and allegiances of both pro and
anti-state militant groups ensured that the distinctions between ‘us’
and ‘them’ became decidedly blurred. The ability to uphold and
demonstrate any form of neutrality in the hope of securing safety was
impossible. Given the intense mistrust that emerged within
communities and neighbourhoods which had otherwise lived in
harmony, providing information voluntarily to various parties became
a way of securing their protection. Such a tactic also gave summary
justice a longer leash as informing on others became a short-cut to
resolving local rivalries and disputes. At the same time, because it was
impossible to know the source of abuses such as disappearance and
abduction, given the range of groups engaged in violence, it led to
speculation that local animosities and tensions provided motive. In
1985 Mrs V’s 26-year-old brother who worked at the local Milk
Board was abducted off the street in the Amparai District by a group
in the company of soldiers and taken away in a white van. She
believed that information was given to the army that her family
supported the LTTE because others were jealous of her family’s
relative affluence which was due to her brother’s position (Mrs V,
Amparai District: Interview 8). Mrs V’s inquiries at the local army
camps were met with total denial and a report to the Akkaraipattu
police station amounted to nothing.

Summary justice enacted by militants, the security forces, pro-

government armed groups and militarised civilian bodies increasingly
filled the vacuum created by a breakdown in the rule of law,
inaccessibility of the courts and a partial police force. People who
retained administrative functions in the north and east were not
immune from pressure to demonstrate political compliance to their
 105

patrons. The Government Agent of Jaffna who administered the

district from 1984 allegedly discouraged the public from making
complaints about the army, leaving complainants with no other option
but to appeal to the LTTE for summary justice (Dr Nesiah, personal
communication). As more communities were drawn into and
implicated in the conflict, violence embedded itself even further into
social relations across ethnic and religious communities. From 1985
Tamil militants attacked Muslim communities with two major
consequences. Firstly, the Muslim community of the north and east
were driven towards the state in search of security. Secondly, targeted
violence spurred growing militancy among Muslim youth leading to a
series of clashes with the LTTE and culminating in the 1990 LTTE
killing of approximately 140 worshippers at the Kattankudy mosque
in the east and expulsion of an estimated 120,000 Muslims from the
LTTE-occupied north (Nissan 1996:21). For its part, the UNP played
a direct hand in provoking the Muslim community into the conflict
and the creation of Muslim Home Guards merely fed the violence as a
pattern of reprisal killings by the LTTE and home guards emerged.
From 1987 to 1990, reports suggest that at least 40 Muslim men were
abducted by the LTTE (Hoole 2001:327; Nissan 1998; AI
37/08/96:23).

4.5 Violence made permissible

By January 1987 the unprecedented violence in the north and east had
led to the deaths of over 10,000 Tamils at the hands of security force
personnel and their allies and approximately 1,000 Sinhalese had been
killed by Tamil militants (Hoole et al.,1990:119). Tens of thousands,
predominantly Tamils, had fled their homes and thousands more were
in detention around the country. As discussed, the legislative and
constitutional framework established under the UNP’s political
 106

apparatus facilitated such violence and provided scope for a range of

groups and individuals with varying motives to engage in violence.
However, it was the ruling party’s exploitation of the Sinhalese
majority’s fears of a division of the country that made such violence
possible. Fears that the Buddhist–Sinhala nation could be destroyed
provided the moral justification for dealing with the “Tamil issue”
militarily rather than by political means. Although civil and human
rights groups raised concerns about the extent of unchecked powers
contained in the PTA and ERs, the majority of the population was
indifferent to the measures or accepted that the security forces should
do whatever was required to defeat separatism and uphold the unity of
the Sinhala-Buddhist nation. The general consensus that the ends
outweighed the means provided scope for abuses to be carried out
against Tamil civilians in the north and east—and these were soon
replicated across the country.

The militants threatened the prospect of jobs and the nation-building

reforms and development projects on offer along with the promises
they held of recapturing the grandeur of the ancient Sinhalese
kingdoms. By reframing the historical past, the nationalistic rhetoric
that accompanied such projects and the wider modernisation agenda
of the UNP drew on what were historical confrontations between
regional rulers to perpetuate contemporary fears regarding ethnic
identity, contextualising Sinhalese colonisation into predominantly
Tamil areas and the accompanying violence as part of a historical
continuum. Resort to disappearance facilitated this falsehood by
impeding the verification of reality and enabled the UNP to deny a
political reality through misinformation.

The disappearance of tens of thousands of Sri Lankans that was to

follow over the forthcoming years was the reality of the UNP’s
 107

“righteous society”. Rather than providing for a just and equal society,
the UNP’s vision of righteousness translated into a society based on
exclusion, affluence and competition. As the ‘ethnic issue’, and with it
prospects for a resolution, became defined largely in military terms,
violence became the preferred expression of this ideology of ethnic
cleansing, as the ruling party became transfixed with eliminating the
unrighteous, the impure and those professing any other society.
Disappearances served as the mainstay of this regime by providing a
means of purification and its concealment. Therefore, efforts to
recover the disappeared through social, political and legal means were
attempts to re-establish the individual in relation to the state and
thereby recover the state’s obligations towards its citizenry in terms of
law and order, justice and basic human rights protections.

There is no question that the LTTE and JVP were extremely violent
regimes in their own right. However, if the government’s intention
had been just to weaken or even eliminate these movements, it would
have set the country on a very different political path. It might have
used the rule of law and democratic process to address their
grievances before they were expressed in terms of violence. Or the
government could have at least strengthened the rule of law to ensure
that the counter-insurgency was proportionate in its response and
upheld international human rights norms.

By the mid-1980s, all forms of political agitation within the Tamil

community were almost exclusively the domain of armed militants
who, in contrast to their parliamentary predecessors, saw any form of
concession or compromise as an act of treason. When offers for
concessions did come from the government, they were rejected by the
intransigent Tamil leadership as too little too late. As the LTTE
challenged the territorial integrity of the state, their demands grew in
 108

parallel with their ability to challenge the state militarily, rendering

the aspirations of the previous Tamil leadership for decentralisation or
devolution of power totally inadequate (Wilson 1998:349). At the
same time, the Sinhalese community saw any concessions offered by
the central government as a threat to the very existence of the nation,
and totally rejected them. Both sides had been politically polarised by
the violence they both perpetrated against civilians, legitimised by
their self-serving rhetoric. The death and destruction wrought by the
security forces was carried out in the name of the territorial integrity
of the nation. The LTTE’s attack on Sinhalese civilians was a means
of securing Tamil rights and exemplified the need to establish a Tamil
homeland where such rights were assured (Warnapala 1994:172).

In 1985, under pressure from India, the Sri Lankan government

offered devolution of executive power and the establishment of
elected provincial councils as a way of providing some autonomy to
the Tamil community. It also introduced a legislative amendment
providing for linguistic equality (Coomaraswamy 1993:144). The
Tamil leadership believed the reforms did not go far enough in
devolving power and meeting their demands. For the Sinhalese
majority, however, they were evidence that the President had given in
to the militants at the cost of the country’s unity because provincial
power could be used by the LTTE as a stepping stone to secession
(Marino 1989: Part 4:5). The Tamil community’s perceived temerity
in rejecting such offers further polarised both communities on the
basis of unalterable ethnic differences.

The politicisation and polarisation of ethnicity was further

compounded in 1987 when the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord of 29 July
granted autonomy to the Tamil community in the north and east by
way of devolution of power. It was greeted by Tamils as a chance for
 109

peace and as a total betrayal by the Sinhalese to Sinhala-Buddhist

nationalism as well as Indian interference in the affairs of a sovereign
state. Mr S from the Sinhalese-dominated Gampaha District recalled
that at the time of the accord, he was told by a policeman that the
President was going to give half the country away (Mr S, Gampaha
District: Interview 14). In contrast, for many within the Tamil
community, the accord was at least initially viewed as an opportunity
to end hostilities and achieve peace. Mrs P from the east recalled that
many Tamils went to meet the IPKF when they first entered her area:
“I myself went to meet them. A feeling came to me like we were
going to be liberated, like one of our own had come …” (Mrs P,
Amparai District: Interview 10). But rather than liberation, the
widening political gulf between the two majority communities
entrenched their polarised positions in the wake of the accord and led
to unprecedented political violence.

Under the pretext of destroying terrorism, the UNP pursued a wider

policy objective of Sinhalese colonisation during the early 1890s,
destroying solidarity within Tamil communities in the north and east
and between Sinhalese villages in the south. Sponsorship of local
paramilitary groups and establishment of civilian home guard units
under specific political direction served to conceal disappearances and
other extra-legal abuses. However, the outsourcing of violence and
militarisation of the civilian population ultimately lead to an
escalation in the level, reach and intensity of violence. The parallel
militarisation of public administration and due process and
encroachment of military involvement in civilian affairs dismantled
non-violent avenues to resolve conflict in the north and east, paving
the way for the military to serve as the arbiter in matters pertaining to
the conflict.
 110

CHAPTER 5
We have the democratic power to do anything.
- President Jayewardene
5

Political violence and manufactured chaos

W
hen the JVP launched its southern insurrection against the
ruling party in 1987 in the wake of the Indo-Lanka Accord
that divided the nation, the UNP used the JVP threat as a
pretext to reinforce its own political agenda. Its political project was
directed at eradicating all forms of anti-government sentiment. Rural
communities already rife with violence, corruption and political
hostility and disfigured by JVP hostilities were not protected by the
state but rather were considered sympathetic to the JVP and were
brutalised accordingly. Moreover, efforts on the part of the JVP to
attract rural male youth to its cause gave the ruling elite a pretext to
target rural youths who were viewed as a threat to the patronage
politics on which UNP rule was based. The political project was
overtly violent and its methods clandestine. Death squads and
paramilitary groups operating in the shadow of the state deliberately
copied the JVP’s tactics, concealing from the public the source and
motive behind the violence and thereby manufacturing chaos and
disorder. In the politically constructed haze of confusion, fear and
impunity otherwise termed the beeshana samaya (era of terror), space
was created for the violent expression of private and political
vengeance from the highest levels of government to the rural villages
caught up in the violence. Within this context, disappearance provided
the ideal means by which this political project could be carried out

5
President Jayewardene cited in Marino 1989:8.
 111

and concealed at the village level all the way up to the highest office
in the country.

In 1994 when a new People’s Alliance government came to power

having defeated the UNP, it established three geographically focused
Presidential Commissions of Inquiry to investigate reports of enforced
disappearance perpetrated by state and non-state actors, which took
place from 1 January 1988 in all provinces of the country. The three
commissions received 27,526 complaints and inquired into 16,742
cases of enforced disappearance and forced abduction.6 A fourth All-
Island Commission was established in 1997 to investigate 10,136
outstanding cases from the previous three commissions. However, an
additional 16,305 cases were received by the fourth commission but
were not investigated as its mandate prohibited investigation of new
cases.

In their final reports, the Southern and All Island Commissions noted
that anti-government political affiliation was the main operative factor
in regard to the disappeared, irrespective of whether the party
concerned was lawful (SLFP) or unlawful (JVP) (Southern
Commission 1997b:30; All Island Commission 2001:10). The
Southern Commission concluded that police and military personnel
operating under an unofficial political command structure were

6
Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or
Disappearance of Persons in the Central, North Western, North Central and
Uva Provinces (herein Central Commission), Presidential Commission of
Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons in the
Northern and Eastern Provinces (herein North & East Commission) and
Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or
Disappearance of Persons in the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa
Provinces (herein Southern Commission).
 112

directed to carry out disappearances and killings in order to achieve

the total subjugation of the population for narrow political (and
personal) ends which had nothing to do with reinforcing the law
(Southern Commission 1997b:53). Contrary to popular view,
disappearances were not a consequence of the civil war between the
JVP and state or a purge emanating from a military coup. Rather, they
were carried out under the direction of an alternative political
apparatus or shadow state established by the democratically elected
ruling party to pursue personal and political interests by undemocratic
and illegitimate means. The violence of the JVP provided the perfect
excuse for the UNP to unleash terror against its enemies and reassert
control over rural communities in order to immobilise the possibility
of dissent and establish for President Jayewardene “unchallenged
personal rule” (Gunasekara 1988:87). The political leadership used
this political apparatus to destroy opponents by abducting members
and supporters of opposition parties and young male youth seen as a
threat to its vested interests and political authority.

5.1 Political apparatus at work

In response to the threat posed by the JVP, the same legal and
administrative features that had provided scope for disappearance,
torture and extrajudicial execution in the north and east in the early
1980s were applied to the rest of the country. The PTA, ERs—
including ER 55FF introduced in late 1988—and the indemnity
legislation comprised the main features. Provision of such
extraordinary powers to a politicised police force and military, and the
relaxation of safeguards surrounding arrest and detention with
executive rather than judicial oversight, provided significant room for
political interference. In a speech in the deep south in 1987, President
 113

Jayewardene made his intentions clear when he told an audience of

security force personnel to “Kill and kill and kill the brutes” (cited in
Gunasekara 1988:9). Months later, the Indemnity (Amendment) Act
1988 came into effect, providing the guarantee required by the
security forces to carry out the President’s wishes with impunity.
While enabling the shadow state to thrive, such measures weakened
the formal legal structures and law enforcement institutions to the
point where they were unable to provide remedy to survivors of
political violence. Furthermore, the military ultimately became reliant
upon extra-legal methods leaving the ruling elite with little alternative
to violence to assert its will.

The existence of an alternative political apparatus was exemplified by

the establishment of unofficial detention facilities near army camps
and police stations across the southern and central provinces
(Southern Commission 1997b: 56 & 194). Death squads and
paramilitary groups comprising law enforcement officials promised
rapid promotions through the official ranks and large monetary
rewards in contravention of the Police Ordinance and equivalent
legislation came into being (Southern Commission 1997b: 35 & 79).
Marino argued that whether engaged in official or unofficial activities,
state security personnel operated exclusively on behalf of their
political patrons (Marino 1989: Part 4:2). Many police stations
received lists of alleged insurgents from UNP MPs and appeared to
act on information from the MPs “as if this had the status of orders
from the executive or of instructions from the judiciary” (Marino 1989:
footnote 6:6). Similarly, electoral lists from the provincial council and
parliamentary elections where many opposition party representatives
and particularly leftist party members had registered for nomination
were used by ruling party politicians to identify political opponents
for eradication (Chandraprema 1991:243). If atrocities were attributed
 114

to unidentified death squads, any police investigation or magisterial

review into them were halted (AI 37/21/89:6). President Jayewardene
summed up the relationship between the political leadership and
military in December 1988 at the height of the violence when he
stated that the security forces operated under “perfect control” and had
been permitted to engage in activities against human rights, which
were “regrettable” but “cannot be helped” (The Times 17 December
1988 cited in Marino 1989:6). At that time, up to 20 youths were
abducted every day by armed men in civilian clothes in the south—
and disappeared (Gunaratna 2001:288).

The extent to which the UNP directed violence during the beeshanaya
was demonstrated in the central provinces where most of the 6,443
complaints of disappearances inquired into by the Central
Commission took place in 1989 following the December 1988
presidential election and parliamentary election of February 1989.7 In
the central provinces, the athurudahanwoowo (disappeared) largely
comprised SLFP organisers, activists and supporters who would have
been easily identified by the ruling elite through campaigning and
electoral lists. Such people were “branded” JVPers and had their
names placed on lists provided to the police and army for elimination
(Central Commission 1997b:5). 8 Of the 8,739 cases of disappearance
reported to the Southern Commission between January 1988 and
December 1996, approximately 5,742 (or 66 per cent) took place in
1989—and half of those (or 2,824 disappearances) between October

7
The Central Commission received 15,045 complaints and by April 1997 had
inquired into 6,443 cases (Central Commission 1997b:1)
8
Lt General Rohan Daluwatta, Commander Sri Lanka Army, stated before
the Southern Commission that a then minister had given him a list which he
came to know comprised the names of SLFP members and supporters
(Southern Commission 1997b:35).
 115

and December 1989 (Southern Commission 1997b:18). In April 1989,

death threats issued in the name of the JVP were made to the families
of service personnel which led to a dramatic escalation in violence.
However, evidence before the Central Commission suggested that the
ruling establishment issued the threats in the JVP’s name. The Central
Commission revealed that security personnel had initially been
reluctant to eliminate the JVP because it was seen as a potential ally
against Tamil militancy.9 Chairperson of the Central Commission, Mr
Suntheralingam explained that President Premadasa “organised the
killing of certain persons: one or two family members of police in
remote areas” which then spurred the police and army into action
(personal communication). The Central Commission concluded that it
was not certain whether the death threats were part of the
government’s ploy to make the “Police and Armed Forces go all out
to wipe out the Sri Lanka Freedom Party supporters under the guise of
crushing the JVPer’s” (Central Commission 1997b:5). However,
many survivors of political violence recognised such tactics as those
of the ruling elite. Mr S’s 26-year-old son, a science undergraduate at
Colombo University, disappeared in October 1989.10 He explained the
rationale:

9
The JVP leadership had earlier declared the armed forces the patriots of the
motherland in the context of the struggle with Tamil militancy
(Chandraprema 1991:186). The publication that appeared in April 1989
purporting to represent the JVP stated that it had abandoned its policy of not
killing the armed forces and that the “only reply to massacre is massacre”
(cited in de Silva 1998:177).
10
The disappearance of Mr S’s son took place in the context of the extremely
violent and highly politicised university environment where the JVP and
various student unions carried out abductions and killings. The son’s
membership of a rival student union to that of the Independent Students
Union (believed to have formed the death squad PRRA to target the JVP in
 116

Even in war if you catch the enemy, wounded or not, they are
produced in the courts but there was no law and order at that
time here. For example if an army soldier is living here and
then goes elsewhere for duty, when he is away from home, the
government used the paramilitary to kill his family and left a
receipt ‘killed because your son or husband is in the army’ so
when he comes home, he sees it and began acting against the
JVP.
- Mr S, Gampaha District: Interview 14.

The wave of violence that was unleashed coincided with a transfer of

responsibility for national security from the police to the army and
release of posters declaring “twelve of yours for one of ours”
(Chandraprema 1991:296). Six months after the threats, an estimated
15,000 had been killed and up to 50 dumped bodies began to appear
daily along the roadsides (Chandraprema 1991:293-312).

5.2 Disappearance of political opponents

The UNP used the December 1988 presidential and February 1989
parliamentary elections to draw out political opponents for elimination
and to consolidate power (Iqbal 2002:92). To ensure a low voter
turnout, deliberate efforts were made to create fear and uncertainty
using provocative posters attributed to the JVP and radio messages to
stay calm. During the day of the election, UNP politicians and their
gangs accompanied by senior police officers engaged in widespread
election malpractice (Wijesinha 1991:167,188). These tactics brought
President Premadasa to power with only 55 per cent of the ballot cast
in an election with the lowest-ever voter turnout in the country’s

retaliation for the killing of its own members) resulted in his abduction and
disappearance.
 117

history—which, in some districts, was as low as 19 per cent

(Wijesinha 1991:188; Warnapala 1994:169).

Potential political rivals both within and outside the UNP were
specifically targeted before the February 1989 election while defeated
UNP candidates ordered the disappearance of successful rivals after it
(Chandraprema 1991:234). According to Spencer, the elections were
held in a context in which organised violence “in the shadow of the
state” threatened the continuation of traditional politics in the country
(Spencer 1990:11). While the JVP had threatened voters with death in
the lead up to the 1988 elections, the killings that took place were
concentrated in SLFP areas, a fact which confirms that the JVP were
not the primary instigator of violence (Wijesinha 1991:188;
Warnapala 1994:169). Of 7,239 proven cases of disappearance in the
southern province, the JVP was responsible for 779 of them (11 per
cent) whereas 4,585 disappearances (67 per cent) were carried out by
security force personnel (Southern Commission 1997b:29).11

As the primary opposition party, it was the SLFP that was a key target
of state terror during this period. The “Black Cats” death squad was
believed responsible for the disappearance and extrajudicial execution
of at least 60 SLFP activists in the central region carried out during
the three month election period (December 1988 to February 1989)
(The Island, 6 April 1992:2). When the UNP was returned to power
with 125 of 225 parliamentary seats in an election characterised by
violence and low voter turnout, SLFP candidates and supporters were

11
In 21 per cent (or 1,543) of the remaining disappearances, the identity of
the perpetrators was unknown. However, it is more than likely that security
personnel were responsible as JVPers were not known to conceal their
identity. A further 59 disappearances were attributed to personal rivals acting
in concert with the security forces or paramilitaries.
 118

again the primary target (Vijayalakshmi 2001:136). Mrs G believed

that her husband disappeared during the election period because he
campaigned on behalf of the SLFP in Kurunegala District. While he
was taken from their home by unidentified persons during a curfew,
she attributed his disappearance to the UNP as the government of the
day responsible for security (Mrs G, Kurunegala District: Interview 2).

Intensified violence provided the opportunity to broaden the definition

of subversion to fulfil a greater range of political and other objectives.
Known critics of the government and security forces were labelled
JVP sympathisers and disappeared or killed outright (AI 37/21/89:6).
State protection was deliberately denied to people who had been
attacked for their dissident views, providing scope for their
disappearance (Southern Commission 1997b:36-28). Others such as
the husband of Mrs S disappeared after direct threats were made by
UNP politicians or supporters. On 4 November 1989, after speaking
out against a UNP minister at a strike of 2,400 sacked textile workers
(including himself), the husband of Mrs S was threatened by UNP
supporters immediately before his disappearance. Mrs S observed that
the government of the day “was not accepting people talking and
protesting against them so the easiest way to get rid of them was to
disappear them” (Mrs S, Gampaha District: Interview 12).

Political competition had become a violent struggle over life and

death as the ruling party increasingly relied on violent, illegal methods
and mass intimidation to assert authority. Unprecedented election
violence, intimidation and deaths in polling booths characterised the
elections and secured the UNP’s election victory (Gunasekara
1988:489). Thereafter President Premadasa was able to assert that as
the legitimate and popularly-elected government of the day, the UNP
had a mandate to eradicate all forms of terrorism and subversion. The
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JVP was eliminated a year after Premadasa came to power. As no

parliamentary party could legitimately lobby against the exercise of
the democratic process or indeed a suspension of it under an
increasingly autocratic regime, the UNP was able sustain a façade of
electoral representation while sanctioning widespread atrocities. The
political regime highlighted acts of brutality by the JVP and other
anti-state actors in the press during a prolonged state of emergency,
which disguised the fact that its authority and power rested solely on
its own excesses. However, rather than strengthen the role of the state,
such authoritarian measures were to threaten its very foundations as
the state itself was totally disfigured as an instrument of coercive force.
As Warnapala explained, all institutions and methods associated with
the state “were made totally subservient to the need to establish and
strengthen the structures of repression and coercion” (1994:161).
When the violence officially ended in 1990 and the country enjoyed a
change of government in 1994, the apparatus that provided for state
terror largely established by Jayewardene and Premadasa remained in
place and violence carried out in the shadows of the state continued.

5.3 Disappearance of those with “potential”

The JVP recognised disenfranchised Sinhalese youth as a potential

source of mass recruitment. Whereas Tamil youth viewed the
university standardisation schemes of the 1970s as evidence of
deliberate discrimination against them, for many Sinhala-educated
youths, the continued use of the English language by the country’s
ruling elite in all aspects of political, social and economic life
highlighted their total exclusion from political power and social
advancement (Presidential Commission on Youth 1990:xvii). A
university degree, let alone secondary education, could no longer
guarantee a decent job with youths comprising 49 per cent of the
 120

country’s two million unemployed (or 26 per cent of the country’s

total workforce)—31 per cent of whom were university graduates who
had to wait around four years to secure employment (Vijayalakshmi
2001:125; Gunaratna 2001:64). Even though youth comprised a
substantial proportion of the country’s population, traditional
parliamentary parties had failed to appeal to the youth vote and
maintain youth ranks. Thus, the mobilisation of Sinhalese youth (like
that of Tamil youth to militia groups in the north and east) took place
outside the traditional domain of the electoral process and democratic
competition (Uyangoda 1992:39).

The JVP used Sinhalese youth disaffection and the growing social
fissures behind it to establish a grip on university politics during the
early 1980s, capitalising on their grievances about political elitism
which appealed to otherwise apolitical students alienated from
electoral politics (Chandraprema 1991:158,111). However, the JVP
relied on violent methods, including forced abduction of rival student
union representatives, and when violence between rival unions
became a key feature of university politics, campuses were closed
(Chandraprema 1991:158). Such closures transformed violent
university political activism to clandestine engagement in
underground movements (Warnapala 1994:174-5). At the same time,
school students forced onto the streets by the JVP to demonstrate
against the government became a target of police violence and
prompted the closure of schools. With schools and universities closed
in many parts of the southern and central provinces, many students
were forced to take up menial work or wait at home for the violence to
end. Some took the view that the only way out of poverty was to join
the JVP (Gunaratna 2001:66). Having completed their studies only to
be denied employment and social mobility, many rural youths had no
stake in the system which perpetrated their socio–political exclusion.
 121

They had viewed the UNP’s extension of parliament in 1972 and 1982
as an affront to the people and “induction into unwarranted methods
designed to achieve retention of political power” (Presidential
Commission on Youth 1990:xvii).

State repression—exemplified by the arrest and torture of scores of

individuals who were sympathetic to the JVP’s economic policies but
opposed to the use of force—turned otherwise neutral bystanders into
active JVP supporters (Gunaratna 2001:203). Indeed, state repression
justified the JVP’s call to arms in 1984 which it termed as necessary
for self-defence, thereby legitimising for their members and
supporters, the need for “pre-emptive” attacks on the state
(Chandraprema 1991:65). In March 1987 all JVP lectures and classes
were replaced with weapons training as the JVP prepared itself against
what it saw as an imminent state onslaught (Chandraprema 1991:66).
In seeking to bring down the centralised government, the JVP
insurrection specifically targeted ruling party MPs as well as public
office holders, public servants and individuals asserting the right to
vote or contest an election (All Island Commission 2001:11).

Initially, anti-government political affiliation was the main factor in

disappearances (All Island Commission 2001:10; Southern
Commission 1997:30). However, the ruling party’s rationale was that
those of low socio–economic status were collectively sympathetic to
the JVP (and potentially SLFP) and it therefore targeted poor rural
communities (AI 1990:7). At the same time, as the JVP was believed
to have specifically enlisted young males considered natural leaders in
their own communities, the political apparatus also targeted the same
demographic group for disappearance and elimination whether they
were affiliated to the JVP or not (Southern Commission 1997b:31).
Mr K’s 17-year-old son showed leadership potential when he
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organised an anti-JVP student protest at his local high school. This

resulted in his arrest on 14 October 1989 and subsequent
disappearance (Mr K, Matara District: Interview 6). As noted by the
Southern Commission, the elimination of “potential groups” became a
permanent counter-subversion tactic (1997b:31). One such potential
source of anti-state activism was the 76 per cent of the country’s
youth who lived in rural areas and were mostly poor. Growing
unemployment and underemployment among rural youths highlighted
the widening gap between the government rhetoric and the reality
while reflecting a deepening social division between the English-
speaking and swabhasha-speaking populations. Rural youths were
perceived, therefore, as a threat on two levels—as potential dissidents
and as a threat to the prosperity promised by the ruling party and its
political longevity (Marino 1989:2:3). The potential for this
demographic group to participate in an ideologically motivated
campaign that challenged the hegemony of the new urban middle
class and wider liberalisation agenda was “quite substantial” (Hettige
1999:315). They were highly politicised, having been first influenced
by a tradition of leftist politics and subsequently under the “guidance
of radical anti-systemic youth movements”, and had been educated
under a universal free education system. Rural youths of low socio–
economic status with no stake in the current political system and
marginalised by economic reforms represented the potential of an
alternative ethos to that propagated by the ruling elite (Hettige
1999:315). Efforts on the part of the JVP to attract this demographic
to its cause provided the perfect pretext to eradicate the threat of rural
youth and destroy their communities. The Southern Commission
revealed that while the level of unemployment among those
disappeared in the south was probably considerably higher than the 10
per cent recorded, the disappeared were male (98 per cent), young
(with the 20–24-year-old age group the most vulnerable) and literate
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(with 63 per cent having a secondary education) (Southern

Commission 1997b:17). 12 In many instances, disappearances were
carried out purely on the basis of the age and socio–economic status
of the victims.

5.4 Politicisation of local grievances and tensions

Political violence coincided with a dramatic rise in criminal violence

in the southern provinces including rape, murder and abduction
perpetrated primarily for reasons of personal vendetta and family
rivalry (Chandraprema 1991:168). Such crimes reflected the collapse
of traditional dispute resolution mechanisms and systems of legal
redress brought about by the prevalence of an alternative political
apparatus to that of the legal system—an apparatus that depended
upon political violence, corruption and impunity to achieve its
objectives. Village officials who would traditionally mediate in local
disputes were politically appointed. They were therefore mistrusted
and unable to resolve disputes which were left to escalate among
villagers often divided along political party lines (Robinson cited in
Spencer 1990:11). Traditional authority structures that had prevailed
in villages and towns as mechanisms to resolve conflict and redress
wrongs were undermined and dismantled by the politicisation of such
appointments (Obeyesekere 1993:16). At worst, state officials became
an important medium of patronage and power who rewarded ruling
party supporters at the expense of political opponents. These
conditions, along with the political violence that characterised

12
The Southern Commission noted that a considerable percentage of persons
recorded as employed were in reality persons who were “under-employed or
seasonally employed”. It concluded that the actual number of unemployed
persons was probably higher than the 10 per cent recorded (Southern
Commission 1997b:17).
 124

governance, provided the scope and opportunity for summary justice

to thrive. Without access to traditional means of reconciliation, social
cleavages along the lines of class, caste, resource allocation,
employment and political affiliation deepened and forced parties into
opposing political camps. Such divisions provided the opportunity to
use the prevailing violence to resolve disputes while emerging
criminal gangs and political parties exploited such divisions for their
own advancement. The availability of weapons from the north and
east ensured that such violence was often lethal (Chandraprema
1991:168). Of the 1,604 murders and over 200 abductions reported by
police in the southern provinces during the first half of 1987 in
relation to private disputes, the majority had been tangled in
protracted disputes over land (Chandraprema 1991:169). Long-held
grievances over land distribution, natural resources and
unemployment had come to the fore in the lead up to the JVP
insurrection (Marino 1989: Part 2:2) and political violence provided a
means of expressing such divisions with impunity (Spencer 1990:12).

Violent expression of local tension in rural communities in the south

was exploited by the JVP, which filled the power and law vacuum in
rural areas. Polarisation along party lines, the deepening cleavages
that developed and the lack of solidarity that prevailed enabled the
JVP to impose its will through a system of summary justice which
regressed into collective terror (Keenan 2002:7). It imposed rules
about both public and private conduct in which the latter was
increasingly forced into the public arena for scrutiny and punishment
including death regardless of age, status or gender. By doing so, the
JVP scrutinised and regulated village life, isolated villages and broke
economic and social ties in order to stifle dissent (Southern
Commission 1997b:45; de Silva 1998:182). Rather than protect or
shield these communities from such violence, the army and police
 125

interpreted the presence of the JVP in a village as adequate evidence

to implicate the entire community against whom counter-insurgency
measures were then applied. Similarly, if an individual disappeared, a
shadow of suspicion was cast over the entire family who became
vulnerable to harassment, arrest and disappearance. The execution of
Mrs V’s brother by the People’s Revolutionary Red Army (PRAA)
death squad in November 1988 led to the disappearance of two other
brothers in army custody. A fourth brother remarked at the time that
“this can happen to me anytime and you’ll find my body on the road
because now we’re a terrorist family” (Mrs V, Matara District:
Interview 2).

As soon as the JVP imposed curfews and work stoppages or issued

instructions about funerals, counter-instructions were issued by
security force personnel and paramilitaries exposing locals to violence
from both sides. While tit-for-tat demands and counter-demands
perpetuated violence and anxiety, the UNP also issued posters in the
name of the JVP countering normal JVP demands and creating total
disorder and confusion (Chandraprema 1991:254). Such strategies,
along with the prevalence of political violence and social discord in
rural communities, encouraged a view among many in the south that
the ruling party had gone to war against the rural poor. Mrs M from
Kandy District, whose husband was abducted by the army on 4
December 1989 and disappeared, maintained that the “poor were
targeted for disappearance as a means of social control”. She
continued:

People need jobs but when they are killed you don’t have to
give them jobs ... It happened only to the poor from the villages
not the rich. I think because the poor are a problem for the
country. Because for the poor they have to give jobs,
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compensation, aid and many things so if you keep the rich, it’s
enough for the country.
- Mrs M, Kandy District: Interview 2.

In other instances, people who antagonised the JVP and therefore

came to public attention subsequently disappeared following
abduction by the security forces (Mrs K, Matara District: Interview 3).
Such was the fate of Mrs M’s husband, an electrician in Kandy
District. Threatened by the JVP for ignoring their curfews and for
speaking out against the movement, Mrs M’s husband came to the
notice of the army in whose custody he disappeared in December
1989 (Mrs M, Kandy District: Interview 2). At the same time, locals
were singled out and forced to serve as a goni billa (masked informant)
to identify suspected JVPers and other subversives and thereby act
against family, friends and neighbours. The term goni billa became a
key word in the lexicon of terror. Literally translating as bogey man, a
mythical character in traditional storytelling, the term was
appropriated during the JVP insurgency to refer to an informant
whose mere presence intimidated and terrified the entire populace.
Argenti-Pillen maintained that male villagers were removed during
cordon and search operations and forced to serve as goni billa,
responsible for identifying JVPers for arrest, torture and often
disappearance before being killed themselves (Argenti-Pillen
2003:74). It was also customary in many areas for local politicians,
policemen and local government officials, including the Grama
Sevaka and Assistant Government Agent, to operate as goni billa.
They identified constituents who they suspected of being JVP activists
and provided their names to security personnel. Mr Suntheralingam,
Chairperson of the Central Commission, argued that Grama Sevakas
played a particularly important role in providing information to the
security forces. With intimate knowledge of the villages over which
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they presided, Grama Sevakas were instructed to provide information

on families considered anti-government regardless of which political
party they supported (personal communication). Other local
administration officials, including members of provincial councils,
were also alleged to have directly participated in disappearances by
serving as informants (Central Commission 1997:2). In this manner,
the role of the local administration was totally subverted. The deceit
of the involved public servants who lived within the affected
communities they betrayed was both personal and political as it
provided an opportunity to act against one’s own political and
personal rivals. Such was the case for Mr W’s 29-year-old son who
disappeared from Kandy District on 30 June 1990. His name along
with the names of 34 others who disappeared was placed on a list
written up by a local goni billa. According to Mr W, the goni billa
was a former employee of the Agriculture Department who provided
his son’s name to end an eight-year land dispute between the two
families (Mr W, Kandy District: Interview 1).

The security forces were fed false information by individuals eager to

have their personal enemies eliminated under the guise of counter-
insurgency operations (AI 37/21/90; Southern Commission 1997b:29;
Iqbal 2002:89). Personal jealousy over sporting or educational skills
and other talents as well as petty inter-communal grievances were
seen by many families interviewed for this study as key motives—and
often the primary motive—in the disappearance of their loved ones.
The fact that politics had become embedded in all aspects of everyday
life and centred on the distribution of state resources and patronage
had created a context in which private disputes were often couched in
the language of party politics and actively pursued during the southern
violence (Spencer 1990:259). This reality, framed in the context of a
“dirty war” in which the identity of the perpetrators and their motives
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were unclear, provided fuel to the perception that much of the

violence was personally driven. 13 It was widely believed that
information about the identity and whereabouts of alleged JVPers was
given to the police and military in the form of anonymous letters and
tip-offs—confirming the view held by many families of the
disappeared that their relatives were taken on the basis of (localised)
personal knowledge rather than purely political reasons. As Mr S
explained:

If a person is a friend of the police or military and tells to an

officer, “I have a problem because my neighbour is taking
coconuts from my trees”, or “we can’t sleep because the
neighbours are always fighting in the house”, the friend in the
police or military would say, “let’s do something about that”
and they would take them. This also happened because of land
disputes or to bright students who people told were JVPers. The
police or army said, “just give us the name” and they were all
taken.
- Mr S, Gampaha District: Interview 14.

Mr S from Matara District expressed a similar view when he said:

The Army didn’t do any justice here. They took all the innocent
people. For example, if there is a person I don’t like, I’ll write a
complaint to the Army camp and he’ll be taken away. Here for

13
The period of systematic terror in Argentina (1976–1983) or “dirty war” of
the military junta against subversives was characterised by the abduction,
torture and disappearance of 30,000 people (Taylor 1997:11). Robben noted
that disappearance was the preferred tactic of the military against the counter-
revolutionary movement. He observed that, “The most immediate military
objective was to sow terror and confusion among the guerrilla forces, but the
repressive method soon spread to civil society as a whole” (2000:71).
 129

land disputes, people sent petitions and they used the situation
for their personal things.
- Mr S, Matara District: Interview 5.

5.5 Manufacturing chaos

Violence saturated the socio–political landscape and was so pervasive,

yet carried out in such a clandestine manner, that it was impossible to
determine with any certainty who was responsible for specific killings
and abductions. The ruling elite manufactured chaos not only to
conceal the sources of the violence and the motives for it but also to
create fear and mistrust across the country. Fear within rural
communities served the purpose of immobilising villages into silent
acquiescence to counter any possibility of collective resistance. In
contrast, the ruling elites deliberately heightened fear in urban centres
to establish consensus with its goal of eradicating subversion. By
highlighting its mandate to preserve national security and uphold a
way of life threatened by the JVP and those it believed sympathetic to
its cause, the UNP was able to secure tacit agreement with, if not
indifference to, the methods employed to destroy subversion.

Security force personnel operating as part of death squads were

renowned for deliberately concealing their identity or forging an
alternative to protect themselves from counter-attack, to cover-up
abuses and to deliberately confuse the local population about the
author of violence and source of danger. During the beeshana samaya,
often the only evidence of atrocity was that of a dumped, charred body
in a public place. Employed as a tactic by the security forces to mirror
the tactics of the JVP, it instilled fear into those who were either
sympathetic to the JVP specifically or anti-UNP generally (Gunaratna
2001:285). The result was total paralysis. Mrs P from Kandy District
 130

whose 25-year-old son disappeared in September 1989 recalled that

“People were not in the streets at that time. If there was a sound of a
vehicle, everyone hid. There was the sound of gunfire everywhere”
(Mrs P, Kandy District: Interview 6).

In direct contrast to the clandestine operations in the north and east of

the 1980s when the bodies of the disappeared were rarely found, in the
southern violence, mutilated bodies or parts of bodies were regularly
displayed in public as a part of the state’s terror campaign (AI
1994b:28). Of the 779 killings carried out by the JVP in the southern
provinces, bodies were found in 628 cases (Southern Commission
1997b:25). The bodies of people killed by the JVP were usually
destroyed in as public a manner possible and then dumped with a
placard bearing a message such as “Death to Informers”. Instructions
were given that the body was to be buried without a ceremony and
that the coffin should not be carried above the knee (Southern
Commission 1997b:30). In January 1988 retaliatory killings of
suspected JVPers also took on a public spectacle. Focused on
mirroring the tactics and abuses of the JVP, the modus operandi of
state-sponsored death squads and paramilitaries comprised forced
abduction in as public a manner as possible followed sometime later
by the dumping and burning of mutilated bodies in public locations
which made identification impossible (Warnapala 1994:193). These
bodies were often left in public places with no claim about the
perpetrator. However, atrocities by paramilitary groups such as the
PRRA were identifiable because they claimed responsibility by tying
a notice around the body of the victim (Southern Commission
1997b:30; Warnapala 1994:191). Yet, attribution on the body to a
paramilitary group whose identity, power and reach were unknown
was as confusing as that of no attribution at all. Such acts not only
instilled greater uncertainty about the motives behind the violence but
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the mutilated bodies themselves served as an open threat to the entire

community and a means of social control. They demonstrated the
price of disobedience but for what and to whom? They also indicated
to the community a wider project of disappearance and thereby
highlighted the ambiguity about the fate of the disappeared. As the
bodies of victims of state-sponsored abuses were found in less than 20
per cent of cases by the Southern Commission, the public display of
mutilated bodies represented the tens of thousands of others who were
not publicly displayed but had been disappeared in the hands of state
agents (Warnapala 1994:193).

Given only 191 people were released from detention following

abduction in the south and four reported instances of reappearance
among the thousands who disappeared from January 1988 to 1995, the
evidence demonstrates that the primary objective was that of
permanent removal (Southern Commission 1997b:25). This intent was
reflected in the fact that individuals were often simply abducted or
lifted without reference to any legal provision whatsoever.
Furthermore, in almost all disappearance cases that came before the
Presidential Commissions, there had been no entry of arrest or
detention made by the police and security forces as both had
persistently denied any involvement. Thereafter, the police either
refused to record complaints of disappearance or recorded them in the
minor complaints book where they were deliberately distorted (Iqbal
2000:92-3). The use of plain clothes, masks, unmarked vehicles and
false claims by police and security personnel points to a deliberate
attempt to conceal their identity and evade accountability. However,
unlike similar groups which operated under military rule across Latin
America including Argentina and Uruguay, the Sri Lankan death
squads were confident enough of their ability to evade identification
and prosecution that they operated, not under the cover of night, but at
 132

any time of day (Simpson & Bennett 1985:79; Servicio Paz y Justicia
1989:69). In 1988 most people whose disappearance from the
southern provinces had been reported to the Southern Commission
were abducted between 4pm and 8pm, while in 1989 most were taken
in broad daylight (Southern Commission 1997b:21). People were not
only taken from their homes but also from public places including bus
stands, markets and the main street, often on the direction of a goni
billa, before being forced into an awaiting vehicle.

Such abductions were made as publicly as possible (Southern

Commission 1997b:30). The objective was to rupture cultural
divisions between the public and private world while demonstrating
the omnipresence of the regime which could strike anywhere, against
anyone at any time. People who had been ordered to sign in weekly at
the local army camp or police station as routine security procedure
disappeared during such visits (AI 1990). Others were taken off the
roads by the security forces on the pretext of providing road directions
or some other form of assistance, or to have a chat at the police station.
In many cases, therefore, the overall impression of affected families
was that such disappearances were in fact a mistake rather than a
deliberate act. However, as in the north and east, the use of death
squads and private groups operating outside the legal framework
enabled the ruling party to create an impression that such violations
were the work of a few rough officers rather than systematic practice.

The subversion of all levels of state administration under an

alternative command coincided with the merger of politicians’
unofficial private armies and death squads with that of state security
under the patronage of the ruling party. State-sponsored paramilitary
groups or death squads comprising police, army personnel and UNP
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thugs, such as Black Cats and Green Tigers, were formed in 1987 and
1988 to protect UNP MPs from JVP attack—and to eliminate any
form of dissent to the ruling party including from within the security
forces themselves (Chandraprema 1991:140). The Black Cats,
comprising an estimated 100 hand-picked individuals, were paid a
bonus for each person killed on top of a basic salary allegedly from
the defence budget (Warnapala 1994:191; Aththa, 8 April 1992 cited
in Kloos 1999). From July to November 1989 alone, at least 830
people allegedly disappeared and were executed at the hands of the
Black Cats (Sunday Times 5 April 1992:1). According to Wijesinha,
the death squads were deliberately given names similar to that of the
LTTE to demonstrate President Jayewardene’s intention to use LTTE
tactics to pursue his own political objectives and to confuse the
identity of the perpetrators (Wijesinha 1991:142-143). At the same
time, in the lead-up to the 1989 and 1999 elections, ruling party
politicians hired armed personnel as their own official security guards.
They were given a rank and emoluments of an army officer and paid
by the army but remained under the control of their political patrons.
While appearing to serve an official function, the role of such groups
was to identify and act against the personal enemies of their political
patrons, free of any legal constraints (Southern Commission
1997b:80). The incorporation of politicians’ thugs into death squads
effectively formalised an emerging customary practice whereby the
will of ruling party politicians was enforced by their private armies
(Perera 1998:25). Indeed many groups that emerged during the time of
terror operated as vigilantes with some even carrying out acts of
violence in the name of established death squads. Such was the case
when the Green Tigers disbanded and other hit squads emerged and
killed in their name (Gunaratna 2001:274). The merging of gangs and
death squads under the single command of UNP leaders ensured that
the personal and political objectives of their patrons could be
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simultaneously achieved. Armed at state expense to counter the

vulnerabilities of UNP MPs against JVP attack, these private groups
proliferated. According to Amnesty International, a substantial
proportion of the estimated 30,000 killings that took place in 1988–
1989 were carried out in late 1989 when active vigilante groups
multiplied (AI 37/21/90:13).

Directives to engage in disappearances and other abuses were issued

from the highest political authorities of the executive and parliament
(Marino 1989:5). The Southern Commission recognised
disappearance in the context of the time of terror as an “orchestrated
phenomenon” (1997b:32). However, recourse to disappearance as the
most “blatant form of atrocity by deception” implied the clear intent
by those responsible to lie, hide and conceal (Hayner 2002:27).
Notwithstanding the extraordinary violence of the JVP, the political
violence in the south was not the consequence of a civil war or indeed
a military coup but rather politically orchestrated, implemented,
manipulated and covered up by democratically elected political
leaders to destroy their opponents (Marino 1989: footnote 1:6;
Chandraprema 1991:211; Gunasekara 1988:18; Fernando 2001). As
Mr D from Matara District observed, “the UNP used the time [of
terror] to get rid of their own rivals pretending they were JVPers” (Mr
D, Matara District: Interview 1). The violence was an integral part of a
wider political project to maintain political power and social control
rather than merely counter an insurgency. This fact was clearly
demonstrated in early 1988 by President Jayewardene himself when
six months after declaring the JVP “dogs to be killed without mercy,”
sought the support of the JVP to fight the IPKF in the north (Marino
1989: footnote 1:6; Chandraprema 1991:211). The violence was
perpetrated not by a military government but rather by a civilian
government to whom the armed forces remained loyal. The offences
 135

including disappearance which took place on a massive scale during

this period were political and deliberate, and in a context where the
civilian establishment retained political supremacy over the armed
forces the entire time. Such counter-terror strategies led to the
institutionalisation of a reign of terror upon which the political
leadership became totally dependent.

While violence perpetrated by actors intent on mirroring the tactics of

others and protecting their own identities encouraged the impression
that chaos reigned, the violence unleashed by the state and those
associated with it was the consequence of political decisions (Marino
1989: Part 4:2). The political project began long before the JVP
amounted to any physical threat and during the time of terror, the
violence would stop for days. In May 1988, the proscription of the
JVP was temporarily withdrawn to enable it to sign a ceasefire pact
with the government which lasted days and could never have taken
place had anarchy prevailed (Chandraprema 1991:216). The violence
was ordered but implemented in such a way as to give the impression
of total disorder. It could be called off at will and continued well after
the insurrection had been quashed, providing for a range of political
and personal motives to find expression in violent political terms. The
pervasiveness of violence fuelled rivalries within the ruling party
leading some UNP leaders to collaborate with the JVP by providing
information or arms. Many killings allegedly perpetrated by the JVP
had their origins in competition within the ruling party itself
(Fernando 1998; Marino 1989:footnote 1:6). Ruling party politicians
and other key actors engaged in political violence or its instigation
were deliberately vague and confusing about their political intentions
and alliances. Statements by Premadasa and his cabinet supporters
about JVP violence were deliberately ambiguous (Marino 1989:
footnote 1:6). According to Marino, many people in the south
 136

believed at the time that the JVP targeted Jayewardene’s rather than
Premadasa’s men. Others maintained that it was Premadasa who used
the violence as a cover to eliminate Jayewardene’s men and other
political rivals (Mr Suntheralingam, Chairperson of the Central
Commission, personal communication). Yet again, others took the
view that the destruction in the south was almost entirely the work of
a faction within the UNP led by the Minister for Science and
Industries, Cyril Mathew, who was considered to be Jayewardene’s
right-hand man (Spencer 2004:3; Hoole 2001:105). Questions were
asked about whether there was either a disagreement between the two
UNP leaders (Jayewardene and Premadasa) on the JVP issue or rather
an agreement to play two distinctly different public roles on the matter
to deliberately distract and confuse (Marino 1989: footnote 1:6).

The SLFP was also deeply involved in the violence making it difficult
to establish whether it was an instigator or a victim. Not only did the
party fail to condemn the violence perpetrated by the JVP but many
SLFP members are believed to have joined the movement expecting it
could be used to serve the SLFP’s political ends (Wijesinha
1991:141&165). Memberships of the SLFP and JVP overlapped and
the SLFP’s silence on the violence perpetrated by the JVP gave the
overall impression that it condoned JVP atrocities if not engaged in
concealing them (Marino 1989:2). Indeed, the SLFP’s consistent
refusal to condemn JVP violence in the lead up to the 1988 and 1989
elections led many voters to believe that an SLFP government would
be tantamount to JVP rule (Chandraprema 1991:248; Marino 1989:2).
For its own part, the JVP preferred to take full credit for killings rather
than to acknowledge any possible association with either of the two
major parties. Overwhelmingly, however, attempts to establish
ultimate responsibility for killings, abductions and disappearances and
identify the motives of those behind the violence were all but
 137

impossible. At the same time speculation remains about the identity

and motive of some of the paramilitary death squads that emerged
during the time of terror. According to Chandraprema, PRRA was the
original creation of minor left wing party activists while Gunasekara
believed that it was aligned with the Independent Students Union
(Chandraprema 1991:240; Gunasekara 1988:302). The fact that
speculation still surrounds the identity, patrons and motives of such
groups, let alone the true extent of the involvement of the political
leadership, demonstrates the extent to which uncertainty prevailed.

5.6 Finishing the “match”

By early 1990 the JVP movement effectively collapsed with the

annihilation of its entire politburo and a substantial number of its rank
and file leaving no JVP leader alive to face trial (Southern
Commission 1997b:42). Despite this, the state of emergency was
further extended on 25 January 1990. In defending such action, the
Deputy Defence Minister, Ranjan Wijeratne, stated that, “We have
finished the first eleven and the second eleven. Now we are tackling
the under fourteen fellows” (Hansard Vol 62. Column 1249, 25
January 1990). And so, disappearances continued albeit at a slower
rate. Those targeted included former JVP suspects who had been
released from detention, SLFP activists and increasingly, young Tamil
men suspected of links with the LTTE (AI 1991:211; AI 1994c:22).
While the official operations of the security forces were brought to an
end in April 1990 with the creation of the Independent Surrender
Committee, young people in affected areas, whether involved with the
JVP or not, continued to live in constant fear of the death squads
(Warnapala 1994:198).
 138

Of 2,000 suspected JVPers wanted by the authorities, 1,871

surrendered to the committee (Warnapala 1994:198). An estimated
14,200 youths were placed in rehabilitation camps. However, when
the army redeployed to the north and east later that year, scores of
corpses were found near the abandoned camps. Officially, these were
the bodies of individuals who had tried to escape or were caught up in
cross-fire but no investigations were ordered into the circumstances of
the deaths (AI 1991:210). In other instances, detainees were released
to their relatives or discharged by a magistrate and abducted on their
way home. Others who had surrendered to the authorities in the
presence of their relatives or the Government Agent for rehabilitation
subsequently disappeared (Southern Commission 1997b:26-27). Such
disappearances were an integral part of the state’s wider objective to
conceal the extent and nature of political violence perpetrated during
the beeshana samaya and demonstrated the extent to which the
political project continued well after the JVP insurrection was crushed.
Hundreds of suspected JVPers remained in detention at one of the
country’s 400 detention centres, some of whom were held for years
under the ERs and PTA without trial or charge. However, reports
suggest that most were eventually released by the People’s Alliance
government when it came to power in August 1994 (US Department
of State (USDOS 2005). The legacies of the violence, however,
remain unaddressed and when the UNP was returned to power in
December 2001, many survivors of the beeshanaya feared that history
would be repeated. Mrs M whose husband disappeared on 4
December 1989 said, “I thought there’s no use; they’ll kill the rest
also” (Mrs M, Kandy District: Interview 2).
 139

CHAPTER 6
War against civilians

isappearance became both a means and an end for the

D military in the fight against the LTTE in the north and east
during the 1990s. While disappearance was employed as a
counter-insurgency strategy against the LTTE in the anticipation of
destroying the movement, it also served to conceal an increasingly
wide range of political and personally motivated crimes. In this way,
disappearance provided the means by which the diverse objectives and
interests of various agencies and actors converged, leading to the
blurring between political and criminal violence. The military’s
reliance upon extralegal solutions and the government’s use of the
power structure established by previous regimes to outsource
extralegal violence to private and political groups, paved the way for
the emergence of a political-criminal nexus between the ruling elite,
paramilitary and private groups and elements of the security forces.
Perpetuation of the conflict served all their vested interests.

6.1 Armed actors and their motives

On 11 June 1990 an official ceasefire between the government and

LTTE, which had held for 14 months, was broken when the LTTE
surrounded police stations in the east and killed eight soldiers in
Kalmunai. According to reports, the government ordered up to 1000
police officers to surrender to the LTTE who proceeded to kill several
hundred Sinhalese and Muslim policemen before withdrawing into the
jungle (UTHR-J 1992:3). Scores more were abducted and although
several Tamil police personnel were later released, the disappearance
of 21 officers was brought to the attention of the North & East
 140

Commission (North & East Commission 1997b:48). A month later, a

number of the Tamil officers who had been released by the LTTE in
Amparai District disappeared while in STF custody (AI 37/14/91:23).
On 18 June, as the army and STF advanced on the east, President
Premadasa proclaimed that the JVP’s fate awaited the LTTE (UTHR-J
1999:40; 1992:3).

Months before the June 1990 events, the LTTE had launched a
campaign to eliminate families of rival organisations in the north who
attempted to flee to India as the IPKF began its withdrawal. Many
such killings were believed to have been carried out by the LTTE and
government in a de facto alliance (UTHR-J 1992:16; Asia Watch
1992:1). Given that many anti-LTTE Tamil militias had assisted the
IPKF in their campaign against the Tigers and particularly the EPRLF,
with the withdrawal of the IPKF, the LTTE turned its attention to
annihilating these “traitor” groups. Further, when the alliance of
convenience with the LTTE was no longer mutually beneficial
following the withdrawal of the IPKF, the government once again
used Tamil militants as part of its own campaign against the LTTE to
“steal, abduct, torture and kill” (UTHR-J 1992:19). However, the
LTTE was able to consolidate its position as the strongest armed
Tamil separatist group. Given that its leadership was highly autocratic,
militant and intent on achieving a separate Tamil state at any cost,
there was little hope that the peace negotiations that took place at
various stages of the conflict would lead to a political solution, let
alone the liberation of the Tamil populace (UTHR-J 1998:5; Bastian
1999:24). Once it had established a monopoly on the separatist
aspiration and territory in the north and east, the movement set about
establishing its own administration complete with a police force,
judiciary and intelligence unit under which scores of people were
abducted (All Island Commission 2001:55).
 141

As part of its efforts to establish a Tamil homeland or Eelam and

counter any assistance provided by the Muslims to the security forces,
the LTTE attempted to expel the entire Muslim population from the
north and east in 1990 and 1991 and attacked those Muslims who
were reluctant to leave (AI 37/14/91:10; Asia Watch 1992:4). The
government’s response—arming and training extra-military forces and
anti-LTTE Tamil militias and maintaining Muslim Home Guards to
fight alongside the armed forces—lead to a greater number and range
of combatants involved directly in hostilities. Thereafter, the conflict
in the north and east during this period, otherwise known as the
piraccinai natkal or troubled times, developed several characteristics.
Although the political apparatus that had facilitated state-sponsored
terror remained largely untouched, a wide range of combative groups
including home guards and pro-government Tamil paramilitaries,
private armies and death squads were used to carry out extralegal
activities. While some were directed by individual politicians, all such
groups worked alongside and in collaboration with the security forces.
Recourse to such groups for security and counter-insurgency
operations totally undermined a number of fundamental concepts,
including chain-of-command control emanating from the government
of the day and established procedures given that under law, state
security officials are the only personnel authorised to carry out law
enforcement and security functions. This situation generated three
dynamics. First, because they remained outside the military apparatus
and gave the appearance of operating outside military control and
government reach, such groups were increasingly relied on to carry
out disappearances and other abuses. Second, the impact of this trend
was that state violence was decentralised and outsourced to the point
whereby the reforms that were introduced by the newly installed PA
government from the mid-1990s had no effect. Third, while
disappearance and abduction remained a central tactic of both sides to
 142

the conflict, a plethora of actors involved reflected the wide ranging

motives behind such abuses for which some state and non-state groups
found common cause, leading to the blurring of political and criminal
violence. As state-sponsored groups were given the scope to pursue
their own agenda through state-sanctioned violence, disappearance
became a means not only of concealing politically motivated crimes
but also of petty offences including theft and personally motivated
crimes such as rape. As Father Paul noted in Batticaloa, disappearance
became an issue more closely related to corruption than war-specific
matters (Father Paul, personal communication).

Many of the combatant groups had their own political agendas

whereas others took direction openly or covertly from different
political sponsors within the government. Unlike the paramilitary
groups and death squads which operated in the south and comprised
largely security force personnel and UNP thugs, the groups that
operated in the north and east were put in charge of security in
specific areas and given free rein to impose their own administration.
Although such groups were given state resources including weaponry,
many also engaged in robberies to supplement their earnings. The
People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) was put in
charge of Vavuniya and used its newfound power to rob and loot, all
the while preventing the local population from making a complaint to
the police when disputes arose or crimes were committed. In the
commission of their own offences, PLOTE members were believed to
have been joined by low-ranking soldiers against whom local
government officials and the police were rendered powerless
(INFORM 1991:1). The Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP)
was made responsible for security in the Kayts islands and in the
internally displaced persons camps in Colombo where it engaged in
abductions (INFORM 1992:13). Throughout the 1990s, pro-
 143

government paramilitary groups including PLOTE, EPDP, EPRLF

and TELO were responsible for rights violations including
disappearance as well as massive and arbitrary arrests targeting
Tamils throughout the island (HRW 1994; LST 1994:46; North &
East Commission 1997:37). In many instances, surviving relatives
were threatened by such groups not to speak out about the
disappearance of their loved ones (AI 37/08/96:15). PLOTE, TELO
and others operated their own detention and torture facilities where
state-held detainees were often transferred as part of efforts to conceal
detention, torture and extrajudicial executions (LST 1994:44; AI
37/08/96:20).

As paramilitary groups increasingly fought the war for the

government (ICG 2007:11), they attained disproportionate political
influence and wealth through violence—benefits that would have
otherwise been unattainable in a context of peace and functional
democracy where law and order prevailed. Some used their power and
influence to advance their respective political cause by securing
parliamentary seats. The EPDP won all but one of the seats for the
Jaffna District at the 1994 election, using its monopoly on power in
the Kayts islands to prevent any other party from contesting the
election (UTHR-J 1998:47). By 1998, moreover, the government had
become reliant upon the support of the EPDP in Parliament for which
it enjoyed state patronage and protection in return (UTHR-J 1998:47).
Rather than being required to put down its weapons and condemn all
forms of violence when entering the democratic mainstream, the
EPDP was able to use both its political influence and the threat of
force to impose its will on communities under its control with
impunity for political and criminal ends.
 144

Private armed guards with the rank and emoluments of army

personnel were used as back up in army operations despite the fact
that they did not operate under the authority of the army and were not
controlled by it. Employed by MPs and provincial counsellors at state
expense, such guards operated as private armies. 14 The Committee on
Disappearances of the Human Rights Commission (Committee on
Disappearances) made the following observations about their role:

These “soldiers” saw their role not as protecting the population

but rather in moving against personal enemies, acting for
personal benefit or moving against the opponents of the
politicians concerned.
-
Committee on Disappearances 2003:48.

Such bodies served as the “militia of political parties” operating in the

north and east. However, rivalry with the regular police often led to an
escalation of political violence, especially during election periods
(Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions
E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:10). There were also reports of internal
tensions leading to armed confrontation between the army and police
which placed civilians in greater danger. As more guns and other
weaponry made their way into the hands of paramilitaries and civilians,
violence not only escalated but also became a common means of
resolving disputes. For communities in the north and east, the early
1990s was characterised by repeated reports of unidentified men
forcibly entering homes at night, blindfolding and then removing

14
Each of the country's 225 MPs were authorised to have eight armed
security guards while each of the 300 provincial counsellors were authorised
to have a maximum of four armed security guards
(E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:10).
 145

people in marked vehicles, never to be seen or heard of again. Mass

arrests became a common response to LTTE atrocities but also
remained an integral part of the political strategy of the government at
election periods (AI 1994b:5). From May to December 1993, over
150,000 people were arrested under the ER in Colombo alone. They
were believed to have been arrested solely on the basis of their
ethnicity (LST 1994:40). Others were held in custody without charge
for prolonged periods (LST 1994:41).

By transferring responsibility for abuses onto paramilitary groups, the

government could allege that such groups were uncontrollable and
outside its influence. Such a scenario made for the perfect crime
(Scouvazzi & Citroni 2007:10). However, the decentralisation and
outsourcing of security functions provided greater scope for a wider
range of offences and motives to be concealed under the cover of
fighting terrorism. Given the widespread use of disappearance and
general overlap of methods and intentions of respective combative
groups, it was impossible to establish exactly what offences had been
carried out and by whom. At the same time, the LTTE’s deliberate
tactic of attacking Sinhalese and Muslim communities and the
military’s counter-offensive which often amounted to retaliatory
violence against Tamil communities, coupled with the arming of
home guards and civilian units which operated alongside the army,
placed civilians at the centre of the conflict (UTHR-J 1992:8; AI
37/14/91:10). The combined effect of having a range of armed actors
operating with impunity, ERs which circumvented the usual
safeguards regarding arrest, detention and the disposal of dead bodies,
a military dependent on illegal methods and official denial of
extralegal activity, led to an inevitable escalation of violence and
abuse that was largely directed at the civilian population (HRW 1990;
AI 37/14/91:7). From June to October 1990, over 1,600 civilians in
 146

the north and east were believed to have been killed and over 3,000
people disappeared from June 1990 to September 1991 (AI 37/14/91:4;
US Department of State cited in Asia Watch 1992:3). Mrs P explained
the impact in her village in the eastern Amparai District:

In 1990 as far as I could remember on 21 June, the army and

Muslims joined together and came, walked into Tamil houses,
breaking those houses … Some elderly people were asked to
move to a side and they took all the men over fifteen years
away for an inquiry. All above fifteen years were taken to the
church. Father spoke on behalf of them and one or two were
released. Some were in the age range of thirteen years. This I
saw with my own eyes but I heard they took people on two
buses––full of people to the camp. One of those was my
brother … in the bus they tortured the men … My brother was
released. He came back and from then on never wanted to stay
in this country. Three times he tried to go abroad and he got to
the Netherlands.
- Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10.

According to Amnesty International, although the vast majority of the

disappeared were young Tamil men, women and children of all ages
also disappeared including babies along with their mothers
(37/14/91:4). The Batticaloa Peace Committee reported over 2,500
complaints of disappearance from the time of the ceasefire collapse in
June 1990 to July 1999 with the number rising in 1992 at a rate of 100
people a month. Yet, the North & East Commission investigated only
1,219 disappearances in Batticaloa. Of them, 70 per cent were below
29 years of age and 90 per cent earned less than 1,500 rupees a month
(equivalent to 10 Australian dollars). The disappeared were
predominantly male youths engaged in agriculture or fishing.
Although most were taken by the army, a wide range of perpetrators
 147

were identified including the LTTE and a number of other Tamil

groups, paramilitaries as well as home guards. The zonal North & East
Commission established that disappearances most often took place in
one of five contexts over the period of its review: arrest during cordon
and search operations as described earlier by Mrs P; arrest at refugee
camps; arrest on the high seas; arrests in other locations; and by way
of abduction (North & East Commission 1997b:29). Of the 756
disappearances inquired into by the zonal commission that took place
in 1990, a substantial number were reprisals carried out during cordon
and search operations following the LTTE’s killing of policemen in
Batticaloa and Amparai in June 1990 (North & East Commission
1997b:9-10, 64). Mrs K’s husband, a labourer, was one of those who
disappeared at that time. He was arrested by the army along with
seven other men on 24 June 1990 at a school in the Amparai District.
That day, the army arrested 38 people in the area. Mrs K, who was
pregnant at the time and had a four-year-old daughter, recalled the
event:

When my husband refused to go, one of the army showed a

knife and threatened him. The army had removed his shirt and
tied both his hands with it. Along with the other men arrested,
my husband was taken away. I was holding my daughter and
went crying behind them but the army chased us away, so half
way, because we were scared they would shoot us, we came
back home … Everyone was screaming and shouting … I don’t
know what they did with my husband. For the past fourteen
years we are still searching and looking for him ... Up to now, I
don’t know. I don’t know whether he’s alive, whether they’ve
detained him or whether they’ve killed him.
- Mrs K, Amparai District: Interview 3.
 148

Despite the fact that many were taken away by security force
personnel in full public view, the state’s strategy remained that of total
denial. By 1998, the MP for Batticaloa, Joseph Pararajasingham, held
that the number of disappearances in the province had reached over
13,000 since 1990 leaving the region with 8,500 widows of whom 70
per cent were aged between 18 and 21 (TamilNet 1 April 1998).
However, most complaints of disappearance in the Eastern Province
have never been investigated. The All Island Commission received
details of the disappearance of 6,452 people from the Batticaloa Peace
Committee and other groups but which could not be investigated as
they fell outside its mandate, given it could only inquire into
outstanding cases of the previous commissions (All Island
Commission 2001:138). During inquiry hearings of the North & East
Commission in April and May 1995, November 1995 and February
1996, the conflict was still going. Throughout the Batticaloa hearings,
the LTTE was engaged in an attack on the local police station. The
commission recognised that those who did come forward in such a
context were not likely to be a “true representation” of the number of
people subject to disappearance from 1988 (All Island Commission
2001:63). Similarly, in Amparai District where approximately 3,000
of the 90,000 Tamil population were killed in the five months after
June 1990, while an estimated 60,000 were internally displaced
(UTHR-J 1990:9 & 14; UTHR-J 1993:12), the actual number of
people who disappeared from the district, as with the rest of the
country, will never be accurately established.

The zonal commission and All Island Commission received 979

complaints in relation to disappearance in the Jaffna District (North &
East Commission 1997b:57; All Island Commission 2001:5). Of them,
a considerable number of disappearances took place in 1990 when the
army was advancing on Jaffna. The Jaffna peninsula had been under
 149

LTTE control from 1990, with the withdrawal of the IPKF, until late
1995. Revealingly, the All Island Commission did not receive a single
complaint of disappearance in 1995 covering the period when Jaffna
had been under the control of the LTTE (2001:47). Although scores of
people were believed to have been abducted by the LTTE from 1989
to 1995, “most families are still too scared to take up a case against
the LTTE” (Mr Chandrasekara, Jaffna Regional Coordinator, National
Human Rights Commission, personal communication). Similarly,
some seven years earlier, the zonal commission had noted that of 30
complaints before it where witnesses were unwilling to disclose the
identity of the perpetrators, such unwillingness was “in fact an
indication of the identity of the Group to be the LTTE” (All Island
Commission 2001:56). One complaint that was raised before the zonal
commission concerned the disappearance of a Jaffna University
undergraduate abducted from campus in May 1991. His father’s
evidence to the commission gives some insight into life under LTTE
control:

When I opened the door of my house in the morning, I saw the

body of my son left infront of my house. At that time anyone
who was against the LTTE was punished in that manner. There
was no army or police in Jaffna at that time. The LTTE was in
full control of Jaffna then and there was nobody else. There
were so many bodies lying on the road during those days.
- A Jaffna father cited in North & East Commission 1997b:55.

6.2 “A war for peace”

On 8 January 1995 a cessation of hostilities was agreed between the

PA government and LTTE with representatives of both parties
meeting in Jaffna for talks on four occasions. However, shortly after
 150

the completion of the fourth round on 18 April, the LTTE announced

its withdrawal from the talks and blew up two naval ships in
Trincomalee harbour (Nissan 1996:19). A month later, the PA
proclaimed that it had launched a “war for peace”. However, a state of
emergency, which had been temporarily lifted for the 1994 election,
was re-imposed in the north, east and in Colombo following the
assassination of presidential candidate, Gamini Dissanayake, at an
election rally along with over 50 others. The state of emergency was
gradually extended to other regions and by mid-April 1996, re-
imposed throughout the whole country (E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:4).
With the resumption of the conflict, the number of reported cases of
disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the north and east as well
as in Colombo rose rapidly (AI 1995). LTTE attacks on Sinhalese
villagers bordering the north and east were directed at antagonising
the security forces into retaliatory action. In one such massacre of 19
Sinhalese civilians in the Moneragala District, not one person was a
legitimate military target and despite the high presence of home
guards in the area at the time, none of them were among the dead (AI
1995). Such killings were met with reprisals in the form of counter-
killings, disappearances and the torture of Tamil civilians, as well as
the rape of Tamil women and girls by security force personnel and
their counterparts (AI 1996; 37/24/97:1).

When the security forces launched their assault on Jaffna in late 1995,
the LTTE ordered the entire Jaffna community south to Kilinochchi.
Those who refused were forced to move by means of intimidation,
threats of execution as traitors, manipulation and violence (AI
37/08/96:8). When an estimated 250,000 civilians later returned to
government-controlled Jaffna town in April and May 1996, their
return coincided with a new wave of disappearances (AI 37/08/96:9).
During the conflict in the north and east, villages that fell under
 151

different regimes at different times were particularly vulnerable to

disappearance and other forms of abuse by both sides. The security
forces were, moreover, fully aware that during 10 years under LTTE
occupation, Tamil civilians in the north volunteered or were
compromised into working for the LTTE for one reason or another.
Conversely, such communities were susceptible to exploitation and
blackmail at the hands of the LTTE and became extremely vulnerable
to arrest and ill-treatment by both sides (UTHR-J 1999:9). Amnesty
International noted that anyone suspected of even the most minimal
contact with the LTTE faced the risk of detention, disappearance or
death (AI 1991:210). Many were forced into acting as informants by
the security forces during cordon and search operations and later
disappeared (UTHR-J 1998:23). The fact that the LTTE drew on the
local population to provide various forms of support for its cause
(forced or otherwise) justified a counter-insurgency focused on the
harassment, arrest, torture, disappearance and killing of Tamil
civilians. Similarly, as the LTTE recruited children often by force, the
security forces responded in turn by targeting youths during cordon
and search operations (AI 37/13/96).

According to the University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna

(UTHR-J), the large number of disappearances in 1996 suggested that
a “decision was taken at the highest level to eliminate persons
suspected of helping the LTTE” (UTHR-J 1999:15). However, this
decision translated into an approach which recognised “virtually all
civilians as collaborators with the subversion” (UN Special
Rapporteur E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:8). In this way, “peasants become
the main victims of human rights violations in areas where there is
armed conflict” (E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:8). Any distinction between
civilians and combatants was made extremely tenuous as all civilians
were effectively on the front line and answerable to both sides.
 152

Shopkeepers near Sittandy were forced to serve LTTE cadres

operating in the jungle outside of the village at night while also facing
the possibility of arrest by day for doing so. Those who refused to sell
to the LTTE or who sold produce to the security forces were abducted
by the LTTE (Human Rights Task Force 1993:26; North & East
Commission 1997b:56). Similarly, farmers who were unable to
cultivate their fields without the permission of one side or the other
were forced into performing errands to earn permission but which
ultimately led to their disappearance or abduction by the opposing
side (Human Rights Task Force 1993:27).

When the military launched its attack against the LTTE in Jaffna in
1996 and 1997 it also imposed strict censorship under the ERs. It took
over the function of regional government and administered
humanitarian needs using resettlement to remove unwanted
individuals and communities (ICG 2006:17). In this way, the military
extended its control over every aspect of life in the north and to a
large extent in the east (in areas government control) with local
government administration effectively subordinate to military
command. The arbitrary dissolution of provincial councils and culture
of political violence “eroded confidence in the political order and
produced a generalized crisis of legitimacy” (Rupesinghe 2000:21).
Indeed, the state and the LTTE enforced regimes of violence whose
authority totally depended on the repression of those under their
control (Montealegre 1982 cited in Manz 1995:158).

Manz argued that under environments of terror, in which a blurring of

the distinction between fact and rumour fuels an atmosphere of
suspicion and mistrust, individuals must continually prove and re-
prove both innocence and loyalty (1995:160). However, in the north
and east during the conflict with the LTTE, the taking and re-taking of
 153

territory, coupled with the range of agencies and actors involved in the
violence, made such a prospect impossible. In this paranoid world,
everyone was continually considered suspicious by both sides, as Mrs
P in Amparai explained:

If we become friendly with the army, the LTTE suspects us of

giving information to them but if we get friendly with the LTTE,
the army suspects we are LTTE.
- Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10.

In this context, the common response was passivity, to do nothing and

deny any knowledge of anything or anyone for fear of attracting
unwanted attention. People held their tongue and “acted blinded”
because of the prevailing atmosphere of absolute fear (Cohen
2001:152). The very fact that the army arrested and abducted scores of
people on trucks in front of entire villages during round up operations
in broad daylight and then totally denied detaining anyone compelled
communities into silence. Given the prevailing view that Tamils were
targeted for being Tamil and that everyone was a potential target, the
remote possibility of demonstrating innocence or loyalty was made
both totally irrelevant and meaningless when ethnicity served as
evidence of guilt and justification for abuse. Mrs C’s view, which was
commonly shared by other interviewees, was that “the army's sole idea
was that every resident, every citizen in this place was LTTE, even a
small infant” and that the intention of the security forces was to round
up and arrest all men of the peninsular (Mrs C, Jaffna District:
Interview 3). Mrs N argued that both the government and the army
made no distinction between Tamil ethnicity and LTTE membership.
She noted that her son disappeared at the hands of the army even
though he worked for the municipal council and must, therefore, have
been a person known to the local government (Mrs N, Jaffna District:
 154

Interview 7). Mrs P, whose husband disappeared in June 1990,

recognised a direct relationship between state-sponsored abuses and
the vocalisation of rights on the part of the Tamil community:

In the beginning when the Tamils didn’t demand anything from

the government there were no problems but when the Tamils
voiced their rights, problems started. If the government had
recognised this problem from the beginning this matter
wouldn’t have gone so far. Also they branded all Tamils as
terrorists. That is why they didn’t differentiate between the
older and younger generation, they arrested everybody.
- Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10.

In a context of widespread suspicion, fear and insecurity where

everyone is a potential target, many people maintained a state of
immobile silence to ensure personal security. For the families of the
disappeared, such a response from relatives, neighbours and friends at
the very moment they most needed support was devastating. As
people who disappeared at the hands of the army were assumed to
have some involvement with the LTTE, their families were left alone
and found themselves, like the families whose relatives disappeared at
the hands of the LTTE, with few friends (UTHR-J 1999:25). Mrs P
observed that many families of suspected LTTE cadres were
themselves targeted by the army for harassment and even torture. “As
to my knowledge, so many families whose boys joined the LTTE
were sent out of the village by the army ... Their families were
severely harassed by the army and some severely tortured”, she said
(Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10). In other instances, relatives
of persons who were elusive to the security forces were disappeared in
their place (Committee on Disappearances 2003:9).
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6.3 Disappearance as the nexus between criminal and

political crimes

As in the southern violence, local animosities and personal rivalries

were settled on the basis of incriminating information given to the
security forces resulting in disappearances (Committee on
Disappearances 2003:9). From the early 1990s, members of the
Muslim community provided lists of local suspected Tamil militants
to the security forces leading to arrests, disappearances and
extrajudicial killings. It is believed that such lists were utilised by
local rivals to eliminate opponents and to target potential leaders such
as government servants and other prominent Tamils (UTHR-J 1990:5).
Meanwhile, Muslim Home Guards used their newfound influence to
exert power and found “temporary concurrence in the aims of the
State” (UTHR-J 1990:37; AI 37/14/91:16). In Amparai, Muslims
interested in Tamil paddy land, residential areas and property found at
least “temporary common cause” with the security forces eager to
clear the district of Tamils (UTHR-J 1990:9; AI 37/14/91:27). In
Pottuvil, one such list included a doctor and headmaster who
disappeared. When the military first took over Akkaraipattu in June
1990, 37 public servants named on a death list were rounded up and
extrajudicially executed (UTHR-J 1990:7; AI 37/14/91:16). The
security forces knew that the death lists were “mostly prepared on the
basis of misjudgements, vindictiveness and ambitions over territory
and power” but made a deliberate decision to act on them anyway
(UTHR-J 1990:7). The UTHR-J concluded that the ideological
presumption on which the security forces were acting “implied that
killing Tamils was essentially a good thing” (UTHR-J 1990:36). With
territory changing hands periodically, those targeted and the scale of
the crimes depended to some extent on the prevailing power structure
 156

at the relevant time in each locality (Committee on Disappearances

2003 Chapter 2:15). According to Father Bernard, a human rights
advocate in Jaffna, the army exploited local inter-community tensions
while the paramilitaries used their power and influence with the
security forces to resolve personal grudges and abduct people. He
argued the paramilitaries would keep families of known LTTE cadres
in a state of agitation and use the “lightest excuse” to abduct them
(Father Bernard, personal communication). As with disappearances in
the south, people who disappeared during the 1995–1996 military
operations in Jaffna District were most commonly considered
individuals with special skills or leadership qualities. The Committee
on Disappearances recognised that such people were deliberately
targeted because such qualities may have been attractive to the LTTE
or marked them out in their own communities as a potential threat to
groups or institutions intent on subduing the local population
(Committee on Disappearances 2003:9).

Pro-government paramilitary groups and the LTTE also carried out

abduction for the purposes of forced conscription. In 1997, local boys
were abducted, often on their way home from school, by paramilitary
groups working alongside the armed forces, had their heads shaven
and were forced to sign enrolment papers before being directly sent
into battle in the Vanni (North & East Commission 1997:54). In
Jaffna, individuals were abducted by security personnel intent on
appropriating their skills or services in army camps before their
ultimate elimination (Committee on Disappearances 2003:9). In other
instances, people were abducted to serve as an informant, in some
cases for many years, before their own disappearance. Women were
also abducted for the purpose of sexual abuse or their male partners
disappeared to enable access to them (Committee on Disappearances
2003:22). As in the south, disappearance became an effective means
 157

of covering up other offences and the instigators behind them by

eliminating both witnesses and victims. Indeed, many of the reported
cases of disappearance in the north and east shared characteristics with
those in the south including the modus operandi (use of white vans,
round up operations and total denial on the part of state agents),
persons targeted (usually poor male youth) and the use of the security
forces to eliminate people implicated by locals to end local disputes or
rivalries. However, disappearances in the north and east were taken a
step further and became both a means and an end for the military.
While the range of combatants engaged in the conflict provided the
security forces greater leverage with which to carry out abuses and
suppress the local population, financial gain appeared to be a key
factor behind many disappearances. Looting, abduction for ransom
and bribes became characteristic of security force operations and
disappearance the means to conceal such crimes (AI 1994b:2;
37/08/96:20; LST 1994:43; UTHR-J 1990:7-8). The zonal
commission noted that in Vavuniya, robbery often led to abduction
and disappearance. Similarly, during the 1996–1997 military takeover
of Jaffna, appropriation of personal belongings was a “motivating
factor”—and even sometimes the sole factor—in arrests or abductions
leading to disappearances in some instances. In almost all 281 cases of
disappearances in Jaffna investigated by the Committee on
Disappearances, the possessions of those who disappeared including
watches, cash, jewellery, and vehicles also went missing (Committee
on Disappearances 2003:8). In other instances, the security forces
returned to the homes of people last seen in their custody to remove
their valuables and personal effects (Committee on Disappearances
2003:18). The fact that disappearance was increasingly used to
conceal the crimes of robbery, rape and other related offences had
primary effects. First, by enabling criminal and political interests to
merge, disappearance became the preferred means of concealing
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offences carried out by state security officials, armed groups and

criminal elements operating initially within and later outside the
context of the conflict and often in collaboration (AFP 2007; HRW
2008:87). Second, the merging of security force personnel with
criminal elements who carried out disappearances and abductions for
ransom effectively blurred the distinction between political and
criminal violence. Additional factors contributed to this phenomenon
such as the rapid rate with which soldiers deserted the army. By 2005
there were more than 55,000 army deserters who had not been delisted,
many of whom had deserted with their weapons (TamilNet 1 April
2005). At the same time, the dysfunctional legal machinery,
militarisation of society and normalisation of violence perpetuated by
the rise of the underworld bolstered in numbers and influence by army
deserters saw with it a rise in violent crime and criminal gangs
(TamilNet 1 April 2005). When the conflict with the LTTE ended in
May 2009 disappearances continued to be reported almost daily partly
for these reasons.

6.4 Reliance on extralegal methods

The PA, which had come to power on a platform of peace, justice and
reform, had to balance the need to realise its mandate for rights and
prosecutions with the practical realities of the conflict in the north and
east. The collapse of the ceasefire agreement in April 1995 brought
the dilemma between securing justice for past abuses and engaging
the LTTE in warfare to a head. In trying to balance these contradictory
interests, the government faced the challenge of appeasing the
international community and local civil society by initiating reforms
while also pacifying the military on which it depended to fight the
LTTE. However, a pre-election commitment to amend the 1978
constitution was left largely unfulfilled and amendments to the ERs
 159

reintroducing some safeguards regarding arrest and detention were not

made enforceable and were either ignored or not effectively applied
(Fernando 2002b:12; UN E/CN.4/1997/34:1996). Undisclosed
detention facilities remained in operation in Jaffna, Colombo and
Vavuniya in contravention of amendments to the ERs and presidential
directives concerning arrest procedures initially introduced in 1993
were only partly acted upon in 1997 (LST 1994:39; AI 37/004/98:9;
UTHR-J 1999). Despite other modifications to the ERs and PTA,
evidence suggests that they were routinely flouted with impunity
(Committee on Disappearances 2003:30). Furthermore, a directive
sent to the army commander by President Kumaratunga in December
1996 to place 200 army personnel who had been directly implicated in
disappearances by the presidential commissions on compulsory leave
was never implemented (UTHR-J 1999:20). It is alleged that Deputy
Defence Minister, Anuraddha Ratwatte, convinced President
Kumaratunga not to enforce the directive for fear of devastating
morale in the north and east, making it impossible for the government
to control the army (Rajakulendran 2001; Coulthart 2001).

According to Hoole, the failure to implement the President's directive

had a “direct bearing” on more than 300 disappearances in Jaffna that
took place over four months from July 1996 (Hoole 1999). Mr Janaka
Perera, put in charge of the 51 Division in the north, was implicated in
disappearance and related abuses by the Southern Commission
(UTHR-J 1999). During his tenure, he was reported to have stated that
as his soldiers were risking their lives for their country, he allowed
them free rein, instructing them not to leave any evidence of incidents
which might otherwise lead to human rights investigations (Asian
Human Rights Commission (AHRC) 2011). Six soldiers responsible
for the September 1996 disappearance, torture and killing of 18-year-
old Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, her mother, brother and friend
 160

following detention at the Chemmani checkpoint were serving under

Perera’s command at the time of the offences (UTHR-J 1999:6).
However, rather than being charged or at least reprimanded, he was
rewarded with a promotion to Deputy Chief of Staff of the army and
retired a year after serving as the Chief of Staff (Dr Victor
Rajakulendran open letter to the Australian Minister for Foreign
Affairs, the Hon Alexander Downer MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs,
10 May 2001). Upon hearing the verdict in relation to the
Kumaraswamy case, one of the convicted officers stated:

Just as society hires butchers to kill animals for consumption

and pays them a living, I too joined the Sri Lankan Army, and
was paid for killing when those in command wanted me to kill
in cold blood. Now why are you punishing and humiliating me,
why the officers who wanted us to kill are getting their
promotions and decorations, and are being lionised as national
heroes?
- Indrajith Kumara cited in UTHR-J 1999:18.

Janaka Perera was never indicted or even named during the trial and
when his term in Jaffna ended in December 1996, reports suggested
that a change in command coincided with a dramatic improvement in
the human rights situation. Major General Janaka Perera went on to
become the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Australia. Despite emerging
reports of abuses in the context of the north and the Southern
Commission’s recommendation that Perera be sent on compulsory
leave for his involvement in disappearances in the south so that
prosecutorial action could be undertaken, Australia’s then Foreign
Affairs Minister, the Hon Alexander Downer MP, supported Perera’s
appointment, stating in Parliament that:
 161

We have been made aware of claims, and we have sought to

indicate that the circumstances of the high commissioner’s
military service meant that he was likely to have served in areas
where human rights abuses were alleged to have occurred, but
none of these claims, my department advises me, has been
backed by any direct evidence of his involvement.
-
Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Alexander Downer MP,
House of Representatives Hansard, 18 June 2001:27693.

The message from the security forces early in the PA's tenure was that
if the government wanted to sustain the conflict with the LTTE, the
status quo should prevail. By ignoring the amendments to the ERs
reintroducing some safeguards, the military was sending a signal to
the government that it should not be touched. Vested interests within
the military and political elite, and the state apparatus implicated in
disappearances and other state crimes, would not tolerate reform.
Evidently, ERs remained in place which provided for preventive
detention without judicial review and enabled security force personnel
to bypass inquests into deaths alleged to have occurred during armed
confrontation (AI 37/08/96:13; E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:15-17). Such
regulations could only have signalled to the security forces of a
political intent to grant impunity to those responsible for abuses.
Indeed, the very public manner in which people were arrested
suggests that the security forces operated with the confidence that
their own actions would attract impunity.

As the war took hold, the culture of violence and impunity which
characterised the previous UNP regime continued albeit on a far
smaller scale. With the apparatus of violence and those responsible for
instituting it left virtually untouched, it was not difficult for the ruling
 162

politicians to pursue violent practices which had continued largely

unabated (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007). In 1992, Asia Watch stated that
unless the conflict in the north and east and violence in the south was
resolved with statesmanship, it would distort all organs of society and
“make the Army arbiter in national issues” (cited in North & East
Commission 1997b:63). This demonstrated the extent to which the
military had come to rely on extralegal methods and the fact that the
entire state apparatus was implicated in disappearances. The military
did, in fact, become the arbiters of the conflict with the LTTE as the
ruling party’s reliance upon the military strengthened in power and
influence in parallel with the disintegration of democratic institutions
which “maintained democratic exteriors but internally were subdued
and modified to fit the changed political reality” (Fernando 2002b:13-
14).

As the central feature of governance, political violence—facilitated by

extraordinary legislation and the existence of an alternative political
framework under which extrajudicial activities were sanctioned—had
become the norm to the point where the security forces knew they
could act with violence or not at all. At the same time, high-ranking
military officials with friends in high places were accused of taking
commissions during the purchase of military supplies and had a vested
financial interest in both maintaining the status quo and continuing the
fighting (Balakrishnan 2000:27). The systems of impunity that
politicians had created to break down the democratic ethos in order to
maintain power created a situation in which they became dependent,
to some extent captured, by the very forces empowered and unleashed
to impose their will. The message to the establishment was therefore,
“keep your hands off us or we can't act at all—its extralegal action or
nothing” (Dr Deepika Udgama, Head of Department, Faculty of Law,
Colombo University, personal communication). The perception in the
 163

Jaffna District where the army was recognised as an occupying force

was that the army had become more powerful than the government.
Mrs R whose 19-year-old son disappeared at the hands of the army
expressed the view that while President Kumaratunga had ordered the
army to arrest the LTTE, “the army went on a rampage and arrested
all the innocent people” (Mrs R, Jaffna District: Interview 4).

This was not a case whereby the military directly intervened in the
nation’s politics, unlike that of Argentina or other countries which
faced military coup. Indeed, historically, the armed forces had for the
most part remained subordinate to civilian authority and had little
reason to rebel. At the same time, however, the civilian authority
established through democratic means had become authoritarian and
totally reliant on political violence largely perpetrated by the military
to retain power and control during the UNP era. By providing for
military control over civil matters, including civil administration, and
relying on a framework of extralegal action carried out by the military
which totally eroded normal legal safeguards, law enforcement
procedure and skills, the military had emerged as the strongest factor
in Sri Lankan politics and most important pillar of governance. While
the PA came to power with aspirations of instituting accountability in
relation to law enforcement practices and preventing abuses, it
ultimately accepted the military’s ultimatum for these reasons and
abuses were soon to characterise its own rule.

ERs promulgated in 1995 were broadly drafted to prevent any

negative news coverage of the police and armed forces, including
possible exposure of corruption in the procurement of arms and
misconduct by state authorities (Article 19:1996). Thereafter, other
pre-election promises to dismantle the political apparatus of terror
were permanently postponed—including the abolition of the
 164

Executive Presidency, which centralised considerable political power

and influence at the expense of the parliament and judiciary. At the
same time, however, plans that the PA put forward in 1995 and 2000
for a new federal constitutional structure to address the “Tamil
problem” were blocked by the opposition UNP in Parliament (ICG
2011:12). A historical tradition of political opposition to and
politicisation of government efforts to address the “Tamil issue” was
upheld by the UNP. As Mr E, a vegetable seller from Matara District,
explained, “Because there are now many parties in this scene and if
one goes for peace, only that party’s name will glow and the other
parties don’t like it and will try to cut them down” (Mr E, Matara
District, personal communication).

In 1997 the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions stated

that violations had been so numerous and serious over years in the
north and east that they could not be dealt with as isolated or
individual cases of misbehaviour of middle and lower-ranked officers
without “attaching any political responsibility to the civilian and
military hierarchy” (E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.2:29). The Committee on
Disappearances noted of the situation in Jaffna that the scale of
disappearances carried out in 1996 discounted the claim that they
were stray instances resulting from the actions of a few errant service
personnel but rather “part of a definite pattern”. Further, the
committee maintained that such disappearances could not have taken
place on such a scale without the complicity of many at the middle
levels of the hierarchy and that at the highest levels, if no direct
complicity, there was “indifference and inefficiency in enforcing
discipline, as well as complicity in the cover up” (2003:33-34). As
noted by Amnesty International in 1996, despite lobbying from the
international and local human rights community, since coming to
power the PA refused to amend provisions in the PTA and ERs which
 165

provided for disappearances while the Minister for Foreign Affairs

held that disappearances continued to occur because the government
was fighting a war (37/08/96:11). In 1997 approximately 100 cases of
disappearances were reported from Jaffna, Batticaloa, Mannar and
Kilinochchi (AI 37/004/1998) and reports of disappearances continued
throughout the rest of the PA's tenure believed to have been carried
out by security force personnel and paramilitaries including PLOTE
and EPDP as well as home guards (HRW 2002; USDOS 2001).
However, again, the exact number was impossible to establish given
censorship surrounding security force operations and controlled access
to the north and east. The US Department of State noted that in 2000,
there was no attempt “as in the past, to use the ER to cover up security
force misdeeds” (USDOS 2001).

6.5 Politicians peace process

The UNP returned to power in December 2001 on the promise of

engaging the LTTE in peace talks. On 23 February 2002 a cease-fire
agreement in the form of a memorandum of understanding (MOU)
between the UNP and LTTE was reached and formal negotiations
began to identify a political solution to the protracted conflict. In
September the same year, the government agreed to lift its ban on the
LTTE in return for the LTTE dropping its demand for statehood and
agreeing to settle for regional autonomy. UTHR-J and the human
rights community lamented the lack of an “explicit human rights
dimension” by way of clear human rights protections built into the
MOU and its enforcement. Reports of abuses persisted while Article 2
of the ceasefire agreement prohibiting assassinations, abductions and
hostile acts against the civilian population was breached to the point
where the LTTE was accused of routinely violating the MOU (UTHR-
J 2003:190). The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), responsible
 166

for monitoring the ceasefire agreement, was rendered toothless,

empowered to document allegations under Article 2 but with limited
capacity to investigate the crimes independently. Once certain of the
facts, the SLMM could approach both parties to the conflict but in
many instances there was no follow-up to their recommendations
(Committee on Disappearances 2003:5). However, as human rights
were not established as an integral part of the ceasefire and measures
to dismantle the political apparatus of state terror by legislative and
other means were not undertaken, the ceasefire marked a decline but
not an end to abuses. In fact, shortly after the signing of the MOU, 10
people were abducted in white vans in the east and disappeared
(Committee on Disappearances 2003:7).

Disappearance throughout Sri Lanka’s contemporary history had

served as an institutionalised means of dealing with all forms of
political opposition upon which labels such as terrorist, subversive,
Tamil militant are then imposed as justification for the act rather than
serving as a counter-insurgency tactic. The fact that disappearances
continue to be reported in the post-conflict context merely
demonstrates the extent to which the national political framework was
diverted and corrupted to serve the interests of an elite minority. For
this reason, the peace process was never going to stop disappearance
as state practice. Ultimately, as Fernando explained, democratic
methods to achieve peace were pursued by civil society within an
“undemocratic system” or non-democratic structure (2012). Father
Bernard of Jaffna recognised the political process and the peace
process as two separate matters requiring parallel address (personal
communication).

Any expectations, therefore, that families otherwise rendered silent

would come forward and use the opportunity of the peace accord to
 167

document the abduction or disappearance of a relative, were never

going to be realised. Conversely, expectations amongst families that
peace would trigger the release and return of their loved ones were not
realised. At a time which should have provided hope for the future,
the peace process came to represent for involved families, death rather
than life. Furthermore, as the UTHR-J argued, the conduct of the
government and Norwegian negotiations gave Tamils a real sense that
they were being handed over to the LTTE, while the monitors
themselves appeared to take a restricted view on abuses of civilians,
playing down frequent reports of Article 2 violations by the LTTE and
leaving many reports of abuses unchecked (UTHR-J 2003:190). As
there were only two parties to the ceasefire agreement, the
government and LTTE, the MOU effectively affirmed the dominance
of the LTTE in the north and east and advanced the movement’s
standing towards that of a state (Wagner 2004:19) but failed to
enforce upon it the responsibilities of a state. In this way, the ceasefire
agreement largely limited itself solely to the interests of the two
combatants without any genuine commitment to the protection of the
civilian population (Peace Support Group 2003:231).

As the negotiations dragged on, it became apparent that both sides

were using the lull in the fighting to stockpile weaponry and to recruit.
The continued recruitment of child soldiers by the LTTE, despite
amounting to a clear violation of the MOU, continued largely
unabated (AI 2004). Violations were raised by both sides not out of
any genuine concern but rather to discredit and embarrass their
opponent (Ganesalingam 2006:4). Despite the fact that the armed
conflict over its 19 years had cost the lives of over 60,000 people and
was marked by gross rights violations including the abduction and
disappearance of thousands, implementation of the MOU largely
avoided addressing ongoing abuses by both sides and intimidation by
 168

the LTTE, let alone the plight of the tens of thousands of internally
displaced people across the country. The MOU represented a formal
agreement made at the highest political level, serving to extend the
rule of both sides and secure greater leverage and legitimacy in
relation to the international community. Because the MOU was
negotiated without any recognition, interaction or involvement of civil
society, it was widely viewed as a politician's rather than people's
peace process (Thomson November 2002). Such views and the wider
cynicism about the manner in which Sri Lankan politicians operated
were expressed by the husband of Mrs S whose son disappeared,
“When you want my vote you come to my house but when I come to
you, you are sleeping and have bodyguards so I can't see you ... Today
the army is on good terms with the LTTE. The EPDP is on good terms
with the army so all don't want to let down one another” (Jaffna
District: Interview 5). An overwhelming sense that the MOU served
the interests of the political elite was as expressed by Mr Sasiharan of
the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies in Batticaloa District:

The army continues to body check everyone in Batti[caloa] at

various checkpoints but do not stop the LTTE. But they say it is
for our own security. Sometimes we know that it is the LTTE
cadres with the new clothes, nice shoes and good bikes and they
go without a helmet or license plates on the roads and wave at
the army fellows who wave back at them and we continue to be
stuck in the middle.
- Mr Sasiharan, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies,
Batticaloa District.

The overriding view among many Sri Lankans was that the cessation
of hostilities was a tokenistic gesture grounded in opportunism and
that there was still no democratic accountability. Alluding to a form of
 169

complicity between the security forces and LTTE and more broadly
the nature of political power in Sri Lanka, Mrs K argued that while
disappearance was a policy of the army, only children, rather than
combatants, disappeared: “The army was only arresting and releasing
LTTEers but children who are innocent were disappeared”, she said
(Mrs K, Jaffna District: Interview 1).

Although the government and LTTE held six rounds of talks, the
greatest challenge appeared to be the refusal by the main nationalist
Sinhalese parties to cooperate. This tension was played out in the
dealings between the President Kumaratunga from the PA and Prime
Minister Wickremasinghe of the UNP with the President on several
occasions accusing the Prime Minister of “endangering national
security” for initiating peace talks with the LTTE. The squabble
culminated in the President taking over three ministries in November
2003 (Perera 2003). As Wagner suggested, as in the 1950s and 1960s,
the main opposition came from the south rather than the north and east
(2004:19). Ironically, however, by propagating an ideology of
Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, the two major parties contributed to the
polarisation of Sri Lankan politics which found expression in Tamil
parties demanding separate Tamil state.

In April 2003 the LTTE announced that it was suspending talks on the
grounds that it was being marginalised by the process and although
the ceasefire lasted a further three years, war resumed in 2006. That
year, 1000 cases of disappearance were reported and in the first three
months of 2007, 100 disappearances were reported from Colombo,
Batticaloa and Jaffna (Gardner 2007). In March 2007 Sri Lankan
police admitted that its own security personnel had been involved in
kidnappings for ransom which had now spread to Colombo. Again,
disappearance provided the means to commit other crimes (AFP 2007).
 170

Thereafter, the lines between disappearance and abduction for ransom

were completely blurred, with political groups including the EPDP
and criminal gangs using these tactics to line their pockets and
advance their own interests (HRW 2008:7).
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CHAPTER 7
No-one even gave us a glass of water.
- Mrs J, Kurunegala District: Interview 6.

Social positioning and stigmatisation

T
he state project of disappearance sought to isolate individuals
and dismantle rural communities through arbitrary violence
and mistrust thereby immobilising any form of solidarity or
collective action. The extent to which this was achieved was
demonstrated by the manner in which surviving relatives of the
disappeared were exploited and ostracised. Following the
disappearance of their loved ones, surviving families faced political
intimidation, social stigmatisation and discrimination which limited
their rights, opportunities to seek justice and the truth, and ability to
cope with the disappearance. At the same time, mistrust and suspicion
created by disappearance and other forms of state terror encouraged
families themselves to suspect those within their own communities of
engaging in or supporting the disappearance of their loved ones. The
emerging contradictions and tensions created a context of extreme
paranoia which contracted social relations and made the possibility of
collective opposition remote. As the nexus between the disappeared,
the state and the community, surviving families were labelled
politically suspect and subjected to culture-specific exploitation for
years after the violence had ended.

7.1 Dislocation of the social and spiritual words

Over the decades in which disappearance was the preferred method of

dealing with political opposition, there were only rare instances when
 172

the body was retrieved, making it impossible for the affected families
to verify whether the disappeared person had died. Indeed, the
“insidious practice of making unavailable the violated body as
evidence” was an integral part of a state project to censor memory (de
Alwis 2009:379). The disappeared are denied, therefore, a place
among the living and among the dead (Blaauw & Lähteenmäki
2002:769). Sasanka Perera (1995, 1998, 1999), Somasundaram (1998),
Bulankulame (2005) have highlighted that without a body, relatives
are unable to conduct important ceremonial rites and funeral rituals.
Such activities link this world to the next. However, studies on
disappearance in the Sri Lankan context have not fully considered the
spatial positioning of or the vacuum inhabited by the disappeared in
relation to their surviving relatives which is central to the sociology of
disappearance.

Political violence ruptures the cultural divisions between public and

private worlds, family and community, victim and perpetrator, safety
and danger, life and death. By deliberately breaking and blurring these
demarcations and boundaries, the political project of repression
intimidates, isolates and silences the individual and dismantles their
community. Through the technique of disappearance, those in power
exploited existing cultural and social divisions as a strategy of control.
Without a body to mourn, which would otherwise demarcate life from
death, affected families are caught in a limbo of ambiguous loss in
which they are torn between grief and hope, unable to either return to
the past or to plan for the future. In direct contrast to any other crime
in which the facts including that of a death are known, in the world of
disappearance, everything is mysterious, indefinite and surrounded by
a tangle of conjectures, indeterminacies and doubts (Mellibovsky
1997:27). Anything could be true or false and society, authority and
justice contradict each other (Independent Commission on
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International Humanitarian Issues 1986:25). In challenging and

blurring the boundaries between the social and spiritual worlds, the
offence of disappearance not only violated the rights of the individual
concerned but also the socio–cultural traditions and values that
underpin Sri Lankan society, including those of funeral rites and
rituals.

Without a body, the social and religious order is disturbed as both

Buddhist and Hindu funeral and almsgiving rituals are suspended.
These rituals address the dead by urging them to move on for the
purposes of rebirth and allow relatives to say farewell and express
grief and loss. The Buddhist tradition of pansakula (the blessing of the
departed) requires relatives to pour water from a vessel to an
overflowing cup to symbolise the transfer of merit to the deceased
while the Hindu sraddha ceremonies also require the provision of
offerings to deceased loved ones (Kariyawasam 1995:44;
Klostermaier 2000:39; Duraiswamy 1997:152). They encourage the
safe and final passage of the departed from this world to the next and
enable the transfer of merit by the living to the dead as a dakkhina or
offering so that the departed may find relief from any “unhappy realm
wherein they might have been born” (Kariyawasam 1995:44;
Klostermaier 2000:39). Almsgiving rituals carried out at intervals
after the funeral are important for families and their communities to
integrate the experience of death into daily social reality. Vansina
highlighted the importance of funerals in bringing surviving kin closer
together and to increase their solidarity as a celebration of “kinship
and neighbourhood” (2011:ix). As an institutionalised form of
collective action, funerals unite people while providing the means
through which grief finds expression in collective experience. For
families without a body and unable to conduct funeral rites, this
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collective experience is replaced by one of social isolation and inter-

family discord and tension.

For most Sri Lankan Buddhists and Hindus the dead occupy an
uncontested and defined public space for a specific period of time, as
the body is placed in the family home before their spirit moves on to a
defined spiritual place. Disappearance ruptures this process as the
disappeared cannot be located in the social world of the living or the
spiritual world of the dead because they ‘exist’ outside all space and
time. The disappeared are afforded no human destiny by those
responsible who condemn them “neither to live nor to die”
(Agupacion member cited in Schirmer 1988:41). In addition to the
ambiguity of death and life, Buddhists believe that if the dead has not
been virtuous, s/he may be reborn as a prētar or hungry ghost who has
no chance of making merit on their own initiative, which is required to
be reborn in a better state (Gombrich & Obeyesekere 1988:39).
Similarly, a bhut in Hindu mythology or restless ghost may be
malignant if they have been denied funeral rites or died a violent death
and will wander aimlessly until the allotted lifetime is complete.
Violent deaths are also problematic in Buddhist society as it is
impossible to have a good reincarnation if the mind of the individual
is filled with evil thoughts at the time of their death (Blaauw &
Lähteenmäki 2002:773).

The disappeared are condemned to roam endlessly and therefore

unfulfilled in a no-man’s land between the spiritual and social worlds.
Many families of the disappeared sought out soothsayers (sastra
karayas) and horoscope readers (sastra kari) as well as sorcery
shrines in the south and oracles in the north and east because they
transcend both the political and social order. However, many relatives
who sought information about the disappeared from such sources were
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told that that their loved one was lost. Mrs N was told by a sastra
reader that, “I can’t see him. He is not there” (Mrs N, Gampaha
District: Interview 6). Similarly, Mrs V was told that her two
disappeared brothers had “fallen into a manhole in the night and had
fallen in the same hole in the day” and consequently, “there was no
use in looking for them” (Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 9). In this
sense, therefore, political violence and disappearance as state practice
is directed at destroying the cultural bonds between social and
spiritual worlds, or the “passage of life and death” (Robben 2000:70-
71).

Given these circumstances, the process of merit-transfer has taken on

a fundamental importance for surviving relatives. However, as the fate
of the disappeared remains unknown, such rituals bring with them
tremendous anxiety. While families will redirect their efforts inwards
to focus narrowly on almsgiving to derive merit, the contraction that
emerges is one in which offering alms signifies for many relatives an
acknowledgement of death and amounts therefore to a form of
betrayal. Mrs M noted that the first time she offered alms for her
disappeared son, she felt that she was “cheating her own heart” by
performing the ritual (Mrs M, Gampaha District: Interview 4). In this
way, disappearance transforms a ritual that would normally provide
comfort and a sense of fulfilment into an additional source of anxiety,
destroying “culturally constituted expectations and functions”
(Suarez-Orozco & Robben 2000:10). As Hannah Arendt noted, while
isolation of individuals in the public spheres is intended to destroy
political opposition, the destruction of social bonds is intended to
engender loneliness, to sever ties to a community and therefore “leave
the individual utterly at the mercy of the state” (Arendt cited in
Bourvard 2002:35-36). In this sense, the family unit is a perpetual
victim of the policy of disappearance given that what is most
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fundamental to the family unit—solidarity, trust and privacy—are

deeply ruptured. However, rather than respond with remorse and
recognition, the country’s political leadership continued to exploit the
permanent victimhood of affected families.

7.2 Experiences with the state

Efforts by relatives to re-establish the social and legal identity of the

disappeared denied by the state—by submitting a complaint at the
police station or military camp, pursuing a habeas corpus petition, or
providing information to the various international and local human
rights bodies—were usually fruitless. Relatives found themselves in
direct confrontation with the state’s regime of terror and up against an
entire apparatus determined to conceal the offence. The police, army,
government administration and local politicians consistently
politicised relatives of the disappeared as potential terrorists while
depoliticising and personalising their claims—a characteristic of the
majority of interviews conducted for this study. Moreover, as it was
too dangerous for male householders to search for their missing loved
one, the responsibility fell to women, many of whom had not
previously ventured far outside their own village. Mistreatment and
exploitation by state and local officials took on a gender dimension
which affected the women’s own communities. The political strategy
of disappearance was to silence the individual, devalue and dismiss
their family by way of denial, concealment and blame, and terrorise
their community. No one was immune; everyone was a potential
target. As previously discussed, victims were blamed for their own
disappearance, leading the wider public to believe that the disappeared
must have done something wrong which simultaneously cast a shadow
of suspicion over the behaviour of their surviving relatives. Avoidance
behaviour on the part of neighbours, friends and relations served as a
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strategy of self-preservation but also lead to the social marginalisation

and isolation of surviving relatives of disappeared persons. Mrs D
recalled that following the disappearance of her husband in 1989, the
rumour circulating in her community was that those who disappeared
were all JVPers so “people thought if they come over here, others will
think they are also JVP” so no one ever came to her home (Mrs D,
Kurunegala District: Interview 3). Corruption came to the fore during
the violence and was given licence under the cover of political
violence. This directly affected the relatives of the disappeared who
became a focus of state terror, community-based corruption and often
aggressive exploitative tactics by their in-laws intent on using the
political context to avoid and distort inter-family and intra-family
social obligations.

In both contexts of violence (JVP insurgency and LTTE conflict), the

casual manner in which people were taken off the streets or from their
homes for seemingly innocuous reasons, even, for example, providing
road directions, plus the personal assurances given to their families of
safety and return of the relative were integral to a wider political
strategy to depoliticise disappearances and confuse communities to
neutralise efforts to relocate the missing. Mrs R was assured by the
local Brigadier as well as the Government Agent and police that her
19-year-old son was safe in army detention watching television and
waiting for his interrogation (Mrs R, Jaffna District: Interview 4). The
façade of false hope was often maintained over days of constant
reassurance that loved ones were safe and would be returned
imminently. However, at some point, relatives would be met by the
official line of denial regarding arrest and detention. The 14-year-old
son of Mrs P was taken to the local army camp in Batticaloa in
December 1993 on the pretext of carrying out some work. Over four
days, soldiers assured Mrs P that her son would be released when the
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work was complete. However, on the fifth day, she was told that her
son was never arrested and soldiers totally denied knowledge about
his identity and whereabouts. At each camp she visited thereafter,
including army headquarters in Batticaloa, Mrs P was assured that an
inquiry would take place. However, she said, “I never got any
information about my son and after that I never went back to any army
camp in search of him” (Mrs P, Batticaloa District: Interview 9). In
other situations, after days of visiting a camp where they believed
their loved one was held, relatives were abruptly informed that they
had been transferred or even released but were never subsequently
located. Many relatives believed that such circumstances were
evidence of an administrative mistake that could be rectified.
Similarly, cases of mistaken identity which led to removals were
considered by relatives to be errors which could be corrected with the
return of their loved one at an appropriate time. Many interviewees in
the north and east took the view that their relative was detained and
would be released following the signing of the 2001 peace accord.
Having patiently waited in anticipation for nine years, Mrs K whose
husband disappeared in army custody on 24 June 1990 shared her
thoughts in this regard:

When the peace process was declared we thought they would

have been released but since there is no information we are
beginning to suspect with so many thoughts. I’m thinking so
many things—killed, detained somewhere, so many thoughts
are coming into my mind.
- Mrs K, Amparai District: Interview 3.

Such tactics on the part of the state were calculated to cause confusion
about the motive and fate of the disappeared, false hope and to
generate prolonged anxiety among affected families and self-
 179

censorship to ensure that they didn’t jeopardise the safety of

disappeared loved ones. They also demonstrated the impunity with
which such officials acted.

While most families sought assistance from the legal apparatus and
law enforcement authorities immediately following the abduction or
arrest, a pattern emerged whereby their claims were totally dismissed
or belittled as a personal drama of the families involved. The level of
disregard let alone antagonism shown especially towards women in
search of husbands, sons and brothers was almost as disturbing to
them as the disappearance itself. Mrs P recalled that having begged
for assistance from the officer-in-charge (OIC) at Thirukovil
following the disappearance of her husband, he “abused us, used filthy
words and chased us [out]” (Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 12).
Police not only refused to document their complaints and
acknowledge the total despair of those before them but dismissed their
claims by arguing that their loved one must have joined the
subversives/terrorists, run off with a lover, left the country or had
gone missing of their own accord and didn’t want to be found. The
response of state officials was that disappearances were the result of
personal family problems rather than political events and that the
wives and mothers of the disappeared should feel ashamed for having
publicly aired the matter. Further, by transgressing public/private
boundaries in search of missing male relations without male
protection, women were recognised as having implicated their own
morality and decency already under question given the disappearance
of their relative. State officials exploited the social vulnerabilities of
women in a traditional patriarchal society by shaming them as
improper wives and irresponsible mothers. As Coomaraswamy
suggested, the primary instrument of honour is fear of shame (1999)
or what Obeyesekere termed lajja-bhaya (1981). The common retort
 180

to the mothers of disappeared men by police and security forces in

both theatres of conflict was that they irresponsibly raised terrorists. In
fact, Tamil mothers were frequently referred to as the mothers of tiger
cubs.15 Mrs T recalled being abused and chased away by soldiers after
she followed their jeep containing her son to an army camp in
Akkaraipattu, Eastern Province, on 28 July 1990. The soldiers said to
her, “go away woman, you gave birth to a tiger” (Mrs T, Amparai
District: Interview 6). Women were subsequently humiliated,
ridiculed and subjected to sexual harassment as part of a state policy
directed at highlighting the illegitimacy of their claims. In this manner,
any concept of state responsibility was totally evaded. Furthermore,
all those with a vested interest in concealing the nature of the political
violence discouraged and actively undermined families’ efforts, as
Mrs P experienced. Her husband disappeared along with 39 other men
following arrest during an army roundup operation in the east. In
response to her pleas for assistance, Mrs P’s local MP told her that she
should pray to god, as though his disappearance was somehow
preternatural rather than the result of a deliberately planned and
implemented policy (Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 12).

Having exhausted all institutional avenues to register complaints or

source information, many relatives became dependent upon rumour
and alleged sightings which made them susceptible to exploitation.
Surviving relations were deliberately misled on a wild goose chase
across army camps and police stations, and often came into contact
with people who, for whatever reason, exploited their suffering and
prolonged their anxiety. After endlessly “pestering” the local brigadier

15
Such a term is a play on the word ‘tiger’ which is the shortened and
informal name given to members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE).
 181

under whose supervision her son was arrested, Mrs R met a person at
a bus stop who told her that they had seen her son at the Kalutara
Prison some four years after his disappearance in 1997 (Mrs R, Jaffna
District: Interview 4). A relative of Mrs S told her that she had seen
her husband at the Penangoda army camp four years after his arrest by
the STF (Amparai District: Interview 5). In every single case in which
information was conveyed even years after the event, it reinvigorated
hope and initiated a new search but which inevitably amounted to
nothing.

In this context where the line between fact and fiction was broken,
corruption thrived. Mrs G’s husband, a 30-year-old cattle farmer
disappeared in December 1993 in Batticaloa. At one of the camps
where she searched for him, she was told that her husband was
detained in an army camp in Colombo, which was almost impossible
for her to reach given the security risks and restrictions on movement
imposed at the time. His release, she was told, could be secured with a
cash payment. While the political apparatus had created a system
which made disappearances permissible, the concealment of such
abuses by state institutions provided opportunities to further exploit
the vulnerabilities of those with the least power to resist. Mrs G paid
30,000 rupees to the responsible OIC who instructed her to leave the
money on the table and wait three months for her husband’s return
which, of course, never eventuated (Mrs G, Batticaloa District:
Interview 5). Furthermore, as chapter 9 details, for those who pursued
legal avenues, including prosecutions and habeas corpus petitions,
such experiences exemplified the extent to which the legal process
had been derailed for political advantage thereby enabling corruption
to fester.
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7.3 The justice system didn’t give us any hope so we went

to the other side to look for them
- Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 9.

While the search for missing relatives was the one consistent feature
in the lives of their surviving relatives, its form changed over time. As
appeals at police stations and army camps were exhausted and
information was not forthcoming, focus inevitably shifted for many
interviewees from that of seeking assistance from law enforcement
officials and the state apparatus to that of spiritual forces. Use of
spiritual mediums, astrology and soothsayers in the Sri Lankan
context has historically been understood as a way of managing
uncertainty and gaining insight into the future. During the height of
the violence, such mediums provided a means through which families
could question the “very moral order of the state and its agents”
(Kapferer 1997:256).

As with the state, such recourse provided additional avenues for

corruption and the exploitation of families’ anguish. They resorted to
soothsayers, sastra (deliverers of oracles), palm and light readers and
other mediums to locate or establish the fate of the disappeared and to
communicate with them, pledging vows to the gods in return for a re-
appearance. Sastra and other such rituals took on a heightened
importance not least because they provided information and validated
what the state denied. However, for many interviewees, receiving
information that could not be acted upon created further tension and
turmoil rather than any genuine comfort. Mrs R was told by
soothsayers that her son had been beaten up and was crouched down
somewhere but was not given any information about his whereabouts
(Batticaloa District: Interview 6). Mrs V was led to believe that her
 183

son was kept in a corner somewhere so she prayed to god to reveal the
location (Mrs V, Amparai District: Interview 8). Others were told to
provide offerings at various temples which added to the financial and
emotional toil of efforts to locate their loved ones.

By appealing to an authority above that of the state, some

interviewees accepted the bad news provided to them through these
mediums and went on to perform necessary almsgiving rituals for the
dead. Others became regular clients as mediums profited from their
despair by validating their false hopes and authenticating their
intentions to pursue loved ones without end. However, the
contradictory nature of the information provided, ineffectiveness of
such avenues in producing the disappeared or lack of tangible
information provided that could be acted upon, led many to realise
that as with the state’s response, they had been betrayed, exploited and
lied to for the advantage of others. Although they may have provided
short-term relief, such enterprises proved themselves to be totally
unproductive, a diversion and waste of money for many interviewees.

As Mrs S recalled:

My mind wouldn’t allow peace so I went to a soothsayer that

said “yes, he’s there and you’ll get information in four
months”—but it’s been two years. Another person I went to
read the horoscope and said “yes, he’s alive but I can only tell
in six months the true situation”. They told this to fill their
stomachs and I didn’t believe it. I went for consolation of the
mind. When I came home, I left it with god. Two years have
passed and nothing has worked out. I realise it was a total lie.
- Mrs S, Vavuniya District: Interview 4.
 184

Others argued that given the ambiguity about the fate of their loved
one, only a reappearance would confirm for them if the word of the
soothsayers had been correct or not (Mrs K, Batticaloa District:
Interview 11). By diverting families away from identifying the source
of the violence and those responsible for it towards the world of
private emotion and spiritualism to find answers, such enterprises
could only ever provide temporary relief from daily despair. Vow-
making as discussed in the following chapter, however, took relatives
in a different direction by serving as a form of collective suffering and
providing a basis for public protest.

7.4 Mistrust, suspicion and social dysfunction

As disappearances were politically justified as a means of eradicating

terrorism, the disappeared by definition were suspected terrorists in
the eyes of the state. Surviving relatives in turn faced the “stigma of
terrorist connections” (Southern Commission 1997b:40). As potential
terrorists and therefore a legitimate target for disappearance and other
forms of political violence, relatives became a source of potential
danger for their communities. As noted in previous chapters, the
immediacy of this threat to families of the disappeared was
demonstrated in both theatres of violence (JVP and LTTE) when
parents, siblings and even children were taken by security force
officials. In other circumstances, relatives were repeatedly threatened
and made aware that they could disappear at any moment. In the
aftermath of the disappearance of a brother in February 1990 which
followed the earlier disappearance of another brother in November
1989, Mrs V explained that army personnel ransacked her home and
tortured her father while “searching for those who were left”. Her
mother commented at the time that “they’d finished half the family
and won’t let the other half stay” (Mrs V, Matara District: Interview
 185

2). Disappearances usually led to the total ostracism of the remaining

family as extended family, neighbours and friends sought to avoid
them for fear of guilt by association. The torture and hanging of a 26-
year-old brother, a JVPer, in November 1988 led to a lifetime of
harassment and discrimination for Mrs V’s family which lasted long
after the violence had ended. Mrs V recalled the impact the event and
its aftermath had on her family:

Everything for normal day-to-day life stopped from that day.

My mother was making sweets and stopped. My father gave up
farming. The householders were called brothers of JVPers. My
parents thought it was no use. People looked on us as thieves.
- Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 2.

Shanthi Arulmapalam of Survivors Associated, a non-government

organisation (NGO) that focused on psychosocial development
activities in conflict areas of the north and east, recalled the situation
of a woman and her two daughters forced to live in a shack with a
makeshift plastic roof on the edge of her village. The woman’s
husband had disappeared and all those around her assumed that he
was an LTTEer so no one in the village including her own brother
wanted to be seen talking to her in public for fear that unwanted
attention might lead to their own disappearance (Shanthi
Arulmapalam Executive Director, Survivors Associated, personal
communication). In other circumstances, surviving relatives were
deliberately chased out of their community. Mrs S recalled that her
brother-in-law disappeared in April 1989 at the height of the
beeshanaya in the south leaving her sister to raise four children on her
own. In a context in which “everyone was scared of each other”, the
rest of the family was labelled subversive and fled the village when
locals threatened to burn down her sister’s house. Upon their return
 186

months later, the house had been destroyed and everything that “could
be taken was taken” she said (Mrs S, Kandy District: Interview 7).

The political order alienated and isolated its citizens from one another
through a regime of violence and fear (Habermas 1986:80), and
disappearances signified the fragmentation of this trust at every
level—between the state and community, state and individual, within
communities and families, and between individuals. Mrs S recalled
that in her village in the central Kandy District, “[p]eople were scared
to come out of their houses thinking they would also get the label
‘JVP’” (Mrs S, Kandy District: Interview 5). The impact of repressive
measures imposed on entire communities was intensely personal
because they denied individuals the power to act and conduct their
lives with any sense of familiarity, security and comfort. People
endeavoured to maintain a routine of survival, of sameness, in the
hope that repetition of action would render them invisible from
authorities and ensure security and safety (Manz 1995:157). Such
behaviour was exemplified by avoidance practices within
communities. Mr S from Gampaha District noted that people “didn’t
cooperate with each other because of fear and they’d try to find out
from the outside what happened” when locals disappeared “thinking
that the same thing would happen to them” (Mr S, Gampaha District:
Interview 13). Witnesses to the abduction or arrest of neighbours,
friends and relatives refused to come forward and provide information
for fear of their own safety. The arrest and beating of Mrs K.’s son
was witnessed by a number of locals within her village but they
refused to speak for fear of harassment by the army. With all possible
legal avenues eliminated, Mrs K was left having to watch soldiers
riding around on her son’s bike which they confiscated at the time of
his arrest (Mrs K, Batticaloa District: Interview 8).
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Mistrust and suspicion fuelled by the concealment of perpetrators of

violence generated new antagonisms within village communities
while also bringing inter-community conflicts and tension to the fore
and manipulating commonly-shared beliefs about omnipresent
malevolent forces that prey on the weak. The politicisation and
polarisation of the entire population as a means of immobilising
collective solidarity enabled the exploitation of social divisions which
deepened and widened. Forcing individuals to act as informants or to
implicate others in order to save their own lives further intensified
such divisions and the mistrust on which they thrived. Individuals not
openly supportive of one political party or another disappeared—
everyone was (politically) labelled and no one was (politically) neutral.
The ubiquity of the informant encouraged social disintegration as
every person one came into contact with could be an informant
(Arendt 1969:71). Ms S observed that SLFP supporters were targeted
in her community in Kandy District and even though the victims were
“people who never did politics openly”, it was possible to identify
them because “in the village, everyone knows each other” (Ms S,
Kandy District: Interview 5). Mrs C noted that as people were arrested
or abducted on suspicion rather than evidence, it was easy to give the
name of a neighbour to the perpetrators (Mirgama Primary School,
Gampaha District). Given that many families of the disappeared were
aware that their relative had not been involved in politics, their
suspicions fell on personal and local tensions as the motive for their
relative’s abduction or arrest. Similarly, while the ruling elite and state
agents perpetuated the falsehood that the disappeared were
subversives, they also encouraged the view that the motive behind the
disappearances was personal and local rather than part of a national
political project. As a result, the public gaze was directed inwards,
transfixed on existing and emerging social divisions. Social relations
not only contracted but were skewed as inter-personal relationships
 188

were no longer a source of solidarity, support and cohesion but rather

a potential source of threat and danger. Avoidance behaviour and self-
imposed isolation became the main survival tactics as Mr S explained:

People were afraid to talk to each other. If someone disappeared

from a family, others didn’t want to talk to them when they met
on the road because of the terror. Some schools were closed
permanently or if the school was far away, they stopped their
children from going to school.
- Mr S, Gampaha District: Interview 14.

Just as neighbours and friends were suspicious of families of the

disappeared, the families themselves were suspicious that information
leading to or the motive for the disappearance of their loved one was
provided locally. In this way, disappearances were perceived as the
actions of state and non-state actors directed by local informants for
their own advancement. For others, the onus of responsibility was
transferred from the political leadership and state agencies to locals
and private actors. Security officials responsible for the physical act of
disappearance were seen as pawns manipulated by others for their
own personal advantage. Mrs V’s brother was captured by the police
because of a tipoff given by a neighbour lured by the 50,000 rupees
reward. He was subsequently tortured and hanged from a lamppost
near the local hospital where he worked, as an open threat to the rest
of the community (Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 2). Unable,
therefore, to distinguish sources of danger from security, many
families focused increasingly inwards at local and personal
justifications for their plight which were more tangible than the
political causes. Localising the offence in order to establish meaning
and assert control over one’s own destiny proved, however, totally
ineffectual. By not identifying the very sources of violence and
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political mistrust that had provided for the disappearance in the first
instance, such efforts further isolated families into silos of personal
pain rendering the possibility of collective recognition and action
among them remote. Mrs B in Vavuniya believed that her husband
disappeared because of jealousy regarding his successful business.
Mr K in Matara thought that his son’s disappearance was the
culmination of a personal vendetta and Ms S in Kandy argued that her
brother disappeared because the family were living at a higher
standard than their neighbours (Mrs B, Vavuniya District: Interview 1;
Mr K, Matara District: Interview 6; Ms S, Kandy District: Interview
5). Sustaining such views not only deepened mistrust in personal
relationships but encouraged families themselves to subscribe to the
political strategy of the regime. Mrs G said that because no one talked
to her or came to visit following the disappearance of her husband, an
SLFP member, the community’s response was either the result of fear
or fact that “they must have liked what happened to us” (Mrs G,
Kurunegala District: Interview 2). Therefore, efforts on the part of
neighbours and friends to secure their own safety by keeping a
distance were perceived by affected families as jealousy,
discrimination or implied involvement in the disappearance (Mrs C,
Mirigama Primary School, Gampaha District). The possibility of
solidarity and collective recognition was made even more remote by
the actions of some families who became complicit in the violence.
Some passed on information to the security forces to exact revenge on
neighbours they blamed for the disappearance of their loved one.
Others served as informants to secure protection or money. Consistent
with the dynamics of election violence and political violence more
generally, revenge was filtered through a lens of political hierarchies
and directed at fellow civilians to affirm the socio–political divide
between the political elite and the rest. Mrs W was waiting to take
revenge on the goni billa whom she held responsible for her
 190

husband’s disappearance. “I see him and met him face to face and
because I’m a woman I can’t do anything but someday he will pay the
penalty” she said (Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview 1). Political
violence had not only shattered social trust but by manipulating local
tensions, victims implicated themselves in the violence. Families were
left isolated and affected by the events in such a profound way that
they had “no feelings for others because we ... are not in a position to
think of others” (Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10).

The manner in which disappearances were superficially depoliticised

as locally derived rivalries demonstrates the extent to which the
regime succeeded in immobilising solidarity. At the same time,
resistance or dissent was a life-threatening option. As violence
became an institutionalised way of life, the sense prevailed that its
perpetuation was inevitable. As in the Argentine experience, a sense
of “utter defencelessness in the face of multifaceted power” prevailed
through arbitrary acts of violence carried out with impunity which
were impossible to redress. This helplessness was accentuated by the
constant reminders that the traditional methods of personal protection,
both social and legal, were entirely inefficacious (National
Commission on Disappeared People 1986:236). It was largely
accepted in the north and east that the security forces perceived the
entire Tamil population as terrorists and were intent on eradicating the
threat. In the south, families spoke of the regime as though it was an
inevitable response to a perceived political threat. Others saw it as a
war against the poor that had no end.

During the violence, private and secure locations as well as places of

refuge were deliberately transformed into locations of fear. In both
contexts of violence, individuals were violently removed from their
homes at any time of day or night in full view of their relatives
 191

(Committee on Disappearances 2003 Chapter 3:35; North & East

Commission 1997:50; Southern Commission 1997b:21). The
knowledge that armed groups could enter the sanctity of one’s home
at any time and carry out any violation against its residents without
punishment made parents in particular feel powerless as the
inviolability of the home and separation between the private and
public worlds was deliberately destroyed. As Robben argued,
disappearances that take place from the home are particularly
frightening because they are intensely private and personal rather than
public events. The manner in which the state and other agents of
violence violated the home amounted to an invasion of the “inner by
the outer reality, shattered ego and superego boundaries”. Thus,
political violence was deliberately directed at the cultural and
psychological divisions between public and private, family and
community (Robben 2000: 70-71). As the traditional patriarch
responsible for protecting and providing for the family, many fathers,
who watched helplessly as their sons were violently dragged from the
family home into the night, committed suicide or became physically
and/or mentally ill following the disappearance. Mrs C’s husband set
himself alight following the disappearance of their 18-year-old son.
Mrs W’s father committed suicide because he was unable to prevent
and cope with the verbal assault and threat of physical harm faced by
his two daughters following their husbands’ disappearances (Mrs C,
Gampaha District: Interview 9; Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview
4). Faced with an overwhelming sense of failure that they were unable
to protect their children or search for them given the immediate
danger to their own and their families’ wellbeing, and had been
proven ineffectual in securing their release, many fathers simply
disintegrated into ill-health or died (Mrs R, Batticaloa District:
 192

Interview 6). 16 Mrs A recalled that her husband “became paralysed

and lost his sight and was bed-ridden” following their 21-year-old
son’s disappearance (Mrs A, Amparai District: Interview 9).

Mr P provided some insight into this horror following the

disappearance of his 18-year-old son who was forced into an army
jeep outside their home in January 1990:

I have only one son. My wife also died after this sad incident.
My one and only son. I'm now left alone. I earn and live alone.
When the Muslims came and told me, I just couldn't bear it.
You can imagine how much I hurt. I brought him up to eighteen
years. Just imagine I gave my son simply to die! He [the
involved army officer] stamped his feet on my son's body and
pointed his gun at me and that's what I thought.
- Mr P, Amparai District: Interview 7.

In other instances, mothers of the disappeared “died of sorrow” or

became sick. Mrs M’s 30-year-old son disappeared in July 1996 in
Jaffna leading to her husband’s death and the deterioration of her own
eyesight as she explained:

My husband in 2002 crying over his son died. I have five

children and all five girls have married ... Thinking about him,
crying over him, l lost sight in one eye and the other one was
operated on ... One day my son will come. Tomorrow he’ll

16
Marecek established that three times more men die of suicide in Sri Lanka
than women and suicides are (two-and-a-half times) more common in rural
areas than in urban (de Silva & Jayasinghe cited in Marecek 2006:66). In
1995 Sri Lanka recorded nearly 48 deaths per 100,000, the highest rate of
suicide in the world (Levi et al., 2003 cited in Marecek 2006:65).
 193

come. My husband didn’t live to see him. May god help me to

see my son.
- Mrs M, Jaffna District: Interview 10.

The decline of Mrs M’s eyesight as a consequence of crying for a son

taken from home by the army never to return is akin to psychosomatic
blindness. Muecke argued that Cambodian women who, in response to
having witnessed and experienced extraordinary brutality under the
Khmer Rouge, appeared to have “closed out the possibility of
continued witness through the loss of the capacity to see it” (1995:43).
It could be argued that Mrs M lost her capacity to see, unwilling to
bear witness to a world full of horrors which had swallowed up her
son. It could also be argued that the endless fruitless search and crying
for her son whom she was unable to see but who remained blindingly
ever-present by his absence, wore out her eyesight.

Interviewees often recounted how men had taken their own lives
following a disappearance of a child, whereas women were seen to
have passively let life drain away from them. This response reflected a
deep internalisation of the traumatising disappearance event rather
than an externalisation and politicisation of it. Mr S, a school principal,
and his wife, an English teacher, were forced to retire early as they
were unable to cope with seeing young students at the school where
they taught because it reminded them of their own disappeared son
(Mr S, Gampaha District, Interview 14). In this sense, parents
internalised the trauma of a political event to a point where it
destroyed them or totally distorted their world view and any inter-
familiar relations. Psychological distress was often transmuted into
physical ailments or else manifested as a continued preoccupation
with the disappeared above that of the surviving siblings let alone
their own personal health and wellbeing. As Mrs K revealed:
 194

My disappeared son used to say he would do the O-Level

examination and then look after the family. To get small work
done, I have to ask so many people. But if he were alive, he
wouldn’t let me stretch a hand. He’s always coming back into
my mind. He was such a bold character. Things he said always
come into my mind, haunting me ... My husband was arrested
twice. The disappearance of my son made him sick and he
can’t do any job continuously ... Because of the other children
I am living life, otherwise I am always thinking about my
disappeared son ... I don’t know where and what condition he
is in ... I thought it would be ok when I built this house but my
heart is burning … We are thinking of our beloved ones and
neglected ourselves ... When there are two or three other
children, to keep them alive and bring them up, we stay alive.
- Mrs K, Jaffna District: Interview 8.

The following narrative of Mrs R highlights the horrific manner in

which many people were abducted, the agony of looking for a lost
relative, the search to give meaning to the event and understand the
motive behind it, and a family’s inability to digest the probability of
death. Mrs R’s then 16-year-old brother, K, disappeared in 1989 at a
time when 60 boys were taken within a one kilometre radius of their
home. Due to fears for their safety, K and his friends had been
sleeping in shelters away from their homes or had stayed with
relatives. On the night of his abduction, approximately seven people
came to the family home at 2 a.m. Two were dressed in police
uniform and kept watch on the road. The rest were dressed in civilian
clothing and some had their faces covered. K was dragged out from
under his bed after his father was ordered at gunpoint to open the front
door. The entire family including K’s two younger sisters witnessed
the event. “The persons warned us to stay inside the house and fired
several shots when they opened the door. They called out ‘don’t come
 195

and look for him and don’t go to the police station’”, Mrs R said. At
first light, the family began their search for K. Despite the threats,
which caused a dispute within the family about whether to enter the
local police station, they did. At the same time, however, the family
was also anxious to keep silent in the hope that such action would
keep K alive. Every day, Mrs R’s parents would check the dead
bodies dumped on the side of the roads for K and they started going
sastra (that is, to soothsayers). According to Mrs R, when they were
informed that K was alive they were happy but when sastra led them
to believe that he was dead, her mother wanted to commit suicide
there and then. They stopped sastra when the money ran out but were
kept in a heightened state of anxiety by rumours. Some said that K
was taken by a paramilitary group and killed in a nearby cemetery
while others said he was targeted because he was a JVPer, an
accusation which infuriated the family. Mrs R’s father, a farmer,
abandoned his fields and vowed he would only return to them when K
reappeared to join him. Instead, he turned to alcohol. One day when
drunk, he had a heavy fall sustaining a head injury which led,
according to Mrs R, to mental illness and ultimately his death. Her
mother neglected the remaining three children as well as herself and
along with Mrs R’s father, “died of sadness” thinking of K. Her two
younger sisters stopped their schooling when K disappeared and the
youngest developed mental health problems. Mrs R decided never to
vote again at any election for any party because no party assisted her
family—so she didn’t trust any of them. She continued to hold onto
the remotest possibility that her brother was alive highlighting that
only two of the sastra they visited stated that K was dead. The
possibility of his death had remained only that despite the fact that his
disappearance and her family’s inability to find some way to deal with
it has caused the total disintegration of any semblance of family life
and physically destroyed her parents. Between presence and absence,
 196

the memory of K could not be fully reconstructed or erased (Gladhart

2005:95) and while his disappearance shattered her family, it
continued to haunt her own (Mrs R, Gampaha District: Interview 3).

State repression reached deep into private and community spaces.

Places of refuge such as the family home, hospitals, schools, refugee
camps and temples were taken over by the security forces and used as
military camps and centres of interrogation and torture. Medical
personnel trained to save lives became passive bystanders to
abductions which took place in front of them at local hospitals
(Southern Commission 1997b:28). The pervading feeling was that
violence was imminent and inevitable and that everyone was
vulnerable. Individuals were increasingly shut off from each other and
any remaining solidarity between them disintegrated as cooperation
gave way to individualism and suspicion, agitation and discomfort.
Within this context, the entire population was terrorised into a
“reluctant acquiescence” (Hosking 1990:10) which became
normalised. As Primo Levi’s experience in the Aushwitz
concentration camp revealed, a hope for solidarity among prisoners
and for human warmth, was replaced by the stark reality of “a
thousand sealed off monads, and between them a desperate covert and
continuous struggle” (1989:38). Mass graves of which there were at
least 12 in the southern province alone came into existence
“contemporaneously” but were not spoken about. Some were located
near army camps, others were located within schools or in the middle
of main roads (Southern Commission 1997b:117-188). Some people
tried to report the existence of such graves to the police who refused
to document the complaint, but most remained silent. The knowledge
of mass graves remains localised and without official
acknowledgment or remedy, and the knowledge and evidence that it
could uncover remain local secrets. Similarly, bodies dumped on the
 197

sides of roads, a practice of both insurgents and counter-insurgents in

both contexts of violence, were buried in shallow graves, the sites of
which remain local knowledge. Locals will die with that knowledge
even though it is an integral part of the nation’s collective memory of
political violence and decisions about exhumations and proper burial
are for the nation to make as part of a process of reconciliation,
recognition and healing.

7.5 The wives/widows of Sri Lanka’s disappeared

The manner in which disappearance was used as a mechanism of

social control to exploit existing social divisions in communities
already politically polarised is exemplified by the experience of the
wives of disappeared people. In communities already afflicted by
poverty and scarce resources, such social divisions came to the fore
following the disappearance of a male relative, provoking inter-family
disputes and rivalries over resources including land and compensation.
Layers of dispute merged in this context as Mr S explained:

Politically the government made the terror but at the end, the
local villages took this opportunity. The old tension was there
but new problems were arising between families because of
land disputes.
- Mr S, Gampaha District: Interview 14.

Although many relatives of the disappeared experienced social

isolation resulting from the avoidance of others immobilised by a fear
of guilt by association, wives of disappeared people faced particular
gender-based discrimination from within their own community and
families. This discrimination reflected both old and new disputes and
 198

was of such a deliberate, persistent and aggressive nature that it

severely restricted their rights and opportunities.

In the Buddhist and Hindu cosmos, the uncertain, unnatural and

ambiguous status of the disappeared carries with it potential chaos,
disorder and disunity. To the extent that the ambiguity threatens the
established social order, it is polluting and must be brought under
control. Danger is a dimension of the ambiguous and is the “property”
of those who transgress categories or defy classification (Kapferer
1997:262). Polluting behaviour is therefore a “reaction which
condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict” the
normal scheme of classification (Douglas 2002:45). As Kapferer
noted, in the Sinhalese–Buddhist hierarchy, pollution is conceived of
as equivalent to “a fragmented, decomposed, encompassed reduction”
while purity is equivalent to encompassing unity (1988:12). The
nature of the discrimination faced by the wives of the disappeared
suggests that the ambiguity in relation to their disappeared husbands
extended to them. To some extent, their status is akin to the liminal
phase in which a widow in mourning is still considered married but is
recognised within an ambiguous, transitional state which involves
pollution (Ramphele 1997:100). By rupturing the social order,
however, disappearances propel the wives of the disappeared into a
state of permanent contradiction or prolongation of the liminal phase.
Spouses of disappeared husbands who were neither dead nor alive,
were both but neither wives nor widows—and as their status
transgressed social and cultural boundaries, they came to personify
potential chaos and disorder.

Political violence not only shattered cultural traditions including

social rituals of mourning but exploited cultural boundaries to
disempower women and question their personal morality in order to
 199

delegitimise their claims. The state, local communities and family

relations exploited the ambiguity of their status and embodiment of
both community honour and disorder for their own political and
personal advantage. As wives/widows were locally recognised as the
embodiment of social disorder rather than the state itself, community
sanctions placed upon them through the ‘voice of the village’ were
directed at controlling their morality and sexuality in an effort to
affirm moral, social and communal boundaries. However, the
imposition of such sanctions provided scope for exploitation and
restriction. Without their husbands, wives/widows became the
responsibility of their extended family and under the pretext of
shunning or controlling immoral women, opportunities were taken by
in-laws to skew and exploit social obligations towards them. At the
same time, the wives/widows faced discrimination on two fronts.
They were viewed through the gaze of their disappeared husband with
all the questions and fears that the disappearance invoked and of the
ambiguity and disorder that it presented on the one hand. And on the
other hand, they were subjected to the restraints and restrictions
imposed on widows particularly as they applied in Tamil society. Mr
IIanko of the Jiva Joti Children’s home in Batticaloa explained that
widows generally are looked upon in a “sexual and exploitative way”.
While the socio-economic boundaries continued to be opened up,
greater access by widows to the wider community generally brought
with it additional opportunities for the exploitation of them and their
children (personal communication).

As detailed in this study, in-laws drew on the political context to avoid

their relations for fear of guilt by association. However, many also
exploited the powerlessness of the survivors of disappearance to avoid
their own social obligations. In some instances, this amounted to
isolation behaviour. Mrs E noted that her in-laws “didn’t want to get
 200

too close because they thought support [to her] meant money” (Mrs E,
Jaffna District: Interview 9). Similarly, Mrs L argued that her in-laws
avoided her because they were poor and didn’t want to feel obliged to
assist her, a dynamic which eventuated in her children having a “bitter
feeling” against them because they showed no interest or concern
(Mrs L, Batticaloa District: Interview 4). Others such as the relatives
of Mrs K refused to assist her. “My husband and son were missing. I
didn’t have a male escort or relative to search for them. But my
relations had many males who could search. When I asked them to
help me, they refused. My own sister refused”, she said (Mrs K,
Amparai District: Interview 4). Although many in-laws may have felt
threatened by associating with the wives of the disappeared and
fearful of assisting them, their inability to provide any support
destroyed inter-family solidarity at the very time that surviving
relatives needed to draw on it. There were many instances where in-
laws even actively engaged in undermining and exploiting surviving
female relations. Mrs W recalled that not only were women simply
abandoned by their in-laws but any property they had was taken from
them or their land and home were simply taken over (Mrs W,
Kurunegala District: Interview 4). Mrs P was forced by her brother-in-
law to sell land, jewellery and to mortgage her house to support a
number of his failed schemes causing her family considerable
financial hardship (Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10). Mrs K’s
brother-in-law refused to return her family’s valuables on the pretext
of waiting to hand them over to his disappeared brother (Mrs K,
Batticaloa District: Interview 11). Mrs P’s in-laws complained to the
LTTE that she was too friendly with a Criminal Investigation
Department (CID) officer despite the fact that one of her sons had
joined the LTTE at 16 years of age and died three years later in battle
(Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10). Such treatment had little to
do with fear in the context of political violence and more with using
 201

the context of violence and disorder to act upon existing family

tensions and to exploit vulnerabilities. Such treatment was worst for
those whose marriage had not been supported by in-laws as Mrs C’s
experience revealed. She married her cousin despite the protests of his
family and following his disappearance in August 1996, her in-laws
set about to deliberately prevent any assistance reaching her. They
told her priest that she was a “bad woman” and as Mrs C observed:

Their one and only aim was to bring shame and to black-paint
my name. They said that I was a bad character woman. Since
my husband is not at home anyone visiting here as to come as a
couple or they will talk. They always said that because of my
behaviour a thing like that happened to my husband. They also
want to separate my children from me. My in-laws are very
cruel to me after my husband’s disappearance.
- Mrs C, Jaffna District: Interview 3.

Exploitation and ill-treatment by in-laws had a generational impact.

Mrs A recalled that following the abduction of her father by the LTTE
in January 1990, the rest of the family were chased out of the house by
her paternal grandparents who refused to hand over the deeds for the
land that Mrs A’s mother had paid for. Unable to find work locally,
Mrs A’s mother felt compelled to go to Saudi Arabia leaving her
children with neighbours. Mrs A continued: “When I saw the
problems of my family, my mind didn’t permit me to go to school. I
looked after my brothers and did the housework. I was between
thirteen and fourteen-years-old when I stopped [school]” (Mrs A,
Amparai District: Interview 1). Other children of the disappeared gave
up schooling for financial reasons but also because of psychological
distress and discrimination. Mrs D noted that at the local school,
families of the disappeared were labelled and shunned as JVP families
 202

while Mrs G had to withdraw her children from school and send them
to cultivate rice to support the family (Mrs D, Kurunegala District:
Interview 3; Mrs G, Batticaloa District: Interview 5). Some
entertained thoughts of revenge against the disappearance of fathers
with others joining the LTTE to take revenge on the army (Mrs P,
Amparai District: Interview 10). Relatives of the disappeared have
also joined the military to be trained so that they can desert with a
weapon and seek revenge (Shantha Pathirana, OPFMD, personal
communication). Many were neglected by mothers in the desperate
search for their husbands and caught up in their own private pain
(Survivors Associated, Vavuniya District: personal communication).17
It was in direct response to such discrimination and the desire to raise
children out of reach of the ‘voice of the village’ that led, in many
instances, to the formation of local women’s support groups as
discussed in chapter 8.

Other social pressures were put on women through the ‘voice of the
village’ or community sanctions particularly in relation to life
celebrations and community-engaging events such as weddings and
coming of age parties to which they were denied access. Many
excluded themselves from such events for fear of losing self-respect,
but others were directly pressured to stay away especially on the first
and most auspicious day of the celebration (Mrs K, Amparai District:
Interview 3). Also, the concept of inauspiciousness and bad luck
otherwise associated with widows in Tamil society was drawn on and
expanded to justify wide-ranging exclusion from the community. Mrs
K insisted that it was custom rather than the Hindu religion that held
17
This evidence was given by a group of representatives from Survivors
Associated in Vavuniya District including counselors who work with families
of the disappeared across the District. The evidence was confirmed in
interviews.
 203

women back as “people have on their own made these laws––not the
gods” (Mrs K, Amparai District: Interview 3). Although Sinhalese
widows are not subject to the same rules and conventions regarding
seclusion and cultural marginalisation as Tamil women
(Thiruchandran 2003:138), many were told not to attend weddings.
Mrs P, a Sinhalese–Buddhist was told by her own aunty and sister-in-
law not to attend a family wedding on account of her attendance being
inauspicious and a bad sign (Mrs P, Gampaha District: Interview 11).

Many Tamil interviewees spoke of the continued pressure to stay

away from life celebrations which was particularly acute on the first
day. Mrs K and other wives/widows didn’t attend such events for fear
of what people might say if “we’re nicely dressed and enjoying, and
our relations are missing ... Some are telling, ‘why is she wearing that
when her husband died’?” (Mrs K, Jaffna District: Interview 8). In
contrast, after years of suffering imposed isolation, Mrs G noted that
there was a gradual reversal in the nature of such sanctions in her
Sinhalese community whereby others would talk ill of her if she didn’t
attend these functions (Mrs G, Kurunegala District: Interview 2).
Community sanctions and other forms of pressure to attend or stay
away from public gatherings demonstrated the extent to which such
women remained under the public scrutiny and control. At the same
time, regardless of which community they lived in, they were sexually
objectified. Mrs M noted that during the search for her husband,
people knew that her husband wasn’t there so they “were looking at
me on an angle to get some benefits out of me” (Mrs M, Kandy
District: Interview 2). Ms W said that she tried to look older when she
went out searching for her husband for these reasons (Ms W,
Kurunegala District: Interview 4). Mrs P noted that men thought
women “like me” were “playful toys” and Mrs S said that if she asked
for help from a man then he will “expect something illegal back” (Mrs
 204

P, Gampaha District: Interview 11; Mrs S, Gampaha District:

Interview 10). Twenty-three-year-old, Mrs J whose husband
disappeared in 2002 during the LTTE conflict leaving her with two
small children, was so frustrated with the imputation that any dealings
she had with men must have been of a sexual nature that she planned
to leave the country. “If I talk to one my male relatives, they say I am
coupling with them and that sometimes he [her husband] might
come ... I can’t go anywhere I like ... My community and culture is
such that if you go out a lot people will talk. I am going to Qatar to
earn so people can’t say anything” she said (Mrs J, Vavuniya District:
Interview 6). Mrs B had four children under four years of age and
made the hard decision to work in Saudi Arabia because as she said:
“If I’d have stayed here, I’d be a mad woman” (Mrs B, Vavuniya
District: Interview 1). The contradiction that emerges is one between
the traditional image of widowhood as a status without social standing
and wives/widows in an ambiguous, potentially polluting ‘status’,
which is confirmed by their sexual objectification that must be forever
supervised and controlled. Indeed, according to Alison, when such
women manage to overcome discrimination and find a means to earn
an income, it is often assumed within their community that their
income must be derived from prostitution (2004:17).

As many women whose male relations disappeared were left to

manage the household, a substantial number had to find paid
employment without any formal experience or qualifications which
made them additionally susceptible to exploitation. As noted, some
took up work in the Middle East where further exploitation and long-
term separation from children placed additional burdens on
traumatised individuals. With the help of an uncle, Mrs V’s sister-in-
law moved to Lebanon to work after the disappearance of her husband
and once there was allegedly sold into prostitution. Two weeks after
 205

departure, Mrs V received the news that her sister-in-law had died
from yellow fever, only then to receive a letter stating that she had
committed suicide. However, despite their best efforts, Mrs V and her
family were never able to ascertain the manner in which their relative
died or secure the return of her body (Mrs V, Matara District:
Interview 9).

In recognition of the often dire financial situation faced by families of

the disappeared, the UNP and PA governments paid compensation to
them. From 1995 to 2003 compensation was provided to the families
of 17,740 disappeared persons, including government employees
(USDOS 2005). However, the manner in which compensation was
initially awarded allowed for discrimination on the part of the
administration—the financial payment was generally only given to
those who suffered at the hands of alleged subversives rather than the
state (Southern Commission 1997b:31). Despite reform to the
compensation scheme to counter this discrimination by the PA,
compensation remained contentious because of the discrepancies in
payments based on the professional standing of the victim. This meant
relatives of public servants received three times the amount awarded
to non-public servant families. Compensation became a source of
grievance and discrimination between affected families as well as
between families and their communities, rather than serving as
reparations. The scheme came to an abrupt end in 2006 when the
National Human Rights Commission stated that it required special
government direction to continue investigations (Wijedasa 2006).

Although the PA-appointed Presidential Commissions had

recommended compensation be paid to provide respite to affected
households and to serve as state recognition of wrongdoing and of the
suffering caused, in reality it became another source of contention and
 206

community antagonism directed at the survivors rather than the state

machinery which was responsible for the violence. The prerequisites
of a police report and death certificate exposed families to widespread
corruption, malpractice and abuse of power by local administrators.
Despite the fact that the beeshanaya had ended years before the
compensation scheme was established, the view that continued to
prevail was that terrorists got what they deserved and their families
were unworthy of state assistance on the grounds of their association
with terrorism. Mrs V was told by the police that they would not
provide a police report because her husband had been a suspected
JVPer (Mrs V, Kurunegala District: Interview 5). In other instances,
the harassment by corrupt officials who deliberately prolonged the
process was so bad that wives abandoned their efforts and rights to
compensation. For others, the struggle to obtain compensation was
often followed by demands of in-laws to share it. Although some in-
laws were angry that their daughters-in-law had “sold out” by seeking
a death certificate even though the compensation was intended for the
education of children, they nevertheless staked a claim for the funds.
Without a death certificate, moreover, meeting daily practicalities
became impossible. Mrs L recalled that her daughter-in-law was
refused a death certificate by the police five years after the
disappearance of her son because the Grama Sevaka argued that it
couldn’t be taken for granted that he was dead. This made school
enrolments for Mrs L's grandchildren extremely difficult (Mrs L,
Vavuniya District: Interview 7). Some families in the north and east
abandoned efforts to secure a death certificate upon hearing rumours
of the release of detainees from various camps. Mrs P was encouraged
by her local Grama Sevaka to obtain a death certificate for her
disappeared 12-year-old son but stopped the process when she heard
rumours of detainees who had been recently freed (Mrs P, Batticaloa
District: Interview 1). Mrs L also spoke about a detainee who had
 207

escaped detention in the south and returned to the east after 16 years
and charged 200 rupees for information to families because he “knew
all the disappeared people” (Mrs L, Batticaloa District: Interview 4).
Whether the returned detainee was a total fake or had indeed escaped
from detention and was prepared to risk the high profile that came
with revealing information about other detainees, either way he was
prepared to exploit the disappeared and the hope of their surviving
relatives. Moreover, even though this individual’s information of a
positive sighting fuelled hope in the families, many were reluctant to
act on his information for fear of inadvertently causing the death of a
loved one to cover up their prolonged detention (Mr Sasiharan,
Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, Batticaloa District, personal
communication).

7.6 Keeping them alive in our minds

Rumour and information about sightings kept the disappeared “alive”

and centre in the lives of many interviewees. For many, time had
stood still since the disappearance. Despite the years that had past,
many interviewees recalled with considerable detail and raw emotion
the disappearance of their loved one and life thereafter. As expressed
by Mrs K, “For me this incident is like what happened yesterday”
(Mrs K, Jaffna District: Interview 8). The disappeared remained in a
state of “absent presence/present absence” and were therefore
“everywhere, always” (de Alwis 2009:381). Often they had been
given an important role in the daily life of the family which in many
circumstances amounted to a form of dysfunction. Children were
encouraged to worship a photo of a disappeared father before going to
school, the threat of disciplinary action from a disappeared sibling or
father was used to keep other relatives in check, birthday parties for
children were postponed and children were told that they could not
 208

wear the garments of their absent fathers until they returned. While
feeling compelled to live in the past where the disappeared remain,
women who imposed such restrictions on their children were unable
to “escape the cocoon of remembering that traps them in a corrosive
past” (Langer 1997:58) but which creates with it a corrosive present.
Mr D had a habit of watching crowd scenes on the television to see if
he could locate his disappeared brother (Mr D, Gampaha District:
Interview 1). Others had preserved the room of the disappeared and
many clung onto their possessions no matter how mundane, as though
they signified to a suspicious world the existence of a person officially
non-existent. Hopes were perpetually raised and extinguished. Mrs N
was told that there was a person who came to her local teashop two
weeks before our interview with the same name as her own son
fuelling hope of a reappearance 15 years after his arrest (Mrs N,
Gampaha District: Interview 6).

Rather than providing the comfort hoped for by the surviving relatives,
the ever-presence of the disappeared often led to the physical and
mental breakdown of parents and considerable dysfunction in inter-
personal relations. Surviving wives and mothers in particular were
reluctant to enjoy life or celebrate the lives of their children for fear of
betraying the memory of the disappeared. Mrs S stopped her daughter
from teaching dance and promptly got her married off after the
disappearance of her youngest child (Mrs S, Jaffna District:
Interview 2). Mrs K’s son was preparing to marry and had started
building a house at the time of his disappearance. Her family were
thereafter unable to complete construction and the crumbling shell of
the house serves as an empty, lifeless and meaningless memorial to
his absence (Mrs K, Gampaha District: Interview 7).
 209

Recent studies have demonstrated that the process of working through

grief is particularly challenging when the circumstances of the death
represent a threat to one’s world view or when little social support is
offered (Bevcar cited in Blaauw & Lähteenmäki 2002:770). Indeed,
arrested grief or atypical reactions are more common among those
who are deprived of the right to conduct a proper mourning for a
loved one. Continued belief in the life of a disappeared loved one
suspends the grieving process indefinitely, making the risk of
complicated grief more likely. A higher rate of post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) has been found among families of the disappeared
compared to families who have suffered a death (Blaauw &
Lähteenmäki 2002:771). PTSD is presented as, among other things,
preoccupation with thoughts of the disappeared, withdrawal from
other people, periods of anxiety and survivor guilt (Blaauw &
Lähteenmäki 2002:771). The fact that the many perpetrators remained
within local communities or in positions of power and that the terror
could re-emerge at any time served as yet another source of anxiety.
Indeed, as previously noted, interviewees faced the UNP’s return to
power in 2001 with tremendous anxiety. Mrs W from the southern
Kurunegala District thought that the “‘left over boys and girls will be
assassinated” (Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview 1). Many
perpetrators are well known around the country and have enjoyed long
political careers despite being named in the Presidential Commission
reports or exposed to the public by other means—their involvement
remains an ‘open secret’. Former High Commissioner to Australia
Janaka Perera, for example, was propelled into such high office that
he was seen as untouchable. Ironically, the LTTE’s ability to target
people in high office earned it some prestige in the south where a
common retort to corrupt police officers or harassing officials was the
expression of hope that they be deployed to the north and east to face
the wrath of the LTTE (author’s field notes). In the case of the Janaka
 210

Perera, he returned to Sri Lanka and ran for candidacy on behalf of the
UNP. At the opening ceremony of his electoral office in October 2008,
Perera was killed by a suicide bomber believed to be the work of the
LTTE. Many families may have believed that it was the LTTE that
brought justice to them in this instance. A number of families in the
south expressed the hope or expectation that those responsible for
disappearances and who were later transferred to the north and east
had justice melted out to them by the LTTE. In other instances,
perpetrators were known to the individual family or they thought they
knew who was responsible and such information served as a source of
constant agitation because they were rendered powerless to confirm it
or act upon it. Furthermore, the widespread uncertainty surrounding
sources of violence and those responsible for disappearances coupled
with their often total withdrawal from society prevented many
families from acknowledging each other’s suffering let alone acting
collectively.

Disappearance as a project of the Sri Lankan elite totally isolated

individuals while creating, exploiting and politicising social divisions
in rural communities. Its impact on the families of the disappeared is
everlasting. It continues to pervade every aspect of their lives from
social isolation, trauma to social marginalisation and stigmatisation.
Exploitation, ostracism and discrimination experienced in relation to
the state, political parties, relatives and neighbours confirmed the
socio–political standing of relatives of the disappeared as politically
and morally suspect and both socially polluted and polluting. The
ambiguous status conferred on the wives/widows of the disappeared
provided considerable scope for culture-specific exploitation for years
after the violence had ended. Unable to officially establish the motive
behind the disappearance or act against the perpetrators responsible,
 211

such families turned inwards for personal explanation for the event
leading many into a state of physical and psychological decline.
 212

CHAPTER 8
We can’t open our mouths and tell you in words all that we have
gone through.
- Mrs V, Batticaloa District: Interview 3.

Political engagement with and the

appropriation of suffering

T
he prevailing political culture which denied an alternative
polity forced families of the disappeared into political camps
represented by various disappearance organisations which
emerged during the 1980s and 1990s. Without neutral political space
from which to appeal for human rights and the rule of law, the
membership of such groups reflected that of the patron political party.
To this extent, the political culture that had provided for
disappearance and other forms of state terror impacted on
disappearance groups to limit their effect and prevent any possibility
of solidarity between them to challenge the political apparatus. The
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, which the Sri Lankan
movements modelled themselves on, were able to transform the
disappeared into a currency of power to highlight the transformative
potential of society. They used ‘never again’ as the aspiration of a new
society based on rights and the rule of law. However, in the Sri
Lankan experience, aspirations on the part of the families of the
disappeared to end the practice of disappearance and encourage truth
and justice were curtailed, postponed or undermined to ensure that the
power structure on which the political system operated remained
unchallenged.
 213

A number of disappearance movements emerged during the decades

of violence in Sri Lanka, of which the most prominent tried to
replicate the mothers’ movements of Latin America (de Mel 2001:244;
Samuel 2000:5). However, unlike the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo of
Argentina (Bourvard 2002:65), neither the Jaffna Mothers’ Front in
the north nor the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF) established in the
south were able to “transform resistance to state-sponsored terrorism
into a demand for a complete transformation” of political life. Indeed,
the safe concept of motherhood drawn from the Latin American
experience was merely a pretext used by opposition SLFP MPs rather
than political reform and social transformation. They did this in a
context of orchestrating the SMF for their own political advantage to
affect a change in regime from that of the UNP to an SLFP alliance.
Indeed, within the prevailing political culture of violence and
impunity, patronage and self-censorship, an alternative polity was not
tolerated. As with many other aspects of Sri Lanka’s highly politicised
environment, political parties commanded centre stage in the
disappearance movements and organisations, and contesting and
winning elections was their sole intention. On the one hand the
disappearance issue was exploited to secure votes from affected
families while on the other their suffering was repeatedly exploited to
attract public sympathy and condemn political opponents. In this
sense, the only legitimate role for families of the disappeared was as
politicised victims. Jayanthi Dandeniya, founder of the Families of the
Disappeared, explained:

Many politicians think that when they talk about the

disappeared and what happened, they will be able to drag the
votes of those families and it did work. It was even the main
demand that toppled the government and with that they [the PA]
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came into power. But after that they just forgot those things.
Even the parents ... think only the politicians can do something
and they use their only chance by voting for them and thinking
they will do the punishment or bring the justice for what
happened. But that won’t happen.
- Jayanthi Dandeniya, Families of the Disappeared.

8.1 Movements and organisations established in the

north and east

The first recognised disappearance movement was formed by women

in Jaffna in 1984 protesting the mass arrest of Tamil youth (de Alwis
2002:683: Hoole et al., 1990:324). The Jaffna Mothers’ Front
conducted rallies, picketed public offices demanding an end to
military occupation and protested the arrests. Current President, Mrs
Kanakaambikai, explained the motives of the movement:

We wanted to tell that we have organised ourselves not only to

protect the families of the disappeared but in the future there
should not be a repetition in this country among the younger
generation.
- Mrs Kanakaambikai, Jaffna Mothers Front.

Drawing women of all classes across Jaffna, the movement prevented

a massacre of TELO members by rival LTTE cadres in 1986 and
inspired women in the east to establish their own branch (de Alwis
2002:684). However, in 1987, when the LTTE began to consolidate
power in the north, it closed in on the Jaffna Mothers’ Front and took
command of its work and agenda (Samuel 2003:169). The LTTE’s
systematic repression of Tamil society and interference in the
movement forced its political conformism. The project of the Jaffna
 215

Mothers’ Front as a grassroots movement was limited and ultimately

controlled by the LTTE as part of its efforts to coerce civil society and
suppress the Tamil community. The regression of the movement from
a militant, radical organisation with widespread appeal to the puppet
of a political party “underscored the reality that a progressive
consciousness would not be allowed to develop at the community
level” (Hoole et al.,1990:324). Thereafter, the movement was silent
on atrocities perpetrated by the IPKF and LTTE and confined its
activities to charity work (de Alwis 2002:684; Hoole et al.,1990:324-
5). For the LTTE, the mothers' movement in the north had initially
served as a useful public relations tool and was tolerated for this
reason. However, once the movement openly aired grievances about
LTTE abuses including abductions, it became a liability and had to be
controlled (Pinto-Jayawardena 2008).

The Missing Persons’ Guardians Association of Jaffna (MPGA) was

formed by the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) in 1997
following the military takeover of the Jaffna peninsula (Mr Satkunam,
MPGA Secretary, Jaffna District personal communication; All Island
Commission 2001:45). They conducted protests and processions to
demand an inquiry into complaints of disappearances reported in the
region from 1996. They employed the strategy of satyagraha
(peaceful protest) and often gathered outside Buddhist temples
(patronised solely by security force personnel deployed in Jaffna) with
placards demanding government action. Over the years, the LTTE and
rival Tamil parties including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) have
involved themselves in MPGA activities. According to Father Bernard,
a human rights advocate in Jaffna, the LTTE and rival Tamil groups
used the MPGA for their own political ends leading ultimately to
withdrawal of community support and public sympathy for its cause
(personal communication). Other disappearance organisations in
 216

Jaffna included the Jaffna Guardians Association for the Families of

the Disappeared, the Association for the Welfare of the Disappeared
(Robinson 2003) and Organisation for the Arrested and Missing in
Jaffna (TamilNet 9 October 1997) whose activities surface in the
media from time to time. Initially, political entities including the
LTTE saw in such bodies, opportunities to pursue and advance their
own cause for a “political moment”. During a protest in December
2001 at the Jaffna Kachcheri (District Secretariat), held with the
support of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the MPGA
spokesperson argued that the EPDP had tried to oppose their protests
and sabotage their struggle when it was a coalition partner of the PA
(TamilNet, 24 December 2001). When the political moment passed,
the LTTE, EPDP, TNA and others lost interest in the disappearance
groups (Ruwan Chandrasekara, Human Rights Commission of Sri
Lanka—Jaffna District, personal communication). Yet, despite the
political appropriation of their cause and the aging of its members, the
MPGA remained active. MPGA’s President, Mr Selvarajah, reflected
in interview that since the organisation’s inception in 1997, its
membership had been deceived by many political parties including the
then incumbent PA government (personal communication). While
continuing its protests and demands for answers in relation to the
disappearance of their children, spouses and siblings, the challenges
before the MPGA and Jaffna Mothers’ Front are similar to those of
disappearance organisations in the south. Although such organisations
continue to remain active, their membership is growing old and
without replenishment, they are diminishing in numbers and strength.
Having been used as a forum for various political parties to secure
votes in return for promises unfulfilled, such groups were unable to
widen their appeal. They were not seen as part of the country’s human
rights movement because of political appropriation and divisions
within the human rights community generally over how to approach
 217

the “Tamil question”. Without a clear human rights mandate based on

legal claims, these groups have not been able to transform the
suffering of their members into political demands. Their claims
remained focused on establishing the truth about individual cases,
prosecuting those responsible and providing adequate compensation
for affected families. Focus on individual cases rather than generalised
patterns of disappearances and political undercurrents of violence
limited the reach and influence of these organisations. However, such
tactics have remained unchanged for more than a decade. For its part,
the 1994–2001 PA government and other political parties repeatedly
broke commitments made to such groups, including that of
prosecutions and payment of adequate compensation. Unable to widen
their ambit and forge linkages with other organisations let alone the
community outside their immediate experience, over the past years the
MPGA and Jaffna Mothers’ Front have increasingly focused on
supporting and sustaining their thinning membership. In this sense,
they operate as a sub-culture within but isolated from Jaffna society.
In this context, therefore, they have stagnated in their thinking and
demands, with their figureheads caught in a time warp surrounding the
disappearance of their own loved ones. This was reflected in
interviews in which some interviewees who attended the Jaffna
Mothers’ Front meetings voiced frustration with the movement’s
inability to advance both strategically and practically. Despite
participating in numerous protests, the question at the heart of their
problems, the fate of the disappeared, remained unresolved while the
movements were never able to transform their activism either into a
wider national movement or into other avenues of protest and
meaningful engagement.
 218

8.2 Movements and organisations established in the

south

In July 1990 the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF) was formed in the
south in response to disappearances that took place in the context of
the JVP insurgency. Two male members of Parliament from Tangalle,
the SLFP’s Mahinda Rajapaksa and Vasudeva Nanayakkara from the
leftist Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), committed themselves to
establishing a mothers’ movement in Sri Lanka based on the Latin
American experience after attending a UN Human Rights
Commission session together in early 1990 (de Mel 2001:280; Sunila
Abeysekera, INFORM, personal communication). However, upon
their return to Sri Lanka, the two MPs had a falling out which led to
each establishing a disappearance organisation rather than one
politically partisan movement. The SLFP established the SMF and the
NSSP initiated the Organisation of Parents and Family Members of
the Disappeared (OPFMD) (de Mel 2001:280). Thereafter the rivalries
between the two political parties was reflected in their respective
disappearance organisations—and political tensions found expression
in questions about the legitimacy of each other’s cause. Vasudeva
Nanayakkara, who established the OPFMD in April 1990, noted that
the two groups became “nearly rivals of one another”. He recognised
that the outcome of such tensions “weakened the cause of the
disappeared and the cause of the families of the disappeared naturally
by the divisive nature in which they worked” (Vasudeva Nanayakkara
MP, personal communication). For its part, the SLFP led by Mahinda
Rajapaksa, was intent on capturing power from the incumbent UNP
and sought to employ a strategy of direct opposition to President
Premadasa, recognising in women, a politically safe yet symbolically
powerful means to drive the campaign to oust him.
 219

As Sunila Abeysekera from the Sri Lankan Information Monitor

(INFORM) noted:

The imagery was wonderful. Women in white saris with their

large photos of disappeared relatives—thus they couldn’t be
attacked—the appropriation of huge emotional and
psychological power of women for political purposes—in tears
with their photos. There were no ethical boundaries. Their
photos were taken and used by the international and national
media for any purpose. It was hugely criminal to make people
cry but not then be there to support them. There were no ethics.
Women were the subject of exhibitionism. As a political
strategy it was powerful but it exploited women. But it did
bring the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearance twice to Sri Lanka and Amnesty International
and international attention to the issue.
- Sunila Abeysekera, INFORM.

The human rights agenda came to the fore at the end of 1991 when
two prominent ruling party MPs, Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini
Dissanayake, broke away from the government to form the
Democratic United National Front (DUNF) which campaigned
directly against President Premadasa and promoted human rights and
democracy. Athulathmudali was shot dead during an election rally in
the lead up to the 1993 election allegedly at the behest of President
Premadasa. Premadasa, who blamed the LTTE for the killing, died a
month later in a roadside bomb attack. 18 While an impeachment

18
The Special Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Lalith
Athulathmudali established by the PA government conducted a two-year
inquiry and presented its report to the President in 1997. The report found
that President Premadasa, the then Minister for Housing and Construction
 220

motion brought against Premadasa in 1991 (for which Athulathmudali

paid the ultimate price) had failed, it undermined Premadasa within
the party and his place as head of state. During its short life under
Athulathmudali, DUNF managed to provide some democratic
opposition and by placing human rights at its forefront, gave a
considerable boost to the human rights cause. 19 While human rights
campaigns primarily led by the SLFP built in momentum from 1992
to 1993, Premadasa’s assassination marked a change in Sri Lankan
politics with successor DB Wijetunga distancing himself from
authoritarian politics (Fernando 2000:91).

Despite the SMF’s political origins, its independent figurehead,

Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu, tried to transform it into a genuine
movement for human rights, peace and justice. However, her
aspirations were inconsistent with those of the SLFP which was
primarily interested in winning power (Samuel 2003:171).
Furthermore, although the SLFP’s pre-election commitments included
a peaceful settlement to the conflict and social reform, its political
interests largely reflected those of the urban political elite which had a
vested interest in preserving the centralised political structure. The
SLFP was willing to campaign on a platform of anti-corruption and
human rights to shame the incumbent government while

under Premadasa and security personnel close to the President as well as

underworld gunmen were responsible for the killing. The commission noted
that Premadasa “preferred deception to debate” (Rajasingham 2002).
19
President DB Wijetunga who took control after Premadasa’s assassination
chose not to run in the 1994 presidential elections providing for Gamini
Dissanayake to run as the UNP’s presidential candidate. Dissanayake was,
however, killed by an LTTE suicide bomber in October 1994, a month before
the elections which saw the PA candidate, Chandrika Kumaratunga sweep
into power.
 221

simultaneously resisting efforts by Dr Saravanamuttu and others to

transform the SMF into a rights-based movement. Although
Dr Saravanamuttu sought to convert the SMF into a genuine national
movement for change, its leadership became intensely political in
parallel with the movement’s growing popularity to the point where it
became untenable for her to continue. In 1992 she left in frustration
and formed her own organisation, the Centre for Family Services (de
Silva 1997:67). Thereafter, the SMF, like that of the other
disappearance organisations, effectively served as a tool for their
political patrons to be used for the narrow ends of contesting and
winning elections.

By limiting the political scope of the SMF, the SLFP was able to
assert its own political position and demand regime change as a means
of ending state violence and impunity but without any commitment or
even acknowledgement of the need to dismantle the political system
on which such violence had thrived. Mr D participated in the activities
of the SMF with his wife who was a member in Matara District. He
noted that when the SLFP secured power at the 1994 election, it was
political collusion rather than justice that prevailed (Mr D, Matara
District: Interview 1). Ironically, the women and men who made up
the membership of the SMF, OPFMD and other disappearance
organisations were those for whom a change of government and
continuation of rule by political elite would not necessarily bring any
benefit. For many interviewees, engagement in the various
disappearance movements and groups ultimately served as merely
another opportunity to seek patronage from which the return of a
loved one and tangible resources such as land and employment might
follow.
 222

The mass protests and deva kannalawwas (beseeching of the gods)

carried out by the SMF that attracted thousands of participants took on
the form of collective suffering and provided a basis for public protest
(de Alwis 2002:37). Kapferer noted that the appeal to the gods of
sorcery was an appeal to the power of the state and the logic of ritual
action, as “in their pleas, offerings, and violent sentiment, they
become active in the restoration of the idea of the state as also integral
to their own restoration” (1988:111). As the state sought to censor the
collective memory of society using disappearance and torture and the
impunity on which such crimes were grounded, the mothers sought to
challenge the status quo by challenging the existence of the
disappeared. De Mel argued that the strategy of appealing to spiritual
forces over and above the state to undermine it were tactics to equalise
power in a situation where protesters were effectively powerless.
Conversely, however, women were organised in this way because
President Premadasa, to whom the protests were directed, revered
such spiritual forces. According to de Mel, the women involved used
deva kannalawwas as politicised religious rituals to heap curses on
President Premadasa in revenge for the loss of their loved ones and to
exploit his superstitiousness (2001:25). Thereafter, many women who
had partaken in such activities saw Premadasa’s violent death as a
“direct answer to their supplications” (de Mel 2001:25). While curses
provided a means of protest which transcended the legislative
restrictions on demonstrations imposed under emergency regulations
(de Alwis 1998:192), such tactics limited the political influence of
those involved to that of seeking refuge in the irrational (Samuel
2000:6-7). At the same time, the state’s campaign against the
movement exploited such tactics with ruling party MPs implying that
the involved women were bad mothers, immoral or irresponsible
wives and pawns of the opposition party. In 1991 Deputy Defence
Minister Ranjan Wijeratne warned that a planned rally of the SMF
 223

would turn violent and emphasised that democracy should be achieved

through “good behaviour” (Economist 1991:34). Tactics such as deva
kannalawwas emphasised the illegitimacy of the women’s project as
an outward expression of personal and private irrationality and
undermined any political aspirations for justice and rights. The same
stereotypes that marginalised women were inadvertently perpetuated
and confirmed (Samuel 2003:167). Although deva kannalawwas
became synonymous with the mothers of the disappeared, their protest
was oriented around a religious activity and its symbolism which
confined them to a ritual of suffering directed at the gods rather than
an expression of citizens’ rights and legal claims against the state.
Such rituals became the focal point not only of SMF activity, but also
of the OPFMD and became synonymous, therefore, with the issue of
disappearance. At the same time, however, the use of deva
kannalawwas generated tremendous public sympathy for the women
of the disappeared which, according to Vasudeva Nanayakkara,
translated into votes for the SLFP (personal communication). The
SLFP was able to exploit the suffering of women for political
advantage at the same time as promoting the view within the SMF that
regime change from which peace, human rights and justice would
flow could only be achieved with the support of the movement’s
membership.

As removal of the UNP regime was the sole focus of the SLFP’s
efforts, over time, political defeat of the UNP in favour of the
opposition SLFP and punishment of a few rogue security officials
became the accepted demand of the SMF in response to years of state
violence, abuse of political power and repression (Samuel 2003:171).
As Nesiah and Keenan noted, a deeper political critique was short-
circuited (2004:15). The moral basis of demands for justice expressed
by the families of the disappeared were exploited and redirected to
 224

that of punishing specific parties, serving the cause of political

expediency rather than challenging impunity and the power on which
it rested. Thus, regime change became the primary intent over and
above that of political, institutional and legislative redress. Indeed,
because the SMF had been prevented from transforming the status of
motherhood and the disappeared as a currency of power into a
successful demand for institutional reform, the SMF had served its
purpose for the SLFP after it came to power in 1994 as part of the PA
coalition with the LSSP, CP and SLMP. Despite its human rights and
social justice mandate, the PA’s victory effectively replaced one
group of the urban political elite with another who soon became
dependent upon violence and repression, albeit on a smaller scale, to
exert power as detailed in chapter 6. The sense that the state served the
purposes of the political elite was strengthened when the PA recruited
a former UNP minister who was allegedly involved in the
Embilipitiya disappearances to serve as part of the new government
(Kumarange 2005:117). As Vasudeva Nanayakkara noted, the SMF
had achieved for the SLFP victory at the election, but afterwards the
movement was abandoned:

And I suppose it had given them the expected results in getting

the sympathy of the voters who denounced the disappearances
voting against the then government in support of those who
raised a hue and cry on the question of the disappeared. But
those who came to power in 1994 under Chandrika
[Kumaratunga] and those particular leaders and
parliamentarians who raised this matter as the main issue of
their election campaign, with songs composed in eulogy for
those who sacrificed and became martyrs, etc. didn’t do
anything to take the matter further and they used it for their
purpose and just left it.
- Vasudeva Nanayakkara MP.
 225

When the PA came to power, SMF members and other relatives of the
disappeared expected that a new era of rights and democracy had
begun. This belief was bolstered by the fact that many human rights
groups and disappearance organisations, minor political parties and
civil society activists publicly advocated for the PA as the only
alternative to UNP rule and state violence. For the families of the
disappeared, the moment had come for the PA to make good on its
pre-election promises, including establishing commissions of inquiry
into disappearances that took place in the late 1980s, to secure a
political solution to the conflict with the LTTE and end the culture of
impunity by dismantling the Executive Presidency. The very fact that
in the lead-up to the election, PA leader, Chandrika Kumaratunga, a
daughter of an assassinated father and widow of an assassinated
husband, associated herself with the mothers of the disappeared,
articulating their suffering as both a personal and national experience,
suggested that a new age of human rights and end to impunity was
about to begin (de Alwis 1998 cited in de Mel 2001:252). With the PA
victory, many members of the SMF subsequently left the movement
and others enjoyed the spoils of victory and the patronage that flowed
from it. As women's rights campaigner, Dulsie de Silva, explained:

Women of the Mothers Front were compromised by

compensation and jobs given by the new PA government when
it came to power.
- Dulsie de Silva.

Others felt obliged to work for the PA as a means of preventing return

to UNP rule. Mrs W also recognised her activism for the PA as a
means through which additional resources could be secured for her
family:
 226

Only after Chandrika Kumaratunga came to power I got

everything, the death certificate, the pension. The UNP did
this to us and we knew this [new] government will never do
something like that and we have a bond with this government
and responsibility to work for the government ... I think about
my daughters and their future jobs … I expect the
government … to do something for us. My youngest sat the A
levels and the oldest is studying nursing and I expect from the
government even a minor job. I want that.
-
Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview 1.

After the 1994 election, the SMF effectively dissolved as it had served
its political purpose. However, as Jayanthi Dandeniya acknowledged,
it was a serious error on the part of SMF members and others to give
the responsibility for solving the issue of disappearance to the
country's leadership. She noted that the PA used the issue of
disappearance for its own political advantage to rise to power but that
once in a position to effect change, actually achieved very little
(Families of the Disappeared, personal communication). Concerns
were also raised that many within the human rights community had
compromised their independence by publicly lending their support to
the PA and even securing government positions. They found
themselves in a weakened position at the very moment the PA should
have been called to account to realise its election promises. The few
organisations and individuals that pursued the government risked
being accused of undermining national efforts to achieve peace and
reconciliation for their own short-term narrow political ends.
Ironically, OPFMD was not one of these organisations. OPFMD had
publicly supported the PA at the 1994 election because, according to
its current Secretary-General, Shantha Pathirana, the organisation was
committed to a change of government. In fact, OPFMD’s founder,
 227

Vasudeva Nanayakkara, had left the NSSP shortly before the election
and joined the LSSP, a constituent party of the PA, becoming the
PA’s MP for Ratnapura District at the 1994 election (TamilNet 8
November 1997). Mr Pathirana argued that the OPFMD gave support
because the PA agreed to its four demands which were establishing a
fact-finding commission into the disappearances, pursuing legal action
against all perpetrators of disappearances without discrimination,
compensating all families of the disappeared and releasing all political
prisoners (Shantha Pathirana, personal communication). However,
having undermined the possibility of an inclusive disappearance
movement by establishing a politically based organisation, and to then
support the incoming government, OPFMD was politically
compromised on two levels.

Thereafter, any attempt by OPFMD to call the PA to account in

relation to its pre-election commitments, let alone its human rights
record, was dismissed as a political act. OPFMD like the SMF could
never have served as an independent voice for institutional reform
because its leadership benefitted from and therefore had a vested
interest in the political structure that prevailed. However, in 1999,
when Vasudeva Nanayakkara spoke out against the PA's policies on
its handling of the conflict with the LTTE, he was suspended from the
LSSP (TamilNet, 8 November 1997 & 17 April 1999). He went on to
form the Democratic Left Front only to find that the overt
politicisation of the country had created social conditions which made
establishing an alternative polity impossible:

When the government was elected there was jubilation and

euphoria. Expectations and all that were shattered within a
matter of months. And there was a disorientation among the
people of an unbelievable right-about-turn of the government
 228

which left them aghast, paralysed, couldn’t move because it

had been such a total betrayal. There was that. Secondly, there
was the fear of not wanting to let the defeated villains to re-
take power therefore not upset the government too much.
Three, there was no leadership even to this new emerging
mood of the people who were being frustrated by the 1994
government, except the very small group we belong, known as
the Democratic People’s Movement out of which we evolved
into the Democratic Left Front, which was able to mobilise a
few thousands here and there but could not be sustained
because it needed a political outlook and political expression
which could not be ultimately brought into being. A political
alternative without which there was no mobilisation or
enthusiasm generated at all.
-
Vasudeva Nanayakkara, MP.

Some families accused the PA of having sold out on its pre-election

promises. Disappearances began to be reported in the Jaffna peninsula,
which were interpreted as evidence that nothing had actually changed
under the new regime. Indeed, many affected families in the north and
east saw the PA-led peace process of the mid-1990s itself as a
political stunt designed to provide the military with an opportunity to
identify its enemies. Mrs P said:

At that time [of peace], people were able to move freely. So

the army stationed in these areas saw people moving freely
and came to know everybody, who is the LTTE and who are
civilians. This may have been one of the strategies of the PA
government.
-
Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10.
 229

The presidential commissions of inquiry into disappearances became

the yardstick by which many affected families across the country
judged the new PA regime. For many of them, the government’s
inability or unwillingness to institute institutional reform and the sheer
lack of prosecutorial action and failure over time to implement most
of the commissions’ recommendations was totally disillusioning.
Mrs M said:
I thought Chandrika [Kumaratunga] would help us. We got the
death certificate and she said when she came to power she
would look into the disappearances. I went to the Presidential
Commission and to Mr Iqbal but we don’t have an end result,
an answer. They didn’t even tell if they were killed. I think they
did not look for the answer to the end, not fully. I am not clear
why. We’re asking why. We thought they’d do something to
those responsible and tell us what happened or where they’re
being held.
- Mrs M, Kandy District: Interview 2.

This view is commonly shared by those who took the time to appear
before the commissions. While some had extremely high and
unrealistic expectations, namely the return of their loved ones, the
majority had what they thought were more realistic expectations: that
the truth be revealed and prosecutions made. Mrs G, for example, said
she expected that those responsible would be produced before the
families and that despite having given all the information to the
commissioners, nothing came of it (Kurunegala District: Interview 2).
Reflecting on the fact that so little had changed, Mrs W said:
We were expecting freedom from fear to walk the streets ...
We were expecting them to bring these people to the law but
we didn’t see it happening.
 230

-
Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview 4.
8.3 The struggle to remain relevant

The work of the disappearance commissions which began in 1995

sustained activism in some disappearance organisations to a point, but
inevitably numbers began to drop. Indeed, Shantha Pathirana noted
that the highest level of activism within OPFMD was from when it
was set up in 1990 to 1996—a period in which the presidential
commissions operated, compensation was provided and the plight of
the families of the disappeared was acknowledged with visits by the
UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance
(UNWGIED). However, he explained that for OPFMD, it became
apparent that the numbers fell considerably in parallel with the level
of disappointment with the commissions. A shrinking membership
forced the organisation to extend its work from that of advocacy and
international campaigning into areas such as legal aid and practical
assistance to families to secure compensation, loans, scholarships and
state allowances (Shantha Pathirana, OPFMD, personal
communication). The SMF experienced the same challenges—but the
two organisations were politically polarised in relation to each other
and siloed into political camps based on party membership. Rather
than forging ties of solidarity and common experiences, they
continued to view each other as a threat to the legitimacy of their own
cause and as a rival for resources. Uncertainty about which parties had
been responsible for which disappearances fuelled suspicion and
mistrust between the groups. One of the legacies of political violence
is that of mistrust, isolation and an inability to forge linkages and
networks to establish solidarity and trust to act in concert. As the
violence came from such a wide range of sources for such a variety of
reasons, the kind of trust needed for “collective political efforts” was
 231

almost totally lacking (Keenan 2002:7). Failure by disappearance

movements to position themselves as active members of a larger
human rights movement in Sri Lanka and their strategic inability to
broaden their conceptualisation of human rights ensured that they
attracted fewer members despite growth in the number of
disappearances around the country. At the same time, unlike other
disappearance movements such as the Asociacion Madres in
Argentina (Bosco 2004:388), the disappeared did not transform from
being victims of political violence to revolutionaries or political
activists who died in a common struggle against the established order.
Without collective recognition of the suffering caused by
disappearances or recovery of the disappeared in the name of human
rights and a new political order, any possibility of unity and common
cause was remote. Not only did these challenges make establishment
of a national movement for the disappeared all but impossible, any
such effort would be faced with the fact that the “politicians would get
into it and divide it. It would be red, green or blue” (Jayanthi
Dandeniya, personal communication). 20 Sadly, even though
disappearances continued to be reported throughout the country, the
organisations that represent the disappeared struggle to remain
relevant in a changing socio–political landscape.

Disappearance organisations have been unwilling or unable to

demonstrate strategic leadership and change their tactics and modus
operandi in line with community sentiment and political developments.
Herein lines one of key challenges before them. In Jaffna, Father
Bernard noted that the MPGA was led by emotion and lacked a
rational approach, reflected in the fact that its membership sought

20
Red denotes the JVP, green the UNP and blue is the official colour of the
PA.
 232

political patronage from any party or political group. “They are

emotional—this is personal. Also internal disputes continue to arise
due to the irrational, emotional nature of the families” he said (Father
Bernard, personal communication). Their leaders reflect the
membership which can be both a strength and weakness. Its strength
is that it provides authenticity for such organisations. Its weakness is
that such authenticity comes at the price of objectivity, vision and
strategic thinking. As the leaders and figureheads of these
organisations are themselves relatives of disappeared people, many
remain traumatised and consumed by the particularities of their own
tragic circumstances. They, like their organisations, are locked in the
past, unable to position the cause of the disappeared within the
contemporary political setting and incapable of forging effective
linkages with other organisation which would otherwise strategically
benefit their own organisation and provide developmental
opportunities.

For many such leaders, the disappearance of their own loved one
remains central at the expense of both their personal lives and the
strategic leadership of the group. Decisions about group activities and
functions often represent, therefore, an inward focus on personal
circumstances which often leads to internal disputes rather than an
externalised public focus on socio–political transformation. The
comments of Mrs Kanakaambikai, President of the Jaffna Mothers’
Front, are illuminating:

Once in three months we meet. If meetings are not functioning,

they run to us and ask ‘why no meetings?’ … They come with
a lot of anxiety. Coming to the meeting is like coming to see
the disappeared children.
- Mrs Kanakaambikai, Jaffna Mothers' Front.
 233

As Father Bernard observed, such organisations appear dysfunctional

even from the outside (personal communication). OPFMD has been
criticised for its political motives and inability to transform itself into
an organisation with greater social currency. The impression is that
the only time it gathers its members together is before an election
(Sunila Abeysekera, personal communication). Indeed, its local and
national leadership clearly use the organisation and its linkages for
their own political purposes. Local representatives seize the
opportunity of organising at the local level on behalf of OPFMD to
conduct their own political campaign as candidates of the Democratic
Left Front. In a highly politicised society where disappearances served
largely a political function, it would be illogical to expect that motives
of those involved in supporting affected families would be removed
from the political landscape. Indeed, the key feature of a highly
politicised society is that no one is outside the political context. This is
not to say that the motives of such individuals are disingenuous
towards families of the disappeared. Indeed, this is a complex set of
circumstances as the author's field notes about one such coordinator
indicate:

The position of coordinator is voluntary so there must be some

additional motive to that of being a ‘good person’ given that
persons were disappeared over 20 years ago. Mr X has utilised
his position for political purposes and his human rights
campaigning during the period of terror has given him the
moral high-ground with which to campaign and stake his claim
over the district. Yet, with the money he earns tutoring students,
he spends much of it on the families of the disappeared and
appears active in seeking and securing employment for families
and their children.
- Author’s field notes.
 234

In a society which operates on the basis of political patronage directed

towards a narrow focus of winning elections for politicians and
securing resources for their supporters, the operations of the OPFMD
are not unique. Jayanthi Dandeniya acknowledged that although social
services are a state responsibility, disappearance organisations spend
considerable resources to assist affected families who will then go and
vote for a candidate on the basis of their promises of support
regardless of the political platform or history of the party they
represent (Families of the Disappeared, personal communication).
This preoccupation with securing tangible resources from political
parties at the expense of any examination of their role in
disappearances and state violence surfaced in interviews. Casting their
gaze increasingly inwards, such interviewees were transfixed on what
they could get out of the system and what they perceived it owed them
rather than demanding the state recognise its responsibility to affected
families, award adequate compensation and dismantle the apparatus
that enabled the disappearance of tens of thousands of Sri Lankans
around the country. The nexus between political patronage and state
resources has politicised Sri Lankan life to the point where elections
are its main determinant. The central motive behind disappearances
carried out from the 1970s in Sri Lanka was to win elections and
assert political power rendering the relationship between state and
citizenry totally distorted. Ms S recognised her brother’s activism in
the JVP as the motive for his disappearance. She was disgusted that
the contemporary JVP leadership which had joined the democratic
mainstream and made promises to her of resources or employment
before the 2004 election (and evidently secured her vote) had later
shifted its position: “They told us that my brother didn’t disappear
because of JVP activities and that it is difficult to give assistance to us
because he didn’t work for the JVP” she said, noting that as a
 235

consequence “we’re not getting anything from either side” (Ms S,

Kandy District: Interview 5).

The ongoing attention given to securing resources is further evidence

of both the extent to which the prevailing political culture is
entrenched and the failure of Sri Lankan civil society to transform the
consciousness of those who have survived the violence to demand
radical political change. Jayanthi Dandeniya’s observations reflect this
concern:

Everyone supports peace, the international community, donors,

governments but no-one supports against disappearance. Now
with the money spent, pigeons thrown and leaflets given, we’ve
nearly run out of pigeons but there’s no peace because we have
to change the mentality of the people.
- Jayanthi Dandeniya, Families of the Disappeared.

Indeed, Mrs S from Amparai established an organisation on behalf of

the families of the disappeared in her village and its first initiative was
to appeal to the local MP for jobs for their children (Mrs S, Amparai
District: Interview 14). Mrs M in Gampaha District stated that she
would vote for the PA at the 2004 election if they agreed to give her
roofing sheets (Mrs M, Gampaha District: Interview 4). For Mrs M
and many others, especially those in similarly dire economic
circumstances, politics is a matter of personal opportunism. At the
same time, participation at elections provided the only opportunity for
many Sri Lankans to have their citizenship recognised in order to
secure resources. Without the equitable distribution of state resources,
good governance and the re-establishment of state–citizenry relations,
which would require the total reconstruction of the political system,
the destructive nexus between patronage, state resources, elections and
 236

state violence—and the impunity on which it is based—is set to

continue. Disappearance as a mechanism of terror both exploited and
strengthened this nexus by affirming a relationship of patron–client
that was personal and private rather than citizen–state with the formal
demarcations and responsibilities implied. However, as Jananayagam
reminds us:

[T]here is a purpose to disappearances and extra-judicial

killings: terror. These acts are not just about the individual, but
the rest of society. They constitute a specific form of violence
aiming to define the relationship between the state and the
community concerned, between fear and submission.
- Jananayagam 2010.

8.4 Strategic interests and practical needs

Without acknowledgement and national debate concerning the motive

and institutional framework that provided for political violence, those
who benefited from it and the socio–economic policies that justified
and normalised it, such violence will persist and create additional
layers of grievance and tension. Efforts directed at restoring the socio–
economic status of families of the disappeared, such as training and
vocational programs, inadvertently affirm their victimisation and
position of powerlessness within a wider socio–political context based
on political competition. Such initiatives are a diversion because they
ignore the root causes of grievance which emanate from a political
structure that has been used to uphold the vested interests of the elite
at the expense of the majority through the use of political violence
(Community Development Foundation, Batticaloa District). Civil
society groups including organisations that represent the families of
the disappeared subscribe to the view that because surviving relatives
 237

focus on the education of their children and “immediate living issues”

and are “not thinking of their disappeared relative anymore”, the onus
for assistance rests on socio–economic support (OPFMD Matara
Coordinator, personal communication). Yet at the same time, efforts
to assist such families to make ends meet simultaneously condemn
them to subscribe to a social order based on inequality, patronage and
violence which created conditions that permitted disappearances in the
first place. Such efforts can inadvertently confirm personal and private
pain rather than build shared political aspirations to demand answers
from the state and realise the aspiration of ‘never again’.

Although the politicisation of Sri Lankan society was reflected in the

country’s main disappearance organisations, local women’s groups
established informally among survivors of political violence
themselves or with the sponsorship of larger umbrella organisations
have proven far more resistant to political influence. Such groups have
brought about meaningful change to the lives of their members and
children through education and other forms of practical support and
solidarity. However, rather than attracting public support and
sympathy to their cause, many have faced years of ostracism and
antagonism from within their own communities. The Janashakti
Women's Development Foundation in Gampaha District is one such
body. Mrs P, who established the group in 1991 following the
abduction and disappearance of her husband from the family home,
recalled first attending meetings of the SMF. She travelled to
Colombo to meet Dr Manorani, the then figurehead of the SMF, and
human rights activist, Sunila Abeyesekera, who suggested that she
herself establish a group for survivors in her local area. Mrs P
explained the impact the meeting had on her life:
 238

From that moment, the tradition of women in the village and

barriers were broken off and I started to climb ... Even though
the terror was going on we were going to form the organisation.
We got afraid because if the widows are getting together and
the government thinks that is also a threat, what are we going to
do? ... I informed the minister that I am going to form a widows
association and he said yes it would be nice if it is without
political interference and whatever you need I will try and help
you all ... We had eleven members and they were UNP, JVP
and SLFP, they were all there. The first meeting was in Sunila’s
office in Colombo in 1991, December 6.
- Mrs P, Gampaha District: Interview 11.

Mrs P recalled that the initial objective was simply to get the wives
and mothers of the disappeared in her area together so that rather than
cry alone, they could cry together. However, the idea grew that they
could do something for their children’s future:

Once a month we’d have meetings to discuss the problems we

face day to day as widows ... For the moment there are 22
members and we can increase the number but we would find
difficulties regarding the finances so we are going like this ...
At that time everyone was scared to have an association or
even to have a meeting but at that time I had a feeling I don’t
know for revenge or something I was willing to do anything,
that’s why it started in my house. The first thing we did in our
association was put up a library so that if a child doesn’t have
a book for school, they can borrow one ... In our library we
now have over Rs 150,000 worth of books.
-
Mrs P, Gampaha District: Interview 11.
 239

Despite the obvious risks involved, the group recognised that

education would be a means of liberation for their children and
themselves, given that the expectation was that they would ‘fall from
life’ (Mrs P, Gampaha District: Interview 11). Mrs S was a member of
the same group and stated:

I thought I was crying and nothing was done so I got strength

inside me and I thought I would get my children on a good path.
I was self-determined ... We gave loans—now Rs 5,000 to
people to improve their standard of life and from that sum we
carry on like this ... From that moment we had eleven members
and now we have about 30 and all are widows ... We all got
together with Sunila and we went on a trip to the zoo and to
Galle Face to break the psychology of our children. They had
ice-cream ... It was like moving from one country to another.
-
Mrs S, Gampaha District: Interview 12.

Mrs W, along with 21 other women whose husbands had disappeared

in her village formed their own support group which went on to
establish a preschool and children’s public library in the face of
tremendous hostility from within their own village. When the group
began meeting in 1993, locals including their own relatives turned out
with machetes to challenge them. Their local Buddhist monk said the
group was going to cause disaster for the village and turn its children
and women into Christians. Following a series of public
confrontations, the group appealed to the local authorities and were
granted the right to use the village hall for their meetings. Even
though the harassment and intimidation continued, the group met
regularly and eventually decided to broaden its membership:
 240

Though people were looking with the corners of their eyes

because we were a widow’s organisation, we decided that all
women of the village could join and get loans so now we have
67 members. Some are those women who came to protest
against us.
- Mrs W, Kurunegala District: Interview 4.

One of the key elements of activism which underlies the ability of

these women to maintain an active membership relates to the extent to
which practical support is provided. The practicalities of everyday life
and the challenges in making ends meet, particularly in conflict-
affected areas, the need to raise children and the ever-changing nature
of their needs, ensured that many women who had initially engaged in
the mothers’ movements, eventually moved on while the movements
themselves stagnated. These movements were unable to respond to the
changing priorities of its members or draw on the common experience
of its membership to build solidarity largely because they were
directed towards the purpose of securing votes. For women,
particularly in the north and east, such challenges were further
compounded by the need to flee their homes during the conflict, often
for long periods, only to return to houses destroyed or ransacked.
Mrs K recalled that following the disappearance of her son, her family
was forced to flee the fighting in the Jaffna District only to return 10
months later to a house that had been destroyed by the army and
without any government compensation to rebuild (Mrs K, Jaffna
District: Interview 8). Such movements were unable to build upon a
sense of shared experience and the transformative potential of unity in
action. Demanding the return of loved ones alone is not enough to
keep people engaged and motivated, no matter how much they hope
for a reappearance. As more immediate needs become the priority, it
is the development of a culture of shared responsibility and common
 241

purpose amongst women for the education of children which serves as

the transformative element. As previously noted, it was the local
women’s groups which arose out of a personal rather than political
imperative that thrived in direct contrast to the respective
disappearance movements which were directed by wider political
considerations.

While the SMF was influential in placing disappearance at the

forefront of the PA’s political agenda, it was politically neutralised by
the party that created it. At the same time, the Jaffna Mothers’ Front
and SMF have been largely unable to serve any practical purpose for
the women involved, many of whom grew tired or simply no longer
had the time or inclination to engage in political action which could
not sustain its original promise. This frustration is reflected in the
comments of Mrs M who detailed the impact that the disappearance of
her 25-year-old son-in-law had on her daughter:

One day to courts, next to kachcheri, next to another

organisation. Nine years of protesting and picketing has not
given a solution, not even an answer ... My daughter’s life and
future are a big question mark. If we know something concrete,
she is young, we can find a proposal and get her married. We
are also ageing so it is a great uncertainty.
- Mrs M, Jaffna District: Interview 11.

Indeed, many interviewees who participated in the mothers’

movement or other disappearance groups noted that they were active
participants in the early days and ran to every meeting in their local
area but that without any tangible progress in their own cases or
alternative activities to redirect their anxiety, interest and attendance
 242

began to decline. Others became disillusioned, recognising the

political obstacles before them as overwhelming.

Ms S reflected on the meetings she attended of the Families of the

Disappeared following her brother’s disappearance:

It’s no use pressuring our government anyhow. If we go

individually it will never happen but even if we go as a group,
even the President doesn’t listen because in the court cases
they say there is not enough evidence and stop the case. In the
meeting one person told that ‘without sending individual
letters, let’s write a united letter and demand’. Jayanthi said,
‘if the President is not caring about her husband and the JVP is
not caring about Wijeweera, will they care anything for us?’
- Ms S, Kandy District: Interview 5.

Similarly, many interviewees spoke of their efforts to meet their local

MPs on the understanding that political connections rather than legal
action were most likely to result in the reappearance of a loved one in
the early days after the event and the provision of resources and
support thereafter. Many interviewees were dismissed or deceived, but
when such appeals coincided with an election, promises were made in
an effort to secure votes. Mrs S recalled having received a letter from
a local candidate in Jaffna claiming that she had been involved in the
alleged release of Mrs S’s son from Kalutara prison in 2002. When
Mrs S approached the candidate to clarify that her son, whose
whereabouts remain unknown, had not been released, the candidate
begged her to keep the letter confidential but still persisted in lobbying
her for her vote. Following the election at which the candidate was
successful, she assured Mrs S that something would be done to secure
the release of her son and a friend he had been allegedly taken into
 243

custody with. Two years later, Mrs S who was clearly worn out by the
experience said to the now local representative “never mind, don't
release them, but at least show them to us” but she never got an
answer (Mrs S, Jaffna District: Interview 5).

8.5 Political currency of the disappeared

Over the past decade since the peace process of 2002 and following
the military defeat of the LTTE, the issue of disappearance has
remained on the national agenda for two reasons. First, because
disappearances continue to be reported around the country with civil
society activists including journalists, social activists, community
leaders and persons who have spoken out against the Rajapakse
regime increasingly targeted (ICG 2011:20). Second, disappearance
remains a political issue because it is used to expose political
opponents during elections for their role in political violence and
secure votes through fear. Both dynamics highlight the manner in
which disappearance has remained the institutionalised means of
dealing with political enemies. They demonstrate the fact that the
alternative political apparatus which provided for state terror during
the 1990s has remained largely untouched despite repeated changes
of government. Until both major political parties and the political
elite they represent no longer benefit from this status quo or are
forced to make changes, the possibilities for democracy let alone law
reform, constitutional change and address of impunity are remote.

Although the mothers’ movements may have largely disintegrated and

disappearance organisations continue to struggle for political
relevance in a context of ongoing violence, poverty and patronage, the
image of the overcome mother dressed in a white sari clutching the
 244

framed photo of a disappeared son continues to haunt the political

landscape. Taken from the Latin American context and adapted, the
image is synonymous with disappearance organisations. However,
while the organisations themselves in the north and the south have
long encouraged women to protest in this fashion, their images have
long been appropriated for political gain. At election time, the central
strategy of the major parties is to remind the voting public of the
violence perpetrated by their political rivals particularly during the
time of terror. As Abeyesekera observed, the images of women
cracking coconuts, cursing and wailing for their loved ones served as
a strategy to challenge President Premadasa and provided the women
involved with an outlet for built-up frustrations. However, the
movement’s leadership demonstrated no ethical responsibility towards
the women involved. As the whole “show was done for political
purposes”, there was no caretaking of the women involved and their
frustrations and anxieties were never directed into positive action
(Sunila Abeyesekera, personal communication). At every election,
such images continue to be appropriated and exploited for political
advantage.

Such images are drawn on to remind the voting public, not of the need
for redress or to demand the truth and justice for the survivors, but
rather of the violence perpetrated by respective political rival during
the time of terror. To this extent, disappearance has been kept on the
political agenda, not as a means of building consensus to demand
institutional reform or to encourage identification with the ‘other’ but
rather to merely shame political rivals and confirm polarised political
positions. The sole focus of such propaganda is to point the finger at
particular individuals and their culpability in disappearance and
political violence rather than focus on the apparatus of terror and the
need for serious institutional reform. In this manner, the aspirations
 245

and agonies of the relatives of the disappeared have been politically

appropriated. Vasudeva Nanayakkara noted that such tactics
undermine the fact that address of disappearance is a “genuine
concern about people [rather] than a question about who is willing and
who is to be accused” (personal communication).

Misreporting and omission have also been effective tools in pre-

election propaganda. In March 2000, with the UNP in opposition, the
Mothers’ Front was reported to have appealed to the PA President
Kumaratunga to punish the perpetrators of the 1988–89 reign of terror
while expressing their gratitude to her for “ending the fear psychosis
and restoring democracy and human rights”, and thanking the
government for compensation received. De Mel noted that the real
newsworthy event of the day, which did not receive coverage by any
of the government-controlled press and only one opposition paper,
was that of a petition signed by 100,000 women asking the
government and UNP to enter into dialogue with each other to pursue
a peaceful settlement to the ethnic conflict (2001:253).

In the lead-up to the parliamentary elections of 2004, advertisements

under the name of the SMF but clearly written by the PA, began
appearing in the national dailies alongside political advertisements for
the parties. One advertisement appeared in the Sinhala Divaina
newspaper along with a photo of a distressed mother carrying the
framed photo of her son (immediately recognisable as a form of
protest against disappearance). The question, is their politics about
killing? was written across the advertisement which went on to
describe a number of atrocities including the disappearance of 32
students in Embilipitiya, noting that in total, such atrocities along with
all the floating bodies in the rivers amounted to the deaths of 60,000
people for which ‘they’ (inferring the UNP) were responsible
 246

(Divaina 28 March 2004:18). Such advertisements, which appear

regularly during election periods, are designed to scare the voting
public into silence and submission while undermining or embarrassing
opposing parties. The objective of using the image of a traumatised
mother could not be more disingenuous and herein is the concern. For
as long as such images are politically appropriated for short-term
political advantage, opportunities encouraging dialogue to realise the
aspiration of ‘never again’ and to move beyond political violence and
trauma as a nation seem very remote indeed.
 247

CHAPTER 9
The only voice here is that of a gunshot.
- Mrs P, Amparai District: Interview 10.

Politicisation of due process and other

official mechanisms of inquiry

E
fforts by families of the disappeared to achieve justice through
the legal machinery demonstrates a series of failings at every
stage of the legal process brought about by the politicisation
of the investigation and prosecutorial functions on the one hand and
the prolonged imposition of emergency legislation which effectively
replaced criminal procedure and evidence laws on the other. This
chapter reveals that the justice system not only failed survivors of
political violence during the period of review, including the families
of the disappeared, for reasons of political interference and the
politicisation of the police and judiciary but actively conspired against
them to deny state terror and protect those responsible for it. The
underlying premise of this chapter and wider thesis is that the
subordination of the rule of law and politicisation of those responsible
to uphold it are both cause and effect of a culture of impunity that
prevailed. In considering the failings to prosecute perpetrators of
disappearances and provide a remedy in habeas corpus cases, this
chapter identifies the characteristics of impunity evident in the
investigation and prosecution of offences which have a direct bearing
on why disappearances became prevalent in the first place. The state’s
reliance on an alternative political apparatus outside the formal legal
framework and grounded on arbitrary violence undermined the
integrity of the formal process. It also brought about a collapse of the
 248

rule of law leading to a total loss of community cooperation with and

confidence in due process and the rapid growth of the country’s
underworld. By focusing on abuses of the previous regime and
compensation, the ruling party manipulated the work of the
presidential commissions on disappearance as part of a ritual of
conspiracy against the victims to deny state terror and protect those
responsible for it.

In the late 1970s, normal criminal procedure was replaced by

extraordinary legislation while the institutions responsible for
upholding it were systematically weakened, politicised and corrupted
by an alternative political framework—all of which was brought about
by the centralisation of power made permissible under the 1978
constitution. Under this framework, the Executive Presidency was
able to impose a state of emergency under Public Security Ordinance
No. 25, 1947 (PSO) and issue (and re-issue amended) emergency
regulations with a parliamentary rubber stamp unconstrained by any
form of judicial review. At the same time the ERs granted legal
immunity to the president for such declarations made in good faith
(Coomaraswamy & de los Reyes 2004:276-277). Under the PSO,
fundamental rights set out in the 1978 constitution were subject to
restriction in the interests of national security including equal
treatment before the law; freedom of association, assembly,
movement, and procedural requirements in arrest and detention
(Coomaraswamy & de los Reyes 2004:277). As the ERs and PTA,
which facilitated the state’s policy of disappearance, were presented as
necessary to ensure national security and stability, the legal and
political basis of the policy could not be challenged by the courts,
parliament or the public. Therefore, any attempt by the courts to
enforce the rule on producing a body or ascribing responsibility for
the failure to do so on state agents would pose a direct challenge to a
 249

policy of the state that allowed and encouraged disappearances to take

place. At the same time, as the administration of justice was largely
captured by political authorities intent on ensuring that perpetrators of
disappearances avoided legal responsibility, the legal process became
one characterised by a systemic pattern of delays in proceedings,
blanket denials of arrest and detention, a consistent reluctance to
investigate and prosecute perpetrators and total disregard for the
families of the disappeared and other survivors of political violence.
The combined effect was a continuation of impunity for those
responsible, victimisation of petitioners and the perpetuation of
uncertainty about the fate of the disappeared and suffering for their
families.

Successive governments justified the continuation of a counter-

insurgency campaign, of which disappearance was a central pillar, on
the grounds of curtailing violence perpetrated by non-state actors and
thereby maintaining national security. Indeed, prolonged recourse to
emergency powers and to abuses was justified on the basis of doing
what was necessary to preserve the nation. In reality, they had the
opposite effect. As noted in the previous chapter, moreover, any
efforts to curtail the extraordinary powers granted to the police and
security forces, such as the introduction of safeguards in relation to
arrest and detention procedures, were carried out to appease the
international community and were not implemented or enforced and
sanctions for non-compliance were not imposed.
 250

9.1 Emergency legalisation: a policy of the state against

its own people

Since 1971, successive Sri Lankan governments have almost

continuously proclaimed or extended a state of emergency. From the
first declaration of a state of emergency in 1958 to 2001, Sri Lanka
had experienced more years of “authoritarian power, under the guise
of emergency powers, than that of democratic governance” with the
longest period of emergency rule lasting from 1983 to 2001 with the
exception of a five-month suspension in 1989 (Coomaraswamy & de
los Reyes 2004:272-273).

The apparatus responsible for carrying out disappearances reported

directly to politicians and operated under the ERs promulgated under
Section 5 of the PSO and PTA, which could not be challenged by the
courts and provided state officials with impunity from prosecution
(Southern Commission 1997b:41). The ruling party initially justified
establishing this framework and the legislation that underpinned it to
provide the security forces with greater powers of arrest and detention
in key geographical areas in the face of what it called a genuine threat
to national security. In reality, however and as Chapter 3 detailed, the
UNP did so before the LTTE and JVP had taken up arms against the
state. Furthermore, its prolonged nationwide utilisation facilitated
widespread and arbitrary rights abuses which had no political origin.
The system that operated under the ERs and PTA had a number of
characteristics. The most common features of the PTA, which was
amended to become a permanent measure in 1983, included the
authority given to police and security forces to arrest without a
warrant and detain a person for 72 hours without being brought before
the courts (section 7) and thereafter for up to 18 months on the basis
 251

of an administrative order issued by the Minister for Defence (section

9). Under the draconian legislation, the state was not obliged to inform
the detainee the reason for their arrest, and the lawfulness of the
detention order issued by the Defence Minister could not be
challenged in court. Judges were not empowered to order bail or
impose a suspended sentence under the PTA and the burden of proof
was placed on the accused to demonstrate that a confession was
obtained under duress. Under the Emergency (Miscellaneous
provisions and Powers) Regulations enacted under a declaration of
emergency, Regulation 17 authorised the defence secretary to make a
detention order and under an amendment which remained in effect
from May 2000 to June 2001, the requirement to produce evidentiary
material was removed leaving it to the defence secretary’s “opinion”
that the detention was necessary.

Regulation 18 permitted any member of the security forces or police

to make an arrest without a warrant on suspicion and up until May
2000, detainees in the north and east could be detained for up to 60
days compared to seven days for detainees elsewhere. After May, all
detainees around the country could be detained for an initial 90 days,
extendable to a maximum of 270 days and the requirement that the
Inspector General of Police (IGP) publish a list of authorised places of
detention was removed. Arresting authorities were under no obligation
to document or record the arrest and although many people were
arrested on the pretext of having a statement recorded, there was
generally no such record of the arrest, statement or detention.

The extraordinary provisions contained in the ERs and PTA not only
infringed upon rights enshrined in the Constitution (Coomaraswamy
& de los Reyes 2004:272) but were also totally incompatible with
international human rights standards as laid out in the International
 252

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Convention

against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (CAT) (CCPR/CO/79/LKA:2003). Moreover, while many
people who disappeared were detained under provisions of the ERs
and PTA, others were simply abducted without reference to any legal
provision. The existence of this alternative framework was
exemplified by the Indemnity Act No. 20 of 1982 and Indemnity Act
No. 60 of 1988 which provided immunity from prosecution to the
security forces, members of government and public servants involved
in enforcing law and order from 1 August 1977 to 16 December 1988
proved that their actions were carried out in “good faith”. Similarly,
Section 26 of the PTA provides for immunity from prosecution for
“any officer or person for any act or thing in good faith” and sections
9 and 23 of the PSO confer similar immunity (Pinto-Jayawardena
2010: 25 and 2009:107). As noted in Chapter 3, such legislation not
only provided scope for the ruling party to subvert the rule of law for
its own purposes but also served to facilitate and justify rights abuses.

Available evidence including the various commissions of inquiry

suggests that if disappearance did not amount to state policy, it was at
the very least a practice sanctioned by the political leadership.
However, to give the impression of a functional and legitimate
democracy founded on the rule of law, the state both simultaneously
facilitated and denied disappearances and other abuses carried out
under the guise of counter-insurgency operations and national security.
Behind a smokescreen of emergency legislation, the authorities
disavowed any knowledge of the disappeared claiming that they had
been killed during an armed altercation with the security forces or had
simply run away. In this manner, emergency legislation was used by
successive ruling parties to sanction violence against their own people
which was both politically justified on the basis of fighting terrorism
 253

and legally concealed. Ironically, however, the extraordinary became

the norm as the state became reliant upon the very conditions and
forces that provided for the establishment and maintenance of this
alternative political framework, including the politicisation of the
police force, to maintain law and order. Without legal capacity other
state institutions such as the Attorney-General’s Department were
compromised and institutional breakdowns brought about by
patronage, politicisation and the effective abandonment of due process,
perpetuated a vicious cycle whereby the state totally relied on
extralegal solutions (Dr Deepika Udgama, Head of Department of the
Faculty of Law, Colombo University, personal communication). Such
solutions facilitated by extraordinary legislation became an entrenched
part of the political culture, bringing about decades of violence
perpetrated by non-state actors and a loss of faith in the rule of law
among the citizenry. The prevailing view that came into being was
that the system was corrupt and worked only for the politically
connected and wealthy. Such a view justified people’s determination
to get what they could out of the system regardless of the
consequences. In such a context, their aspirations for justice found
expression outside of the legal context, resorting to spiritual forces
and a growing reliance upon Sri Lanka’s powerful and well-connected
underworld.

9.2 Investigation and prosecution of disappearances

The history of the Sri Lankan police force is one of political

interference. Such interference was an integral part of the manner in
which due process was dismantled and discarded in favour of an
alternative political process which provided for extralegal action. The
Southern Commission observed that during the late 1980s, police
recruitment was conducted to control political opponents rather than
 254

eliminate crime with substantial rewards paid in contravention of the

Police Ordinance (Southern Commission 1997:31). Examples include
the rapid promotion of junior officers to the rank of Chief Inspector
and above on grounds other than merit, promotion of officers against
whom court cases or departmental charges were pending, and the
ridiculing of diligent officers overlooked for promotion by senior
figures newly appointed on the basis of influence rather than merit
(Police Committee 1995 Part VI:1). Premadasa Udugampola, for
example, was rapidly promoted through the ranks of the police force
over the heads of at least 180 officers, from Inspector in 1977 to
Deputy Inspector of Police in 1988, despite having been convicted of
human rights abuses by the Supreme Court in 1987 (Southern
Commission 1997b:35-40). The politicisation of the police force
enabled politicians to take a commanding role in relation to police
functions through interference at every stage and at every level. In this
way, police operations were totally subverted to serve the interests of
local MPs and their influential constituents.

The investigation and prosecution of disappearances during the period

of review can be defined by two features. First, formal procedures
such as inquest and investigations, which are an otherwise integral
part of the normal operation of the rule of law, were suspended under
the ERs enabling the security forces to dispose of bodies without any
report to the courts or inquest. Second, the very authorities that carried
out disappearances and other abuses were also charged with
investigating them, without the constraints of any impartial or
independent review. As the majority of prosecutions were initiated
against the police and security force personnel, the combined effect of
these two features resulted in few prosecutions. There were, however,
other substantial constraints in relation to prosecuting disappearances.
As enforced disappearance is not recognised as a discrete crime under
 255

the Sri Lankan Penal Code, prosecutions are limited to charges of

abduction with intent to murder, unlawful confinement, torture and
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and murder.
However, the very fact that bodies were never recovered made the
charge of murder almost impossible to sustain. Furthermore, there is
no provision in the Penal Code enforcing command responsibility
which would otherwise facilitate charges against not only officers who
carried out abuses but also their commanding officers who sanctioned
them. Therefore, only those against whom direct or explicit criminal
liability was established could be prosecuted. By treating criminal
involvement narrowly, those responsible for commissioning
disappearances or failing to prevent them from being carried out were
placed beyond the reach of the courts (AHRC 1999). This meant UNP
politicians at all levels of government and high ranking officers who
conspired to cause disappearances, or who encouraged or supervised
officers carrying out disappearances or who failed to divulge
information about disappearances remained above the law. Given
these legal limitations and deficiencies, penal provisions proved to be
largely ineffective in combating disappearance.

Deficiencies in the investigation and prosecution of crimes relating to

disappearances are evident at every stage of the process. As described
in previous chapters, the lodgement of a formal complaint at a police
station, which is the first step in the legal process, was usually made
impossible by police refusing to acknowledge an offence and
document a complaint. Even when a complaint was documented,
however, the police resisted carrying out investigations due to the
complicity of colleagues, other government officials and politicians in
abuses such as that of joint police-military death squads (AHRC 1999;
Mr D, Matara District: Interview 1). Moreover, anyone appointed by a
local MP to serve as an officer-in-charge of a police station, a key
 256

position in the police structure, were “behold[en] to, and sometimes

virtually became a hostage of, the MP” (Police Commission 1995 Part
VI:5). Similarly, when investigations were conducted, direct political
influence was brought to bear where those responsible enjoyed the
patronage of their local MP (Police Commission 1995). During the
investigations into the Embilipitiya disappearances of 25 school
children following arrest by the army in 1989, it became evident that
the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) had conducted
investigations with the “object of safeguarding certain people” (Dias
2003:30). Witnesses in this case testified that their statements had not
been accurately recorded or were not read back to the complainants
for their confirmation. In other instances, police and military
personnel believed responsible for disappearances were not
transferred out of the area once named as suspects and could influence
proceedings by pressuring their fellow investigators or intimidating
witnesses and complainants. Reports of threats, harassment and
intimidation of complainants and witnesses were commonplace.

Once an investigation was taken over by the Disappearance

Investigation Unit (DIU) or CID within the Police Department, a case
could be aborted and the accused discharged if a complainant failed to
appear, even if their non-appearance meant that they were in hiding.
The DIU failed or refused to return files, particularly those relating to
senior officers, and the endless delays by the police testified to the
existence of a “brotherhood” where investigators sought to protect
fellow officers, especially senior officers at the expense of the junior
colleagues (Iqbal 2000:102-103). Furthermore, as the Asian Legal
Resource Centre (ALRC) noted, the prosecution system which
functioned within the Missing Persons Unit (MPU) of the Attorney
General’s Department (AGD) was “defective because it depends
entirely on the criminal investigation files to be made available by the
 257

police for the department to begin action on any crime” (ALRC

E/CN.4/2004/NGO/63:39). This enabled the AGD to use the excuse
that it had not prosecuted crimes because the police had not provided
the necessary files (ALRC E/CN.4/2004/NGO/63:39). The close
connection and collusion between the AGD and police (Francis
1994:143) was apparent in the way the AGD frustrated habeas corpus
petitions in the High Court (ICJ 2011:14), failed to act impartially,
misled Parliament and covered up an inquiry into deaths in state
custody (Pinto-Jayawardena 2009:163).

The MPU had been established within the AGD in July 1988, on the
recommendation of the presidential commissions, to study the prima
facie (‘on the first appearance’) evidence of responsibility in relation
to an estimated 3,000 cases (Iqbal 2000:101). It initiated criminal
proceedings against 500 police and armed force personnel in relation
to 270 cases of disappearances (WGEID 1999:
E/CN.4/2000/64/Add.1). However, as the AHRC observed some 12
years later, given the demonstrated lack of political will to see the
prosecutions succeed, the most likely outcome was that few if any
criminal investigations would be carried out and therefore few
prosecutions would be instituted (AHRC 2000). Similarly, Iqbal
concluded the same year that as they had “moved at a snail’s pace and
are not pursued in all earnest”, it is “highly unlikely that these cases
will end in convictions” (Iqbal 2000:109). Furthermore, at least 200
police and security force personnel identified by the presidential
commissions for their involvement in disappearance were not
interdicted from service by either the head of the police or the army
(Iqbal 2000:102; WGEID 1999: E/CN.4/2000/64/Add.1).
Demonstrating the extent to which the security forces enjoyed
impunity, the Minister of Defence failed to take action against its own
in contravention of a directive issued by the President (UNWGEID,
 258

E/CN.4/1997/34: 13 December 1996). Even individual officers

charged by the courts were reinstated by the Inspector General of
Police (IGP) (Dias 2003:32). Repeated calls by the UNWGEID to
appoint an independent body with the power to investigate and
prosecute such crimes were never going to be realised as long as
disappearance remained state practice and the security forces carried it
out.

The power of the judiciary to deal with matters concerning individual

freedom had been severely limited by emergency and national security
laws. The framework imposed by emergency legislation deprived the
judiciary of its normal powers to intervene in matters relating to arrest
and detention while the existence of undisclosed places of detention
effectively put “entire areas of the country outside the jurisdiction of
the courts” (Fernando 2010). Therefore, abduction without recourse to
any legal procedure, interrogation without records or supervision (and
often conducted in secret detention centres, paving the way for
torture), and the killing and disposal of the individual all took place
within a policy framework approved by the Executive President—a
framework underpinned by security laws and emergency powers
designed and approved by the Executive President. As Fernando
observed, the courts of Sri Lanka had no jurisdiction to challenge any
of these policies, whatever may be the consequences for individual
liberties. Although the courts have a legal obligation to uphold the
rights of the individual including against the abuse of authority by the
state, Fernando (2010) and others have argued that had the courts
taken such an approach, they would have found themselves at
loggerheads with the state because disappearance was covert state
policy. Rather than affront the state, the judiciary was forced into a
position of what Pinto-Jayawardena and Guneratne refer to as
“judicial conservatism” and “manifest reluctance by the courts to
 259

challenge the executive” evident from pre-independence to the

modern era (2011:xv, 225).

Under article 35 of the 1978 constitution, the head of the executive,

who is also the head of the government, is not answerable to the
courts—and therein lay the challenge for the judiciary. Indeed,
because the Executive Presidency had the power to make all policy
decisions relating to national security without having to answer to the
court, all decisions on the governance of the country were attributable
to the President and placed beyond the reach of the judiciary. As
Fernando observed, the judicial role to protect individual liberties was
thereby removed because the President could initiate security and
other national initiatives such as anti-terrorism without any
impediment, check or control by the courts. While the scope for
executive encroachment on rights increased by way of constitutional
intervention, the judiciary were marginalised and left to operate only
within a limited area for the protection of rights with substantial
limitations (Fernando 2010). At the same time, however, political
pressure was brought to bear on the judiciary with death threats issued
against individual magistrates and the integrity of due process was
systematically undermined by a refusal on the part of the government
to acknowledge and act upon orders and notices issued by the courts.
In November 1991 INFORM noted that the government had
deliberately blocked the implementation of over 100 decisions about
fundamental human rights matters handed down by the Supreme
Court (INFORM 1991b:1). At the same time, the police and security
forces exercised their impunity by deliberately ignoring orders to pay
compensation and failing to release people held in detention without
charge. When the decisions of the Supreme Court were ignored, it
being the highest court in the country and the only institution to which
 260

a person whose fundamental rights have been violated could appeal,

people had no other available legal recourse (INFORM 1991b:1).

Exercise by the judiciary of its remaining independence was seen as a

direct threat to the government’s authority. Any effort by the judiciary
to exert authority over state agents was undermined by its having to
operate within the confines of a “constitutional document that does
not include the right to life, permit public interest litigation, allow
challenges of legislative acts” or permit judicial review of enacted
legislation (even if unconstitutional) under article 80 of the 1978
constitution (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007d; Coomaraswamy & de los
Reyes 1994:286). When the PA came to power in 1994, there was no
radical shift towards greater judicial independence as anticipated and
in 1999 a close confidante of President Kumaratunga was appointed
Chief Justice. The fact that the benches were packed ensured that
decisions were consistent with the views of the political establishment.
Thereafter, judges and magistrates on lower courts were controlled by
transfers, disciplinary control and dismissal often “at the single nod
from the chief justice”. As Pinto-Jayewardene noted, the negative
impact of such action on the “credibility and internal discipline of the
judicial service is incalculable” (Pinto-Jayewardene 2007d). The
judiciary was further marred by “deficient record maintenance,
nepotism, corruption and lack of competence” (Joseph 2007:7).

Given the dysfunctions within the legal system and delays in court
proceedings, bribery became a common means to expedite
proceedings including “legitimate processes” or to influence a
decision (Marga Institute 2002:7). Delays in court proceedings merely
extended opportunities for bribery and further undermined the
integrity of the judicial system. Bribery was reported at every stage of
the judicial process and tainted those before the courts, magistrates
 261

and lawyers which confirmed in the mind of the public that justice
was not served and that the system existed to serve the interests of the
rich. This perception is captured by the widely held view that only the
poor end up in prison. In 2005 the Solicitor General stated that in 85
per cent of cases before the courts, the accused escaped liability
because they were able to frighten witnesses into staying away from
court to testify (AHRC 2005). Given the lengthy delay in criminal
cases, perpetrators of disappearances before the courts, who are
usually police and security force personnel, have literally years to
harass witnesses before being brought to trial (AHRC 2005).

Only a handful of prosecutions for crimes related to disappearance

were made because of the cumulative effect of the procedural
challenges at every stage of investigation and prosecution of offences,
as well as long delays in the judicial process, often brought about
deliberately by police and security force personnel, political
interference, patronage, corruption and lack of political. Statistics on
accountability of the security forces released by the government are
inconclusive, confusing and “hardly convincing” (HRW 2008:98).
Over 10 years from 1998 to 2007, and despite the fact that the various
inquiry bodies including the presidential commissions themselves
provided names to the government of suspected offenders against
whom there was prima facie evidence, only 27 police, military and
civil administrative officials, all of whom were of low rank, were
convicted of abductions and wrongful confinement (HRW 2008:100;
AI 2009:61; Nesiah & Keenan 2004:18). Although torture became an
institutionalised part of police and military operations, there were no
convictions for torture from the time of the enactment of the
Convention against Torture Act in 1994 to 2004 (Pinto-Jayawardena
2007). It should be emphasised that no senior officer or politician has
been indicted much less convicted for human rights abuses (Pinto-
 262

Jayawardena 2007). The view among Sri Lanka’s human rights

community was that the prosecution of individual low-ranked officers
gave the impression that their behaviour was “aberrant” thereby
enabling the state to deny the phenomenon of disappearance and
extrajudicial killing (INFORM 1992b:12). Indeed, UTHR-J noted that
during the trial of the accused in the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case,
the process failed to acknowledge the fact that the disappearance of
Ms Kumaraswamy and her relatives took place in a context in which
hundreds disappeared in Jaffna during that period and raised
suspicions that those involved were engaged in a “damage control
exercise” (UTHR-J 1999). By framing the offences as the actions of
an undisciplined few, the opportunity to construct a “social map of
violence that grapples with how the very fabric of our social divisions
produced the ‘willing executioners’ who sustained the violence of the
last decade” was totally lost (Nesiah & Keenan 2004:11). The
importance of constructing a social memory has taken on a heightened
importance given the fact that both the JVP and LTTE leadership were
effectively wiped out and important aspects of the violence and the
various perspectives of those engaged in it cannot be investigated
(Kloos 1997).

Of the successful prosecutions in relation to disappearance, two have

been extremely well documented and reported upon: the Krishanthi
Kumaraswamy case in which six soldiers were convicted of rape and
murder following a record two-year trial and the Embilipitiya case
resulting in the conviction of four army officers for abduction with the
intent to commit murder and wrongful confinement (Pinto-
Jayawardena 2007; Coomaraswamy & de los Reyes 2004:285). In a
climate in which there was almost no political will to investigate
complaints of disappearance, it was only intense pressure from the
domestic and international human rights community that generated
 263

sufficient will to prosecute these cases (Iqbal 2000:109). The

prosecution of 27 individuals encompasses, therefore, the totality of
justice for the tens of thousands of disappearances (Punyasena
2003:150) and exposes the response by law enforcement agencies as
completely inadequate (HRW 2008:101). Notwithstanding the
thousands of sworn affidavits submitted by various local and
international human rights organisations on behalf of families of the
disappeared over decades which have not been acted upon, many
other inquiry bodies have unearthed evidence which was never taken
up for inquiry. The presidential commissions identified perpetrators in
3,861 cases of disappearance with investigations initiated in relation
to 1,560 security force personnel of whom 597 were indicted (Pinto-
Jayawardena 2007e). The Human Rights Task Force (HRTF)
established in August 1991 with a mandate to monitor places of
detention commented on the failure to initiate inquiries into incidents
such as the Eastern University disappearances of September 1990
when 158 persons were arrested and disappeared in state custody,
despite the existence of credible evidence and provision of the names
of suspected perpetrators in its first report (Soza 1994). Similarly,
from its establishment in 1980 to 2001, the UNWGEID received
12,297 well-documented cases of disappearance from Sri Lanka
(UNWGEID E/CN.4/2002/79:53).

9.2.1 Embilipitiya

Approximately 50 high school students were believed to have been

detained, tortured and murdered in the Sevanagala army camp
between September 1989 and January 1990. It was only after years of
constant agitation by their families and supporters—not to mention a
special report by the Southern Commission presented to the president
about the disappearance of 52 Embilipitiya students in 1994—that the
 264

state charged nine suspects in the Ratnapura High Court in 1994 with
the disappearance of 25 people. In February 1999 six soldiers,
including the Brigadier Liyanage, and the principal of the high school
were convicted in the High Court of conspiring to abduct, actual
abduction and kidnapping of the students in order to murder and/or
with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine them (Pinto-
Jayawardena 2010b:55). They were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
After a long appeals process, the convictions of the principal and the
lower ranked soldiers were upheld in early 2002. Brigadier Liyanage,
the highest ranking officer, was acquitted on the grounds that no
evidence could be found linking him to the charges of abduction with
intent to kill despite the zonal commission’s findings that the children
had been detailed for long periods at the army camp where Liyanage
was in charge of (ICG 2007:5; Pinto-Jayawardena 2010b:55).

Following his acquittal, Brigadier Liyanage won a fundamental rights

case against his non-promotion to the rank of Major General. The
Supreme Court took the position that in the absence of direct
involvement in the disappearances, Liyanage merely occupied a
“place of authority in the chain of command” (Pinto-Jayawardena
2007). As the ICG noted, the concept of command responsibility was
not incorporated into domestic criminal law, the code of military
justice and the police disciplinary code enabling criminal liability on
the part of a military commander, high-ranking police officer and even
a political leader for actions of his/her subordinates even without
having directly ordered those actions (ICG 2007:28). This omission
along with the immunity enjoyed by high ranking officials and
politicians both under the law as well as emanating from a politicised
system are the primary reasons why they have yet to be indicted, let
alone convicted, of disappearance-related offences.
 265

The case is important not only because it led to convictions but also
because it disclosed the practices of the army following abduction and
provides insight, therefore, into the fate of the country’s disappeared.
Furthermore, it revealed the manner in which a school principal,
embroiled in a private dispute, used his connections with the army to
affect the disappearance of the school children. It also exposed as a
total fabrication allegations made by the army that the actions of its
soldiers related to operations against the JVP (UNWGEID 1999:8)
implying that they were somehow acting in self-defence. The idea that
causing the disappearance of children was a necessary component of a
counter-insurgency campaign and carried out, therefore, in self-
defence is remarkable. This case cannot be dismissed as an isolated
event, moreover, as more than 14 per cent of the disappeared across
three provinces involved children below 15 years of age (Fernando
1998). In light of the fact that the official line was that “excesses” on
the part of the security forces (implying disappearances among other
forms of state violence) were a consequence of the need to preserve
national security and social stability at all costs through defeat of
insurgency and terrorism, the Embilipitiya case totally undermined
both the rationale for recourse to disappearances as well as the
counter-insurgency strategies devised to justify recourse to such
abuses.

9.2.2 Krishanthi Kumaraswamy

Eighteen-year-old Tamil school student, Krishanthi Kumaraswamy,

was abducted at an army checkpoint in the Jaffna peninsula in
September 1996. Her mother, brother and a friend later disappeared
after making inquiries about her whereabouts the same day. The
bodies of all four were found in shallow graves the following month.
Eight soldiers and three police officers were arrested for abduction
 266

with intent to force illicit sexual intercourse, rape and murder of

which six soldiers were ultimately convicted and sentenced to death in
July 1998 (ICG 2007:5; Pinto-Jayawardena 2010b:52). On the basis of
the available evidence, the remaining suspects were charged in the
Magistrate's Court of Jaffna under section 357 of the Penal Code for
the abduction of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, and under section 296 for
committing the murder of Krishanthi and the three others.

Upon their convictions, Lance Corporal Rajapakse and his four co-
prisoners revealed knowledge of mass graves in the northern town of
Chemmani which were said to contain the bodies of hundreds of other
Tamils killed by the army. Fifteen bodies were eventually exhumed
from the site during a process initiated in June 1999, a year after the
revelations. The process was hampered by unfinished exhumations,
inconclusive DNA tests and political interference. The exposure of the
graves led to a series of investigations and legal cases involving
disappearances and killings that took place in Jaffna in 1996 and
despite the arrest of a number of soldiers and police, no indictments
were filed. One of the key problems with the Chemmani graves case
was that the case was not heard in the Magistrate’s Court in Jaffna but
rather transferred to the Magistrate’s Court in Colombo in response to
concerns raised by the army officers involved that their lives were at
risk in Jaffna. The petitioners had grave fears of travelling to Colombo
because they had to reveal to the military that they were travelling to
give evidence against the army in court in order to secure clearance to
travel (Mr Remadious, Centre for Human Rights and Development,
personal communication). In January 2006 the case came to an end
when police told the Colombo magistrate that they were unable to
proceed in the absence of instructions from the Attorney-General,
despite having handed over the findings of their investigations (ICG
2007: 5).
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The Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case is important not only because it

led to successful prosecutions which despite great hopes became an
exception to the rule of impunity. The case also revealed the manner
in which state terror operated and the licence which existed within the
army at the time to detain, torture and kill, as evidenced by the mass
graves at Chemmeni. Notwithstanding these important findings, the
judiciary and the defence sought to confine themselves to the specifics
of the case and by doing so, failed to consider both the wider context
in which people had disappeared and killed let alone the culture of
impunity in which the army operated at the time. Those who engaged
in these abuses believed that the army hierarchy and Defence Ministry
would cover up for them because they were carrying out orders of
superiors (UTHR-J 1999). As with the Embilipitiya cases, the
prosecution of these cases was as much about what was not said in
evidence regarding the details of who gave the orders, the number of
other people who disappeared in this manner and the wider context of
state terror in which such abuses took place.

9.3 Habeas corpus

Habeas corpus (literally, the right to claim and present one’s body in
front of a court) “curtails the exercise of arbitrary state violence by
defining the body of the citizen as an integral part of the sovereign
body of ‘the people’ and thus entitled to due process” and is
recognised as one of the elements on which the notion of citizenship
began (Marshall cited in Hansen & Stepputat 2005:10). It was in 1679
that the Parliament of England passed the Habeas Corpus Act which
enacted the right to be protected against arbitrary detention or
imprisonment and codified the procedures for issuing the writ years
before the 1689 English Bill of Rights otherwise recognised as the
landmark in the history of civil and political rights (Lauren 1998:14).
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Habeas corpus is an important safeguard against disappearance as

petitioners can use the remedy to find or locate an individual who has
disappeared while in state custody. A person can petition a court to
issue a writ of habeas corpus commanding the authorities to produce
the corpus (that is, the person) before the court so that it can then
determine the legality of the detention (AI 1994:124). Under Article
141 of the Sri Lankan Constitution, all persons are guaranteed the
right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention through the writ of
habeas corpus and this right is non-derogable even in times of
emergency. Apart from criminal prosecution, habeas corpus provided
the only legal recourse available to establish the whereabouts of
disappeared people. Mr Remadious, a lawyer for the Centre for
Human Rights and Development (CHRD), explained the application
process:

If the location where the corpus was arrested or disappeared

from is known, the case can be filed in the Provincial High
Court (under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution)
otherwise it has to be filed in the Court of Appeal in Colombo.
The petitioner must provide evidence of this location of arrest
whether through the first respondent who admits arrest in the
province or documented evidence. If the Provincial Council
accepts the case, it notifies the respondents and if the
respondents deny involvement in the arrest or disappearance,
the case must go to the lower court, the Magistrate’s Court. At
the Magistrate’s Court, a fact-finding inquiry is conducted. If
the Magistrate is satisfied that there is sufficient evidence of the
arrest or if there is any doubt created of security force
involvement (that is, involvement of a government body) it is
taken up.
- Mr Remadious, Centre for Human Rights and Development.
 269

Thereafter the Court of Appeal will direct the respondents and the IGP
to produce the corpus before the Magistrates Court or to disclose any
material about its whereabouts. Although the Court of Appeal might
find the respondent responsible for the arrest and custody of the
corpus, such a finding does not automatically lead to criminal
investigation and it is for the Attorney General to make such a
decision (Dias 2003:36). However, when criminal investigations are
taken up, they are carried out by the police who, as previously detailed,
were far from impartial. If the court establishes the allegation of the
petitioner that the respondent is responsible for the corpus, payment of
“exemplary costs” can be awarded to the petitioner.

There were 2,925 habeas corpus petitions filed between 1988 and
1997 including over 600 in 1989 alone for people whose whereabouts
were unknown and who were alleged to have been kept in unlawful
detention. Of them, 272 had not been concluded by the beginning of
2000. Most of these cases took over five years to conclude and only a
few of them were proven to have been of adequate merit to require
court intervention (Iqbal 2002:112; Human Rights Committee 1990:
CCPR/C/42/Add.9). The reasons for this relate to a number of
procedural, political and economic challenges before petitioners. They
found themselves up against a system focused on securing the
impunity of the perpetrator and concealing the nature and extent of
state terror rather than on justice and adherence to due process. Indeed,
consideration of the habeas corpus process is an examination of the
characteristics of impunity which combined to ensure that those who
carried out state-sponsored abuses would not be held to account and
the facts of disappearances never revealed.

In the case of habeas corpus, the burden of proof to establish beyond

a reasonable doubt that a victim has been arrested and taken into state
 270

custody is placed on the petitioner (ICJ 2011:12). Habeas corpus

petitions that fail to identify the specific authorities responsible for an
arrest or abduction leading to disappearance have, of course, little
chance of success (Dias 2003:37). Given that most of those
disappearances were believed to have been carried out by agents of
the state, the state’s denials of involvement made this burden
“impossible to discharge” (ICJ 2011:12). As many interviewees from
both contexts of violence asserted, it was extremely difficult to
distinguish police personnel from army officials and in other instances,
the perpetrators deliberately concealed their identity. Even when
officers wore their uniform in the course of an arrest, it was almost
impossible to distinguish members of the Special Task Force,
deployed in the east, from army personnel. The northern commission
concluded that “most of the officers and soldiers who participated in
the arrests could not be identified” (North & East Commission
1997b:3). Moreover, even when the petitioner was able to establish
the identity of the perpetrator, evidence before the various
disappearance commissions revealed that the security forces
transferred people from police stations to army camps to detention
facilities, ensuring that it was near impossible to establish exactly
where their relative was initially taken let alone their whereabouts
over time. Secrecy was maintained because if the detainee was killed
in custody either during or following torture, as was likely, it would
obstruct efforts by relatives and others from locating their loved one
and from seeking corrective measures. According to lawyer, Mr
Thayaparan from Home for Human Rights (HHR) in the northern
Vavuniya District, to further frustrate efforts of families and
organisations such as the ICRC, security force personnel in the north
would often swap the names of detainees to claim that “such-and-such
a detainee is this person and is detained under different legislation
etc.” (Mr Thayaparan, HHR, personal communication). Such
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strategies require complicit people, institutional support and political

will. A substantial number of security force personnel and public
servants were, therefore, involved at various stages in the arrest or
abduction, detention and torture, disappearance and extrajudicial
execution of detainees or had specific knowledge about such
operations. The All-Island Commission report noted that in one
incident alone, 270 state officials were implicated (2001:10). All those
involved at every level of government and within the security forces
and police had a vested interest in ensuring that such crimes were not
uncovered through the habeas corpus procedure.

Many families declined to submit a habeas corpus petition for fear

that such action would result in retaliatory action against their
disappeared relative. As Mr Kandasamy noted in relation to families
in Trincomalee, Jaffna, and Amparai among other places, many
families believed that their children were detained at various army
camps and that if they filed a case, their child would be killed (CHRD,
personal communication). Others felt too intimidated or were subject
to threats which discouraged them from seeking an effective remedy
(Human Rights Committee 2003: CCPR/CO/79/LKA). The
substantial costs and lack of legal literacy were other major
impediments. Of those that chose to take legal action, some were
unable to find a lawyer willing to represent them given the likelihood
that they would also be subjected to death threats and intimidation for
taking up the petition. Such challenges remained throughout the
process as prolonged delays imposed a heavy financial and emotional
burden on petitioners forcing many to withdraw their applications
(Iqbal 2000:112).

A total lack of political will to bring those responsible for the arrest
and detention of disappeared people to account affected every stage of
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the legal process in habeas corpus cases, rendering it totally

dysfunctional. From 1994 to 2002 habeas corpus cases were primarily
taken up by relatives of people who had disappeared during the
southern insurrection with a few during the conflict in the north and
east. After 1998 most cases were from the north and east (Fernando
2010). However, a study of 884 Appeal Court decisions between 1994
and 2002 undertaken by Pinto-Jayawardena and Guneratne revealed a
pattern of impunity on the part of army and security force personnel
who comprised the majority of respondents. In 390 of the 884 cases,
applications were dismissed on the word of counsel for the respondent
that the detainee had been indicted without supporting evidence.
Twenty-one petitions were dismissed upon withdrawal by counsel on
the grounds that the corpus had been produced before a Magistrate or
located in custody-again, decisions made on the basis of the word of
counsel without supporting evidence were common (Pinto-
Jayawardena & Guneratne 2011:xxiii). In 411 instances the court
relied exclusively on the word of the state counsel about the facts of
the case without resort to any other corroborating documentation or
supporting evidence. Such tactics were evident during the 1980s, as
Mr G, recalled when the courts relied totally on the word of the
respondent. In 1986 he went to the courts in Colombo to pursue the
January 1985 disappearance of his son who vanished in STF custody
in Karaitivu, Amparai District. “They didn’t take any action. They
postponed the date. The second time I was called they informed me to
come but I sent a letter. The court said that they didn’t arrest any boy
at Karaitivu. The government said it had not arrested. Thereafter no
answer!” he said (Mr G, Amparai District: Interview 13).

Respondents demonstrated the extent of political influence they could

exercise in various ways: by eliciting the postponement of habeas
corpus hearings because they alleged that their absence was due to
 273

official duties (Southern Commission 1997b:105), or by delaying

proceedings with requests to transfer cases to Colombo, further
disadvantaging petitioners who mostly resided elsewhere and had to
face the costs and risks of travelling to Colombo and through various
military checkpoints along the way.

Cases were often delayed for up to three years before even the
preliminary inquiry was held (ICJ 2011:13), and as previously noted,
habeas corpus cases commonly take five years to conclude while
some have taken 10 years or more. Delays can threaten to undermine
the purpose of the remedy. Article 9(4) of the ICCPR provides that an
arrested or detained person should be brought before a judge or
authorised officer “promptly”. Delays also gave respondents and their
peers more opportunities to threaten and coerce petitioners, witnesses
and magistrates to dissuade petitioners from pursuing cases (Mr
Thayaparan, HHR, personal communication). It became usual practice
for petitioners to remain on duty pending the determination of the
petition and because Sri Lanka had no witness protection program, the
risk to witnesses, petitioners and their families only increased. Delays
in concluding habeas corpus applications also affected any criminal
investigations that followed including the evidence gathering required.
Delays could also diminish the interest of lawyers or the sponsoring
organisation, usually an NGO, which could then change its policy and
stop pursuing habeas corpus cases. This would result in the
withdrawal of funding for legal representation provided to petitioners
(Shantha Pathirana, OPFMD, personal communication).

In almost every case, the petitioner took up a habeas corpus case with
the expectation that during the course of their testimony, the
perpetrators would reveal their involvement in the crime and provide
information about the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared.
 274

Lawyers on the other hand have focused on pursuing compensation or

“exemplary costs” and the issue of a death certificate on behalf of
their clients. However, in the end, when the perpetrator was not forced
to reveal what happened and safe in the knowledge of their own
impunity, persistently denied any involvement, petitioners and their
families lost faith in the system. As Mr Remadious explained:

At the end of the cases, the families have no faith in the judicial
system as the perpetrators even in torture or murder cases get of
free, the families receive little compensation if any and in the
case of habeas corpus they don’t get to establish whether their
family member is alive or dead.
- Mr Remadious, Centre for Human Rights and Development.

For the petitioners, therefore, habeas corpus in the Sri Lankan

experience provided neither a safeguard to protect the liberty of the
corpus by forcing its production or a clear and unambiguous answer
about their fate. Ironically, it was the very absence of a body that
sparked hope for the families. Furthermore, petitioners often have had
to endure not only intimidation from respondents or their peers but
also their repeated denials of responsibility before the court. This not
only undermined any faith a petitioner may have had in the process
but by rubbing salt into the wounds, compounded rather than provided
remedy for their anguish. Despite the dysfunction of the process and
the lack of political will shown by the law enforcement authorities to
investigate the petitioner’s claims, petitioners also have had to deal
with the “disregard for witness protection and a manifest lack of
sensitivity or concern for victims” by the police and the judiciary (ICJ
2011:10). The fact that the courts dismissed cases on the word of the
respondent demonstrates, moreover, the degree of impunity with
which respondents acted as well as the impotence of a politicised
 275

judiciary which was subordinate to “rule by politics” rather than rule

of law (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007d:41).

While acknowledging these fundamental flaws in the process, many

human rights NGOs encourage families of the disappeared to pursue
habeas corpus cases. OPFMD asserts to its clients that compensation
awarded to them serves as a form of state acknowledgement for
wrongdoing and the writ of habeas corpus serves to hold the
government to account (Shantha Pathirana, OPFMD, personal
communication). Similarly, Mr Kandasamy of the CHRD explained
the three basic aims of the organisation in filing habeas corpus
applications on behalf of the relatives of the disappeared:

Number one: to bring the perpetrators to court in order to

expose them as responsible and the complicity of the state in
such abuses and to publicise internationally such responsibility.
Number two: to secure a death certificate from the District
Court.
Number three: to secure compensation from the District Court.
Thus, there are two main overall directives in taking such an
approach: one-human rights campaigning and two-ensuring that
victims are compensated.
- Mr Kandasamy, Centre for Human Rights and Development.

Although such efforts are fundamentally important in seeking to bring

the state to account, the process is extremely difficult for the families
involved. Given, moreover, that the process does not provide what it
should, petitioners are left at the end with no answers and little by way
of compensation while perpetrators remain untouched. Ultimately, the
process upholds the impunity of the perpetrators and victimises the
victims.
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9.4 Disappearance commissions

The most prolific and long-running of all the commissions were those
established by a newly-installed PA government in 1994. Fulfilling its
pre-election promise to establish commissions into disappearances,
the PA sought to distance itself from the former UNP regime by
ending state-sponsored terror and impunity and ushering in a new era
of accountability, democracy, demilitarisation and peace (Nesiah &
Keenan 2004:1). President Kumaratunga appointed three
geographically focused commissions in November 1994 to consider
the causes and remedies of involuntary removals and disappearances
including the possibility of prosecution where credible evidence
implicating specific perpetrators was uncovered. The three
commissions presented their final reports to the President in July and
September 1997 and an All-Island Commission was then appointed in
April 1998 to consider only outstanding cases of the three previous
commissions. That commission submitted its report to the president in
May 2000. The commission’s findings were then made public in June
2002 despite the official date of publication listed as March 2001.

The mandates of the commissions have been criticised for deliberately

avoiding the period 1984 to 1988—this period has never been
inquired into. The methodology of the commissions was to investigate
individual cases, identify specific laws and human rights norms that
were violated and identify perpetrators of the violations. They were
then to determine the specific state action required to punish
perpetrators, provide reparations to the victims and put in place
security sector reform to prevent a recurrence of specific crimes. The
commissions were not expected to address the structural inequalities,
underlying grievances, ideological structures or material conditions
that gave rise to the violence. This meant the opportunity to connect
 277

the struggle over resources with that of disappearances was lost

(Nesiah & Keenan 2004:8). The commissions certainly acknowledged
the role of the political elite in directing and orchestrating the violence,
but without consideration of the wider political project of the ruling
party and its ideological underpinnings, they were unable to
demonstrate that the roots of the violence lay in a clash between those
who defended the established order and those who were against it or
had no stake in it. By defining their terms of reference, the
government could strenuously avoid exposing the root causes, vested
interests and political framework which gave rise to disappearances.
This meant the government was able to avoid implicating the political
elite given that “[m]any in powerful positions politically and militarily
were directly involved in or profited from the disappearances in some
way and the government was unwilling to take on the elite” (Mrs V,
Matara District: Interview 2). Although the commissions
recommended that impunity be addressed, there was no discussion of
the ideological basis of political violence which otherwise prescribed,
directly led to or attempted to legitimise such acts. As the
commissions’ reports were unable to expose the illegitimacy of the
ideology underpinning the use of state violence against its own
citizenry, the PA was not forced to defend why it perpetuated a regime
of political violence. The All Island Commission report focused on the
failures of state security force practices. Its recommendations detailed
reforms to state institutions and legislation to address “indiscipline”
within the security forces. While the commissions were mandated to
focus on legal rules in relation to arrest and detention procedures, the
All Island Commission’s approach in detailing legal process failed to
recognise the dimensions of state power and the manner in which
violence was orchestrated against various groups in the exercise of
that power (Nesiah & Keenan 2004:10).
 278

Having received written and oral evidence from thousands of

complainants across the country, the commissions described the
pattern of arrest, detention, disappearance and execution by primarily
state officials and provided some insight into the manner in which
political impunity operated from the lowest to highest levels of
government. Despite the constraints before them including the lack of
cooperation by the police force and armed services who were not
compelled to appear, threats to complainants and efforts to interfere
with the process, the commissions’ reports provide an account of the
manner in which arbitrary power was systematically wielded by both
state and non-state actors with the sanction of the ruling party at the
highest level. The thousands of petitioners who came before the
commissions revealed how disappearances were the culmination of a
series of events which had their origins in threats from ruling party
politicians or their supporters. Ultimately, therefore, the reports
provide an official record of the state’s abuses against its own
citizenry. However, in relation to the Embilipitiya and Krishanthi
Kumaraswamy cases, as well as in other cases, evidence before the
respective presidential commissions was not relevant to the
prosecution and did not appear to have been noted by the High Court
or Court of Appeal as a way of, at the very least, providing context to
such cases (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007c; Pinto-Jayawardena &
Guneratne 2011:179). It is logical that the courts were not able to
draw on specific cases documented by the commissions because the
Evidence Ordinance applies to criminal cases while the commissions
were able to come to a finding based on a balance of probability (Iqbal
2002). However, what is not clear is why the courts chose not to draw
on the work of the commissions to establish an understanding of the
modus operandi used by state officials to carry out disappearances.
The omission rendered the findings largely useless in a criminal
justice sense. Furthermore, within such a legal framework where
 279

commission evidence was non-admissible in judicial proceedings, all

that can result is the prosecution of junior officers who physically
carried out the abuses while those behind them who gave the orders
and indeed the system that encouraged such actions were left
untouched (Pinto-Jayawardena 2007b). As previously noted, the
evidence unearthed by the commissions about perpetrators against
whom there was prima facie evidence was handed over to the
President under confidential cover for further investigation and
prosecution but was not acted upon. Many of those named in the
confidential annexes to the Central Commission’s report included
ministers of Cabinet rank and 27 other senior MPs, 14 provincial
council members, 12 Grama Niladhari, 27 police superintendents, 51
OICs, 12 army captains and four majors (Vitatchi 1998). Many of
these politicians remain active in the political arena including as
ministers in the 2002 United Front government (Pinto-Jayawardena
2010b:80; Keenan 2002:5). The families of the disappeared are clear
about their chances of seeing involved politicians in court as
evidenced by the following statement by Mrs V:

All are guilty parties. MP Piyasiri was in the government party

when the terror took place and now is under Mangala
Samaraweera in the alliance. No minister wants to take a fellow
minister to the courts. They just change the sides.
- Mrs V, Matara District: Interview 2.

A number of named security force personnel went onto hold high rank
including that of major general or deputy inspect-general and others
continued to serve in their posts (UNWGEID 1999:9; Hoole 1999).
The families of the disappeared have witnessed a direct correlation
between the involvement of such officials in disappearance and their
promotion to higher office. Even though many recognise that
 280

prosecutions in such a context are highly unlikely, they hope for some
form of recognition or acknowledgement:

I think if we can arrange some sort of open discussion amongst

the responsible government officers and personnel and the
parents and share and let open the real happenings during that
period and let the parents know this is how your child was
killed and we are sorry, then we can forget it on one condition
that we both promise that it will never take place in the future.
- Jayanthi Dandeniya, Families of the Disappeared.

Unfortunately, some sort of acknowledgement of wrongdoing or

apology are extremely remote given that such officials went on to
enjoy prestigious posts rather than legal or political sanction by way
of prosecution, loss of position or public shame. The message to the
families of the disappeared from those in power was that their actions
were at the very least justifiable.

The commissions all emphasised the need to enforce accountability at

every level of government and public service in their
recommendations. They recognised the need for legal action to
address impunity and political action to safeguard against the excesses
of state power and thereby prevent a repeat of history.
Recommendations focused on establishing mechanisms to facilitate
expeditious and impartial prosecutorial action and reform of the
security forces. Particular attention was given to ensuring that officials
with chain-of-command responsibility were criminally liable, that
private armies sponsored by politicians were eliminated, and that the
ERs were reformed including that which permitted the disposal of
bodies without inquiry or inquest. They also recommended enforced
compliance with existing requirements about record keeping in
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relation to detainees and arrest receipts as well as the immediate

closure of secret and unauthorised places of detention and public
access to information on all places of detention. Both the Southern
Commission and All-Island Commission recommended that a special
committee be established under the auspices of the National Human
Rights Commission (NHRC) to record evidence of perpetrators and
recommend amnesty for those who confessed their participation in
violations and provided full evidence of accompanying circumstances.
They also recommended establishing an Independent Human Rights
Prosecutor to conduct prosecutions of human rights violations
generally and specifically in regard to disappearance. The All Island
Commission’s recommendations that enforced disappearance
constitute a crime and that the concept of command responsibility be
legally recognised echoed those of the UNWGEID following visits to
the country in 1991, 1992 and 1999 (UNWGEID E/CN.4/2002/79:53).
However, none of these recommendations from the Southern or All-
Island commissions have ever been realised. Similarly, the All-Island
Commission recommendation that those state officials against whom
criminal and or disciplinary proceedings were initiated be interdicted
from service has been ignored. The commissions, like the UNWGEID,
emphasised that the PTA and ERs should be either abolished or
harmonised with internationally accepted human rights standards. For
its part, the UNWGEID has also repeatedly called for the prohibition
of enforced disappearance to be included as a fundamental right in the
constitution. However, the government has never issued instructions
to carry out the UNWGEID recommendations leaving Sri Lanka
without a procedure for dealing with UN human rights
recommendations despite such obligations under the ICCPR. Further,
the Sri Lankan government has at no stage explained why it has not
promulgated a law making enforced disappearance a crime or taken
any action to draft such a law (ALRC E/CN.4/2004/NGO/63:39).
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Although the commission reports make comprehensive

recommendations in the area of criminal justice reform, most remain
unimplemented. The PA’s commitment to human rights had
disintegrated in parallel with its dependence upon the security forces
to fight the LTTE and its reliance on the ERs to assert power and
uphold patronage. That is why much of the evidence uncovered by the
commission was ignored or politically manipulated. Emergency and
anti-terrorist laws remained in place, the media and those advocating
an alternative polity were censored or repressed, and institutionalised
violence remained the primary means of governance—all of which
prevented progress towards any form of national dialogue let alone
reconciliation triggered by the commissions. The PA may never have
had genuine political will to implement the commissions’
recommendations, but it used them to placate the international and
local human rights community and embarrass its political opponents
while simultaneously engaging in disappearances. The PA’s concept
of restorative justice focused largely on the political responsibility of
the previous regime rather than a victim-centred accountability and
truth telling process. Transitional justice policy was directed at
upholding the moral and political legitimacy of the ruling party rather
than any attempt at social reconstruction. Rather than “anchor its
legitimacy in the recognition of victims and its response to
perpetrators” (Humphrey 2012:49), and “create a consensus
concerning events about which the community was deeply divided”
(Grandin 2005:55), the PA legitimised and maintained existing
divisions. Within this context, the trauma of the families of the
disappeared remained unresolved as efforts were directed to the bigger
concern of ongoing political competition, exclusion and one-
upmanship at the expense of a new ethos of political inclusion, human
rights and social reconciliation.
 283

Because disappearances still continue, such recommendations remain

as relevant today, some 15 years after they were originally presented
to President Kumaratunga. The reality is that the legal framework in
which disappearances and other abuses were committed have not
undergone any fundamental change and nor has the “basic
constitutional structure” that made these acts and supporting
extraordinary legislation possible (Fernando 2004:xix). The PA may
have demonstrated some initial intent to investigate disappearances
and bring those responsible to book, but it was unwilling to challenge
the armed forces engaged in a war with the LTTE and dismantle the
institutions of state violence upon which it, like its predecessor, relied
(Thomson 2013). For those who provided evidence to the
commissions, compensation was the only tangible benefit as there was
no effort made by the government to dismantle the structures of power
and impunity that sanctioned disappearances and resolve the ongoing
trauma associated with them, as Mrs K explained:

The Presidential Commissions didn’t inform us very much. It is

meaningless. I got Rs 15,000 compensation. When I got it my
two sons were in the camps so the money was spent on going to
see them. I had to go for a few days to get the compensation to
the Grama Sevaka for the death certificate to the courts and
other places and for some trouble to get the money.
- Mrs K, Matara District: Interview 4.

Interviews with families of the disappeared demonstrated the extent to

which they came to recognise the commissions as a mechanism of
state welfare rather than transitional justice and human rights. As
state-sponsored welfare had become interwoven with election
victories, compensation came to be seen as state benefits distributed
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within the context of national politics and as a reward for a PA victory

rather than as part of a reconciliation process (de Silva 2006:193).
State benefits as the “levers of political patronage” reflected and
contributed to divisiveness within the community (Gunasekera 1992
cited in de Silva 2006:200). Distribution of the compensation became
a political affair as elaborate election-style ceremonies were
conducted at which local MPs rallied support for the government by
condemning the former regime. Many interviewees recognised that
this politicised use of compensation was a way of rewarding them to
keep quiet. Mrs W recalled that when her expectations that the
commissions would eventuate in prosecutions went unrealised, the
politicians used compensation to pacify the families in the same way
as “money is distributed when they come to power”. Compensation
was an attempt to encourage people to “just forget about it” and just
“like giving a toffee to a child, to take your memories away” (Mrs W,
Kurunegala District: Interview 4). Mr D felt compromised for
accepting compensation. He argued that: “We were the people beaten
by the terror. They gave us Rs. 15,000 but I wish they never gave it at
all so I like to stay independent. It was shut-up money because after
receiving the money, we can’t question about him [disappeared son]
anymore” (Mr D, Matara District: Interview 1). As one of the few
commissions’ recommendations that were acted upon, compensation
became another tool for the ruling party to affirm politicised social
divisions and undermine any prospect for collective recognition and
action. Such divisions were driven further by the discriminatory
manner in which compensation was awarded leading to additional
grievances within and between families and communities as
previously detailed. Rather than challenging the concept that
victimhood emanated from the ‘other’, the politicisation of
compensation and the opportunistic approach taken by the PA to the
commission reports confirmed polarised positions which were
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exploited yet again for political advantage. While the commission

reports themselves provide a “narrative about the entire nation’s
trauma” (Minow 1998:57), they came to be seen as a political
mechanism through which the victims were silenced, isolated and
politicised. Furthermore, by drawing selectively on the commissions’
findings, the PA used both the inquiry and compensation distribution
processes to remind the nation of the UNP’s regime of terror while
simultaneously retaining many of its elements in the pursuit of
remaining in power.

The commission reports are an historical memory of political violence,

conflict and state terror. However, the All Island Commission report
was published in virtual secrecy and its public release was delayed by
the president for more than two years. As Keenan noted, the report
had in effect “fallen into the void” (2002:5). The other reports have
not been widely disseminated and have not, therefore, provided clarity
about the different sources of violence and who was responsible for
particular disappearances and their motives. Not a single person of the
87 interviewed for this study, for example, had seen a copy of the
reports. Without establishing the facts, informed public debate let
alone the ability to challenge impunity is made all but impossible. It is
important for all Sri Lankans to understand how state institutions were
politicised and manipulated by those in power and the characteristics
of impunity and patterns of terror instituted by the state to abuse and
silence its own citizenry. Without such public recognition and clarity,
secrets and rumour about those involved and their motives will
continue, given that much of the knowledge within the community is
personal. Moreover, as other chapters have detailed, because all
political sides appropriated terror, they have a tendency to recreate
history, rewrite their involvement in the violence and sheet blame to
the other side—and all the while the official records remain
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deliberately ambiguous. As Keenan argued, “people know and they

don’t know” (2002:8). Wide dissemination and public discussion of
the commissions’ reports would provide the facts necessary for Sri
Lankans to build a social memory and a history of state terror which
would serve as a powerful means to demand answers and challenge
impunity.

9.5 Rise of the underworld

As this chapter has demonstrated, Sri Lanka’s investigative and

prosecutorial system is seriously flawed and politically compromised.
When entering the judicial system, the fundamental question for a
court user is whether or not they are going to receive justice. The
Marga Institute survey found, however, that 76 per cent of
respondents saw the justice system as serving to some extent only the
rich and powerful and 84 per cent believed that political pressures
influenced the judicial system completely or partially (Marga Institute
2002:59). The lack of independent investigation and a hostile
prosecutorial and overarching legal system have “led to victims being
penalized at all stages of the process”, from that of attempts to lodge
information at a police station to legal proceedings, resulting “in many
victims and witnesses being coerced and compelled to change their
testimony, again reinforcing the cycle of impunity that prevails”
(Pinto-Jayawardena 2010:6). The various national institutions and
mechanisms that should safeguard human rights have failed to deliver
adequate protection and there remains to be adequate investigation
and credible public accounting for the vast majority of cases of
disappearance.

Without legal accountability for human rights violations, public

confidence in the rule of law has declined to the point where little
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public will remains. A total loss of confidence in the police, as evident

in Sri Lanka, is recognised as one of the greatest obstacles in crime
prevention. Not only have the courts failed to provide any guarantee
of personal security or redress against state violence but they have
been more likely to “destabilise political compromises that could help
mitigate Sri Lanka’s enduring social fissures” (ICG 2009:1). The ICG
held that in the context of the conflict with the LTTE, the Supreme
Court had “reached out to invalidate arrangements fashioned to
achieve difficult political compromise” while entrenching a vision of
Sinhalese nationalism, political centrality and the unitary state (ICG
2009:1). Any move towards transitional justice would require the
courts to uphold civil and political rights—a remote prospect so long
as successive governments recognise the potential of the judiciary to
serve as an alternative apparatus of political power and bastion against
executive action.

This thesis has demonstrated the manner in which state terror operated
with impunity and the politicisation of public institutions including
law enforcement and the judiciary, as well as public protests and
movements such as the Mothers’ Front, left Sri Lankans trapped in a
political system that conspired against them. Political neutrality in Sri
Lanka is non-existent as everything and everyone is politicised.
Although there are many political movements in the country, there is
no unifying rights or peace movement which would otherwise serve as
a neutral space for citizens to gather and debate free of the constraints
brought about by political manipulation in the service of powerful
vested interests. This is a political system where those responsible for
grave human rights violations remain in power including not only the
major parties but also the pro-state Tamil paramilitary groups
including EPDP which entered the democratic process in 1994
without any recognition of wrongdoing or the imposition of legal
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sanctions. The accumulative effect of such actions coupled with the

processes that brought about disappearances has produced deep
cynicism within Sri Lankan society about politics and the institutions
of governance:

Politics means, the main idea of politicians is to oppress the

people. In those days, politicians really wanted to lead the
community but now days they want to hold onto the chair ...
Never looking into the wellbeing of the community.
- Mrs K, Jaffna District: Interview 9.

With little remaining faith in the rule of law and those responsible to
uphold it and protect the citizenry, people lose interest or incentive to
uphold the law themselves. For those who recognise such institutions
as not only corrupt but also actively involved in abusing its own
citizenry and concealing its actions, regard for any semblance of the
rule of law has been shattered. Having a stake in the system and a
sense of public good and community benefit has been replaced by a
narrow focus on personal and private interests with violence providing
opportunities that people would not otherwise entertain. The most
common means of alternative justice are bribery and violence (AHRC
2006) which provide short-cuts to settling criminal, political or civil
disputes. Bribery, as previously noted, is rampant in the justice system
and summary justice by murder or assault is usually carried out with
the assistance of the underworld which the AHRC noted in 2006 has
increasingly replaced the courts as a means of adjudication.

Collapse of faith in the due process and political system has led to
community reliance on underworld gangsters whose ranks are fuelled
by army deserters with the necessary training and weapons to perform
contract killings. At the same time, however, the political patronage
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enjoyed by the underworld has its origins in the 1970s when rampant
corruption provided a space for the underworld to grow to the point
where everyone “vying for a social position had to obtain the
patronage of these criminal elements” and politicians and the
underworld became mutually dependent (Fernando 2004:x).
According to Fernando, the underworld has effectively taken over the
function of law enforcement agencies because it is far speedier,
effective and efficient than the legal process. It has also taken over the
election process which has become a contest between criminals
supporting one party or another (Fernando 2010b:21). At the same
time, the underworld has provided the ruling elite with another pretext
to abduct or intimidate political competition and outspoken opponents
while the police, under pressure to control crime, resort to torturing
detainees regardless of the offence of which they are suspected. This
dynamic is reflected in comments by Gotabaya Rajapaksa in relation
to more recent disappearances. Mr Rajapaksa dismissed the number of
recent disappearances as “inflated” while upholding the view that
those alleged to have disappeared were “criminals” and implying a
connection with the underworld or the “victims of kidnapping for
ransom”. By suggesting that any allegation of government
involvement in disappearances was part of a lie to give the “wrong
image of Sri Lanka by the rump of the LTTE who is remaining
outside and trying to damage the image of Sri Lanka”, Mr Rajapaksa
sought to create suspicion about the motives of the victims and
surviving relatives of the disappeared (Haviland 2012).

Violence has become an institutionalised way of life in Sri Lanka as

evidenced by the systematic torture of detainees in police custody on
which the police relies to extract confessions, election violence, the
dramatic rise in violent (and unsolved) crime, and constant reports of
the brutal treatment of school children by teachers and principals.
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Without proper mechanisms to resolve dispute and grievances,

disappearances and other serious violations have continued to take
place. Given, moreover, that thousands of disappearances, political
violence and terror were perpetrated by a range of different actors at
different times—including civilians on the basis of personal rivalries
and disputes—address of such abuses and the underlying structural
inequalities that gave rise to violence requires much more than basic
reform of the administration. Total reconstruction of the political
structure directed at greater decentralisation of power would serve as a
start.
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CHAPTER 10
Political imagination

I
n Sri Lanka, ongoing large-scale disappearance did not produce a
strong human rights movement to challenge impunity nor did it
result in the effective mobilisation of global human rights to hold
the Sri Lankan government to account. Elections, commissions of
inquiry and criminal investigations were mechanisms utilised by the
Sri Lankan state to maintain a façade of democracy, rule of law and
accountability in order to avoid scrutiny and uphold impunity. Within
this context, disappearance groups and their individual members have
not provided a starting point for any social reconstruction of Sri
Lankan society but continue to serve a politicised agenda. Their
ongoing trauma is exploited to shame political opponents and validate
polarised political viewpoints while demands for justice and rights
expressed by them are politicised to delegitimise their claims and
affirm their ‘otherness’. The extent to which the ambiguous status of
the wives/widows of the disappeared was exploited by their families,
communities and political leaders to undermine their moral integrity
and social standing for economic and political advantage reveals the
gendered nature of violence which served as a mechanism of social
control to exploit existing social divisions. The fact that these
survivors of political violence, rather than the institutions and leaders
responsible for it, came to personify the turmoil and disorder within
local communities ensured their continued exploitation, justified their
exclusion from within their own communities and further
delegitimised their claims. By perpetuating untruths and rumours
about the sources of violence including the view that the survivors
were the source of disorder rather than its outcome, the state
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politicised their claims as dangerous and divisive to avoid

accountability and justify the continued imposition of emergency rule
and widespread repression of particular groups with impunity.

Over the past three decades of political violence in Sri Lanka,

disappearance was used to eliminate political competition, immobilise
an alternative political imagination and deny the possibility of
collective action. Democratic institutions, judicial independence and
public administration were eroded and politicised by an executive
intent on manipulating fears about the threat of non-state violence to
justify the centralisation of power and impunity. By impeding the
verification of reality, disappearance provided the means by which the
political elite could manipulate power and exploit state resources to
advance its own cause while encouraging the convergence of myth
and rumour about political violence to create a society deeply
polarised along political lines and unable to distinguish common
ground on which to rebuild.

While disappearance emerged as a counter-insurgency tactic with the

purpose of securitising those classified as ‘dangerous' and producing
political consent through fear, the phenomenon has its origins in early
contemporary Sri Lankan history. Following Sri Lanka's
independence, the national political agenda became a sphere of
competition for resources, power and autonomy based on patronage,
class and ethnic lines which excluded the vast majority. At the same
time, political engagement brought to the fore existing grievances
while political violence and patronage politics created new grievances
and divisions as politics became a condition of collective moral
disorder. This study considered the various forces and factors which
led to the systematic erosion of integrity systems and the politicisation
of Sri Lankan society, providing scope for an alternative political
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apparatus or shadow state to flourish. Under the auspices of nation

building and national security, the executive compromised the
independence of democratic institutions, the courts and public
administration by manipulating public fears and exploiting
dependence on state welfare. The longstanding state of emergency
which characterised every administration since 1947 was used to
justify the centralisation of power and create a culture of impunity
enabling those in power to enforce their arbitrary will on the Sri
Lankan citizenry. The imposition of a state of emergency and the
extraordinary powers bestowed on the police and security forces
provided the perfect cover for dealing with the ruling party’s political
and personal rivalries from the highest to lowest levels of power.
Within this context, the practice of disappearance came to signify the
exercise of absolute power by those who were able to utilise the state
apparatus for their own interests. Political manipulation carried out
through disappearances, extrajudicial killings and the secret disposal
of bodies by state agents acting unofficially on behalf of the state led
to a wider transformation of the political system itself. While
maintaining a façade of legality, the legal process was totally
misdirected through prolonged imposition of emergency regulations
and anti-terrorist legislation which provided scope for political
interference and strengthened the shadow state. A democratic system
based on the rule of law was transformed by efforts to eliminate all
political rivals and replaced with a system of patronage and repression.
The practice of disappearance within the Sri Lankan context
represented the exercise of power by the state as well as its meaning
and purpose. More than a human rights violation, a disappearance
implicates the entire function of the state which serves those in power
and their interests of which impunity is the most significant. Within
the system that prevailed, all efforts on the part of the relatives of the
victims of disappearance to re-establish their socio-political identity
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were expropriated, justice was totally denied and transitional justice

mechanisms were manipulated and exploited for political advantage.

10.1 Stifling political imagination

At independence the conservative leaders comprising wealthy

landlords and entrepreneurs who dominated the political life of the
country recognised the post-colonial state as the means through which
their wealth and privileged status could be protected (Jayawardena
2000:346; Rupesinghe 2000:19). Decolonisation effectively amounted
to the transfer of government to them. Political competition between
the old high-caste Goyigama Sinhalese families and the new rich
Karāva colonial bourgeoisie over resources and political capital took
the form of a struggle over nationalism and national identity. As the
ideology of governance, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism increasingly
assumed an ethnic outlook which allowed the ruling elite to pursue
their own class interests (Jayawardena 2000:299; Jayasundara-Smits
2011:83).

The ruling elite set out to govern by reward and punishment. It created
a ‘state welfare system’ as a way to reward supporters and cultivate
clients. It distributed some 30 per cent of national income on welfare
which created dependence on state resources, services and
employment which became increasingly centralised in the hands of
ruling party MPs (Hennayake 2006:12). The entrenchment of
patronage politics and growing intolerance towards political
opposition and popular protest including repression of peacefully
expressed aspirations of the Tamil community led to the political
exclusion and economic marginalisation of the rural majority. The
centralisation of the economy brought about by nationalisation and
state monopoly affirmed the economic and political domination of the
 295

urban ruling class at the expense of large sections of the rural

economy. This fuelled historical class tensions over resources and
power which found expression in the 1971 JVP insurgency. The
insurgency brought to the fore two important dynamics which
prompted decades of political violence. First, the level of disaffection
among rural youth and particularly educated rural youth alienated
from their own communities and the wider political system which
intensified in parallel with efforts by the ruling elite to centralise
political power through repression and the curtailment of democratic
norms and judicial independence. Second, the extent to which rural
youth across Sinhalese and Tamil communities, marginalised by the
political system, personified an alternative political ethos and
embodied for the ruling elite an ideological and physical threat to its
power and monopoly on the use of violence. The interplay between
the two dynamics informed a policy of disproportionate repression
while the successful use of disappearance to conceal the elimination
of JVP activists in 1971 led to its entrenchment as a weapon of
repression by the shadow state.

Disappearance was used to eliminate political opponents, prevent

collective mobilisation and demobilise any alternative political
imagination. The vast majority of those who disappeared in Sri Lanka
comprised male rural youth denied social mobility for reasons of
political patronage in employment and the use of English by the urban
elite. While only relatively few of them took up arms against the state
as JVPers and Tamil separatists, the level of their discontent with the
aloof elite leadership over disparities in wealth and privilege, social
inequalities and injustices represented a wider and more substantive
threat to the continuity of patronage politics. Violent repression of
peaceful demonstrations and Tamil aspirations, rampart corruption
and growing reliance upon extralegal methods undermined the moral
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authority of the state in the eyes of the country’s youth and justified
the politics of violence and revolt. As the embodiment of dissent, rural
youth posed a threat to the ruling elite, its vested interests and self-
interested liberalisation agenda from which they were excluded.
Under the pretext of nation building, the 1978 constitution created a
virtual dictatorship by curtailing the independence of the judiciary,
parliament and administrative apparatus in favour of executive
interference. Thereafter the threat of anti-state action including
opposition to the UNP’s economic liberalisation agenda emanating
from sections of the rural population provided justification for
prolonged emergency legislation and abandonment of safeguards on
the use of force accompanied by the proliferation of a shadow state.
Conversely, a prolonged state of emergency enabled the ruling elite to
avoid any legal consequence for its actions including that of
disappearances. Under this alternative state apparatus, death squads
and paramilitary groups were empowered to carry out disappearances
on behalf of their political masters. The entire state apparatus became
complicit in the practice and its concealment.

Counter-insurgency provided the guise under which the shadow state

caused the disappearance of rural youth across the country and the
pretext of national security and preservation of economic prosperity
enabled the suppression of their communities. The establishment of a
one party state, free of all democratic and legal constraints and with a
self-imposed mandate to build a righteous Sinhala-Buddhist nation
and recapture lost grandeur, provided the underlying ideology of
political violence. However, swabhasha-educated unemployed rural
youth who were recognised as an embodiment of an alternative ethos
exposed the façade of ‘righteous society’ policies which failed to
provide for a free and just community. Rural youth were seen to be
standing in the way of the country’s future which they were not a part
 297

of. They refused to follow in their parents’ footsteps and take up

farming or menial employment and were not part of the urban
English-speaking elite set which enjoyed privilege through patronage.
To this extent, disappearances carried out by state-sponsored groups
under the pretext of countering insurgencies and upholding national
security were an imperative to nation building. Language difference
and geographic segregation of Sri Lankan youth—and the fact that
such youth were forced into competition with each other and
encouraged to consider each other as the source of their own
grievances and fears—prevented the possibility of a generational
struggle rather than class and ethnic-based struggles represented by
the JVP and LTTE.

During the early 1980s, the use of paramilitary groups and the
militarisation of civilians in response to armed Tamil youth separatists
widened the scope for violence and paved the way for reliance upon
death squads and private armies which featured during the beeshanaya
(1987–1990) and led to the disappearance of an estimated 60,000
people. Military reliance upon extralegal methods, including
disappearance and the outsourcing of extralegal violence to an array of
private and political groups which took place in the north and east
under the PA government from the mid-1990s, provided for the
emergence of a political-criminal nexus between the ruling elite,
paramilitary and private groups and elements of the security forces.
Perpetuation of the conflict served their respective vested interests.
Military encroachment over civil and administrative matters in the
north and east and the PA government’s reliance upon the military,
which depended on extralegal methods, provided scope for the
military to emerge as the strongest factor in Sri Lankan politics and
the central element of governance. Transitional justice initiatives
including the presidential commissions on disappearance and the few
 298

prosecutions that were pursued during this period exemplified the

power of the military to dictate on national issues, and its complicity
with the ruling elite and wider state apparatus to conceal the
perpetrators of violence and victimise the victims.

Institutions fundamental to a strong democracy including the media,

NGOs and civil institutions were politically appropriated or
suppressed. With power centred on the President and the military, the
role of Parliament diminished while civil rights activists, trade union
leaders and journalists were threatened into silence. Democratic space
to challenge the government became extremely narrow. The human
rights community was also politically divided. Thus human rights
criticism of the counter-insurgency tactics deployed by the military
was undermined by the widespread support for the state’s efforts to
eradicate the JVP insurgency and LTTE separatism. The 'ethnic'
conflict provided the basis on which the ruling elite further divided
civil society by propagating the argument that those who rallied for a
political solution to the conflict sought to compromise the nation's
unity. By politicising and neutralising Sri Lankan civil society in this
way, it became impossible to build the necessary trust for collective
political efforts. Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Defence Secretary and brother
of the current president, highlighted the polarised construction of Sri
Lankan society into two groups: “the people who fight terrorism and
terrorists” (cited in Gunasekara 2011:22).

Through the political appropriation and censorship of the media the

ruling party was able to manipulate public opinion and manufacture
chaos. They used the media to create the belief that security required
the suspension of legal norms and processes and that excesses on the
part of the security forces were not only to be expected but justified in
their fight for the nation. The ruling elite encouraged a “collective
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deception” which it facilitated by obstructing the investigation of

disappearance (Cohen 2001:156). Holding regular elections gave the
appearance of a democratic and inclusive process. However,
dependence on politicians for state resources particularly among rural
and poor constituents brought with it complicity with the use of
violence employed by politicians to secure power. Violence associated
with elections became an integral part of the wider political system to
counter all forms of public expression from peaceful public protest to
insurgency and internal conflict. While violence gave the political
regime a means to impose its will on the population, the militarisation
of society which it encouraged reinforced the rationale for more
extreme violence and reliance upon the military which effectively
became the arbiter in national issues.

10.2 Culpability and complicity

As long as the institutional actors and patronage networks that directly

benefit from political violence remain silent, disappearances will
continue to be carried out in Sri Lanka and the institutions of political
violence and underpinning culture of impunity will remain
unchallenged. The state project of disappearance sought to isolate
individuals and dismantle rural communities through arbitrary
violence and mistrust thereby immobilising any form of solidarity or
collective action. The family unit became a perpetual victim of the
practice of disappearance given the fact that any sense of solidarity
and trust were totally destroyed while the ongoing and therefore
unresolved trauma of affected relations remains inextricably linked to
the unresolved and therefore ongoing crime of disappearance.
However the role and motive of vested interests in ignoring,
challenging or colluding with disappearances and other abuses must
be understood as part of a process to re-establish the demarcations
 300

between cause and effect (Nesiah & Keenan 2004:8; Keenan 2002:7).
The interplay must also be recognised between the conduct of civil,
legal and private institutions and public administration as well as
international involvement in providing arms and training death squads
and the military, along with transnational criminal networks which
have contributed to and benefited from the violence (Argenti-Pillen
2003:13). Father Nandana, Kandy representative of the Families of the
Disappeared, held that as with the rest of the population, religious
leaders were divided by politics and unable to provide a united
position on key issues of national importance including disappearance.
Furthermore:

All the victims are from the poor. The general public is not
interested in these issues and they have no confidence in the
police and the rule of law and there are no leaders in the
country with vision. We have leaders who want to divide the
people. When there is a major discussion going on organised by
a civil society group about serious issues regarding this country,
the politicians organise a cricket match and you know how
cricket mad people are here!
- Father Nandana, Families of the Disappeared.

The acquiescence of the urban middle class and divisions within the
human rights movement (which itself was subject to persistent attack
and denunciation) in its interpretation of the state's cause against the
JVP and LTTE and the methods applied to realise it must also be
reconciled. Hoole observed that for many middle-class urbanites, the
presidential commission disappearance reports aroused “mixed
feelings of guilt and embarrassment” as they come “from a past we
wish to have buried” (1999:2). Nesiah and Keenan recognised that the
middle class largely endorsed the violence committed partly in their
 301

defence “if not officially in their name” (2004:12). The conspiracy of

silence about disappearance will be maintained so long as the socio–
economic and political inequalities that support class hierarchies are
upheld by state power, and vested interests in the undemocratic
political structure outweighs the possibility of and opportunities
emanating from a new political paradigm.

Rural communities were drawn into and became complicit in the

violence for reasons of survival as well as personal gain. Concealment
of political and private motives which blurred the boundaries between
victim and perpetrator, myth and reality, sources of fear and security,
enabled the deliberate exploitation of social divisions and mistrust.
The widespread use of masked informants typified the manner in
which rural communities were compromised. The families of the
disappeared also became complicit in the violence and its supporting
framework to avoid their own disappearance—or, by seeking state
resources, inadvertently adhered to the very system which brought
about the disappearance of their relative. Many interviewees spoke of
their unwillingness to reveal the identity of the perpetrators
responsible for the disappearance of their relatives for fear of
disappearing themselves. Mrs S and Mrs L both had relatives
abducted by the LTTE but supported the LTTE’s efforts because as
Mrs L said, “they are fighting for our freedom”. They felt torn
between the two and fearful of LTTE reprisals, and so were compelled
into silence (Mrs S, Vavuniya District: Interview 4 and Mrs L,
Vavuniya District: Interview 7). Others appealed directly to MPs or
gave their support to political parties to obtain a death certificate,
compensation or state resources. Recognising patronage politics as the
primary means through which employment and state resources were
secured such families were bound and limited to the exclusion-
dependence paradigm. Ultimately, the largest disappearance
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movement, the Southern Mothers’ Front demonstrated its complicity

in the violence to the extent that the movement was directed to serve
the narrow political interests of regime change rather than bring to
light the vested interests in whose name the violence was perpetrated.

Today, after the end of the fourth Eelam War, the population
continues to be constantly alert to the continuing threats to national
unity including the potential re-emergence of the LTTE, the threat
represented by the JVP as a mainstream political party, the threat of
cultural separatism of the Muslim community in the east and
prevalence of the underworld. These threats are used to justify
continued state violence and prolonged emergency legislation in the
name of peace and national security which in turn perpetuates
impunity for past political crimes by preventing any serious human
rights investigations. Rumours and myth pervade the socio–political
landscape preventing the re-establishment of boundaries and
demarcations between crime and punishment, perpetrator and victim,
fundamental to challenging impunity (Keenan 2002:7). Argenti-Pillen
discovered that years after the violence had ended in the south it
continued to pervade community relations in the form of rumours that
the JVP insurgents were reorganising and in the fear of locals who had
been JVP insurgents or given information to the army and still
remained in hiding in the neighbourhood (2003:73). The strategy of
continued vigilance is designed to cut off the “public exchange of
opinion” by denying through fear “the power of initiative” (Habermas
on Arendt 1986:80). The prevailing political culture and the nexus
between dependence and patronage on which it is based continue to
deny space for, and legitimacy to, genuine autonomous mobilisation
of civil society (Bastian 1999:41). Moreover the juxtaposition of
democracy and liberal legal practices with patronage politics and
political violence further entrenches the dependence–exclusion
 303

paradigm “limiting any active democratic mobilization against state

abuses of power” (Keenan 2002:6). Mr V, a community leader in
Amparai, recognised the political system as being the central problem
in this regard:

The political situation is stopping people from coming together

because the government likes to retain its power. All parties try
to topple one another and they have brought this ethnic division
amongst the people. There should be a lot of change in their
thinking.
- Mr V, community leader, Amparai District.

The political culture in Sri Lanka during the 1970s and 1980s which
witnessed the greatest number of disappearances has changed little
over the decades and the expectation of many interviewees is that
disappearances on a mass scale can take place again at any time.
Indeed, disappearances continued to be reported even after the war
ended in 2009. At the same time, surviving relatives remain in a time
warp with the disappearance at the forefront of their lives despite the
years and even decades that have passed since the event. While they
are condemned by a traumatic memory to relive the event on a daily
basis, ongoing politicisation of the issue exemplified by the controls
imposed on the disappearance commissions and efforts to bury their
findings and ignore their recommendations is evidenced in the
political divisions amongst disappearance groups. These divisions and
the different interpretations of their members’ suffering and the root
causes of it enhance existing social cleavages and ethnic antagonisms
rather than provide the basis for a “unifying national narrative”
(Humphrey 2013:1).
 304

If methods to rebuild a democratic and inclusive framework are to be

worked out, these factors must be understood: the ideology of national
security, the legal mechanisms and political implements used to
pervert the democratic system and allow for the propagation of
political violence, the vested interests that supported and benefited
from such action and the complicity of survivors. Without recognising
the social, political and economic factors and forces that brought
about such violations and turned a democracy into a dictatorship, it
would be impossible to imagine a viable framework for peace and
justice. Only a national effort directed at peace and reconciliation will
create the necessary climate of trust and confidence for the
fundamental structural changes required.

10.3 Exclusion and dependence

The exclusion–dependence paradigm is central to the phenomenon of

disappearance in Sri Lanka. The disappeared themselves not only
emanated from families for whom patronage and privilege were
inaccessible but represented to the regime a rejection of the political
structure that provided for this paradigm and a threat to its existence.
Surviving families themselves represent the poor rural majority who
are denied equal access to state resources, employment and education,
political power, patronage networks and connections made possible
through an English education. The aspirations of the rural majority for
middle class status and the younger generations who reject the limited
opportunities available to them are undermined by their dependence
on the politicised state. The long historical roots of state-based welfare,
state involvement in disputes and interference in almost all aspects of
life created a form of dependence which has social, economic and
political dimensions. The dependence–exclusion paradigm makes the
rural majority complicit in a political system which conspires against
 305

them to safeguard its own vested interests. Such complicity starts at

the lowest level of governance where local officials use their position
as an opportunity to promote their own interests rather than develop
their region and people (Mr Chandrasekara, Jaffna Regional
Coordinator, Human Rights Commission, personal communication). It
feeds corruption and deceit at every level of engagement with
fraudulent practices recognised as an acceptable means of getting
elected—practices that have been normalised as a daily part of life
(Wimal Fernando, personal communication). Thus, the use of force,
power and corruption to achieve political outcomes has been
normalised and extended to achieve other results. Any serious effort to
address poverty or political violence cannot take place while political
power is achieved through force and provides seductive rewards for
the victors, the means of getting rich.

The conflict with the LTTE has ultimately made the dependence–
exclusion paradigm more acute, especially in conflict-affected
communities and among youths. The detention and relocation of
thousands of Tamils, many of whom lost everything and have little
prospect of returning to their destroyed villages, has further
entrenched their dependence on a politicised welfare system. At the
same time, efforts to counter dependence, including self-employment
initiatives made available to families of the disappeared, provide an
opportunity to earn a living and educate children. However, such
practical initiatives cannot address the primary source of their
grievances and social ostracism nor protect them from political groups
that are intent on securing power through the exploitation of their
trauma to uphold claims about their own legitimacy. Efforts to divert
these families away from the pain and trauma of the disappearance
inadvertently affirm their socio–political status and can compound
their suffering. The disappearance movements, including the Southern
 306

Mothers' Front which sought to represent such families, were forced to

operate under a dependence–exclusion paradigm within the wider
political context thereby enabling the appropriation of their broader
goals to the narrow vision of regime change.

10.4 State-centric and politicised truth and justice

initiatives

The families of the disappeared have not emerged at the heart of a

human rights movement in Sri Lanka as they did in Argentina. Serial
disappearance directed at different stigmatised groups has allowed the
state to justify and perpetuate emergency rule. Truth and justice
processes introduced by both the UNP and PA after it came to power
in 1994 were limited to state-oriented remedies which could be
politically directed to serve political interests. All claims in relation to
disappearance, which is not a crime under Sri Lankan law, had to be
channelled into claims against the state and thereby mediated through
individual rights claims which had the effect of domesticating “more
complex (and potentially more radical) demands on the social
structure” (Nesiah & Keenan 2004:11). The manner in which the
political elite exercised what Galbraith termed “conditional power”
over the disappearance movement in the 1990s to affect regime
change and focus on individual prosecutions denied the opportunity to
recognise and debate how the shadow state flourished and how the
population became complicit in the violence (1986:214). As the fight
for justice narrowed around specific violations and perpetrators, the
context in which such violations took place, the motives underlying
them, the framework that enabled them and the vested interests
involved became abstracted and removed thereby limiting or
restraining the country's political imagination (Nesiah & Keenan
 307

2004:9). Efforts on the part of the human rights community to focus

on minority rights in the context of the ‘ethnic’ conflict were
politicised as divisive while also diverting attention away from bigger
picture of the structural inequalities which were the main cause of
grievance across all communities. As Fernando has noted, the “basic
constitutional structure” that provided for disappearance has remained
in place while the fundamental premise of national security on which
political violence has been carried out by successive regimes remains
unchallenged (2004:xix). While efforts to achieve a democratic
solution to the conflict with the LTTE were contained within an
“undemocratic construct" (Fernando 2002b:13), the same could be
said in relation to transitional justice mechanisms which served
political interests at the expense of the victims.

The reports of the presidential commissions of inquiry into

disappearances serve not only as a historical memory of political
violence but also initiated a first important step by questioning the
fundamental premise of national security on which state violence was
based. However, distribution of compensation to the families of the
disappeared as recommended by the commissions was used by the
ruling PA as a tool to blame the UNP regime for the disappearances
and thereby to strengthen its own legitimacy. By focusing on abuses
of the previous regime and compensation, the ruling party
manipulated the work of the presidential commissions as part of a
ritual of conspiracy against the victims to deny state terror and protect
those responsible for it. Almost all the other findings and
recommendations of the commissions were ignored. The perception
was perpetrated that state welfare compensation was the only tangible
outcome of the commissions’ work and, when placed within the wider
context of national politics, came to represent for the families both a
reward for a PA victory and “shut-up money” (Mr D, Matara District:
 308

Interview 1). Such dynamics enabled the ruling elite to divert and
curtail transitional justice efforts and limit the scope for redress to a
handful of prosecutions while using the disappearance commissions as
an opportunity to reaffirm the political divide. Within this context,
families of the disappeared already recognised as politically suspect
and morally polluting were caught between these two dynamics, on
the one hand unable to transform their trauma into a movement for
social change while, on the other, complicit in a corrupt political
system that provided them state resources on which they depended for
survival. By stymieing individual and collective efforts to restore the
socio–legal identity of the disappeared, the dependence–exclusion
paradigm restrains political imagination, as Sunila Abeyesekera
observed:

In Sri Lanka we are so caught up in the formal and legal justice

processes that we can’t think of any alternative. But people
don’t know what to do now.
- Sunila Abeyesekera, INFORM.

This frustration is expressed by the families of the disappeared in a

variety of ways. Mrs B whose husband disappeared in 1984 while
travelling from Vavuniya to Colombo by bus noted that on
International Women’s Day, “We didn’t do anything. We only drank
tea and ate wadai. I want to speak out for peace but we haven’t done
anything yet” (Mrs B, Vavuniya District: Interview 1). This is not to
suggest that there are not important initiatives which have taken place
or are underway. Political solidarities have been built which have
succeeded in forcing accountability where there is no political will.
Protest and a weekly vigil for legal action against those responsible
for the disappearance of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy and her relatives
led to charges being laid (LST 1997:185). The Batticaloa Peace
 309

Committee which intervenes on behalf of individuals taken into

custody to ensure that no harm will come to them in detention was
established by a group of concerned citizens in 1985. It has remained
active despite the murder of two of its members in the late 1980s and
years of intimidation which led to the detention of another member
whose house was ransacked by the army in search of information
(Batticaloa Peace Committee, personal communication). Similarly,
protests carried out by disappearance organisations which come
together to mark auspicious occasions and inclusive local women’s
groups formed by the wives of the disappeared are vital steps towards
the creation of neutral public space. This space is essential to
encourage dialogue and revelation about political violence so that all
Sri Lankans can consider and debate how to address the past, prevent
repetition and consider the future. Ultimately, addressing the
phenomenon of disappearance is an imperative to nation building.

Generations of potential future leaders disappeared in Sri Lanka—a

systematic attempt by the state to destroy any possibility of anti-state
activism or the emergence of an alternative political ethos. The price
of the state’s ruthless leadership is an enduring legacy of violence
which remains a central obstacle to political activism and an
alternative leadership required to instigate transitional justice and
reconciliation initiatives. Meanwhile, the political structure which
provided for such violence is yet to be exposed and dismantled—and
disappearances continue to serve the interests of the ruling elite intent
on suppressing political opposition or the germination of a new
political imagination on which a democratic and inclusive Sri Lanka
might be based. While the beeshana samaya (era of terror) officially
ended in 1990, the ideology which underpinned it continued to serve
the interests of the political elite during the conflict with the LTTE,
and underpins the legitimacy of the ruling establishment today.
 310

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Appendix
Overview of interviews

Amparai District, Eastern Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

 335

in relation to occupation & date

interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Ms A 1 Father Farmer – 38 yrs January 1990
Mrs R 2 Father Farmer February 2001
Mrs K 3 Husband Labourer – 28 yrs 24 June 1990
Mrs K 4 Husband Farmer – 30 yrs 15 February 1984
Son Farmer – 17 yrs 1992
Mrs S 5 Husband Goldsmith - 27 yrs 24 September 1990
Mrs T 6 Son Farmer – 19 yrs 28 July 1990
Mr P 7 Son Labourer – 18 yrs 8 January 1990
Mrs V 8 Son Farmer – 21 yrs 9 September 1990
Brother Farmer – 26 yrs 1985
Mrs A 9 Son Student – 21 yrs 30 July 1990
Mrs P 10 Husband OIC Milk Board-42 y 23 June 1990
Ms R 11 Father Post Master – 59 yr 30 August 1990
Mrs P 12 Husband Post Master – 40 yr 24 June 1990
Mr G 13 Son Student – 21 yrs 8 January 1985
Mrs S 14 Son Student – 18 yrs 29 May 1990

Batticaloa District, Eastern Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

in relation to occupation & date
interviewee age at time of
disappearance
 336

Mrs P 1 Son Labourer – 12 yrs 10 August 1990

Mrs N 2 Husband Farmer 1990
Mrs V 3 Son Farmer – 22 yrs 1991
Mrs L 4 Husband Labourer – 24 yrs 10 Sept 1990
Mrs G 5 Husband Farmer – 30 yrs 2 Dec 1993
Mrs R 6 Son Labourer – 24 yrs 10 October 1992
Mrs J 7 Brother Supervisor – 26 yrs 17 Nov 1995
Mrs K 8 Son Labourer – 23 yrs 6 May 1998
Mrs P 9 Son Labourer – 14 yrs 24 Dec 1993
Mrs C 10 Brother OIC Milk Board – 33 y 13 Nov 1993
Mrs K 11 Husband Farmer – 37 yrs 21 August 1990
Mrs R 12 Husband Mason – 23 yrs 7 June 1990
Mrs N 13 Husband Fisher – 35 yrs 27 June 2002
Mrs A 14 Husband Fisher – 40 yrs 27 June 2002
Mrs S 15 Husband Fisher – 38 yrs 27 June 2002
Mrs P 16 Husband Mason – 21 yrs 27 June 2002

Gampaha District, Western Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

in relation to occupation & date
interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Mr D 1 Brother Painter - 28 yrs 21 July 1988
Mrs P 2 Husband Unemployed - 31 yrs 1 May 1990
Mrs R 3 Brother Unemployed - 16 yrs 1989
Mrs M 4 Son Local market 16 November 1988
stallholder - 16 yrs
Mr S 5 Wife Housewife - 44 yrs 12 April 1989
Mrs N 6 Son Factory worker -18 yr After 1988 President
elections
Mrs K 7 Son Kiosk manager/owner Unknown
- 27 yrs
 337

Mr G 8 Son Farmer - 34 yrs Unknown

Mrs C 9 Son Labourer - 18 yrs Unknown
Mrs S 10 Husband Tailor - 37 yrs 19 March 1997
Mrs P 11 Husband SLFP secretary 20 November 1989
Mrs S 12 Husband Textile worker 4 November 1989
Mr S 13 Son Student - 26 yrs 12 October 1989
Mr S 14 Son Student - 19 yrs 16 December 1989
Ms D 15 Fiancé Garment factory 27 October 1989
Brother worker - 30 yrs

Jaffna District, Northern Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

in relation to occupation & date
interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Mrs K 1 Son Labourer - 23 yrs 20 June 1996
Mrs S 2 Son Electricial shop staff 28 August 1996
Mrs C 3 Husband Labourer/Fisher - 30 10 August 1996
Mrs R 4 Son Vegetable Stall 26 March 1997
Manager - 19 yrs
Mrs S 5 Son Unemployed 26 March 1997
Mrs O 6 Husband Post Office Officer -31 20 July 1996
Mrs N 7 Sons Fisher -19 yrs 14 July 1996
Council Labourer – 16 June 1996
Mrs K 8 Son Electrical Technician 21 August 1996
Mrs E 9 Husband Fisher - 35 yrs 4 August 1996
Mrs M 10 Son Mason - 30 yrs 20 July 1996
Mrs M 11 Son-in-law Farmer - 25 yrs 19 July 1996

Kandy District, Central Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

 338

in relation to occupation & date

interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Mr W 1 Son Mechanic/Welder - 29 30 January 1990
Mrs M 2 Husband Electrician 4 December 1989
Mrs G 3 Brother Shopkeeper 6 December 1990
Mrs K 4 Son Labourer - 15 yrs 9 November 1990
Ms S 5 Brother Teacher - 25 yrs 9 November 1989
Mrs P 6 Sons Lands Department September 1989
Officer - 25 yrs
Army - 24 yrs 5 March 1992
Mrs S 7 Brother-in-law Builder - 42 yrs 12 April 1989

Kurunegala District, North Western Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance date

in relation to occupation &
interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Mrs W 1 Husband Primary School 19 October 1989
Teacher - 39 yrs
Mrs G 2 Husband Shopkeeper - 44 yrs 19 October 1989
Mrs D 3 Husband Coconut business - 8 December 1989
29 yrs
Mrs W 4 Husband Farmer/Small 19 November 1989
Business - 22 yrs
Mrs V 5 Husband Coordinator - 17 October 1989
Insurance Corp. - 35
Mrs J 6 Son Student - 17 yrs 28 September 1989

Matara District, Southern Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

 339

in relation to occupation & date

interviewee age at time of
disappearance
Mr D 1 Son School student 16 December 1990
Mrs V 2 Brothers Monk - 23 yrs 21 November 1989
Engineer - 33 yrs 20 February 1990
Mrs K 3 Husband Tractor Driver - 28 yrs 17 September 1990
Mrs K 4 Son Driver for DIG 30 October 1988
Colombo - 21 yrs
Mr S 5 Daughter Housewife -19 yrs 1988
Mr K 6 Son Student - 17 yrs 14 October 1989
Mr D 7 Brother Worked for Kacheri - Killed day after 1989
48 yrs Presidential election
Mr R 8 Mother Housewife - 59 yrs 21 December 1989
Mrs V 9 Brothers Timber merchant - 36 5 March 1990
Unemployed - 20 yrs 5 March 1990
Tractor Driver - 33 yrs 5 September 1990

Vavuniya District, Northern Province

Interviewee No. Disappeared Disappeared Disappearance

in relation to occupation & date
interviewee age at time of
disappearance
 340

Mrs B 1 Husband Manager of overseas April 1984

employment agency
Mrs K 2 Brother Electrician - 40 yrs Unknown
Mrs N 3 Husband Unemployed 3 August 1990
Mrs S 4 Sister Shop Assistant Approx. 1993
Mrs B 5 Husband Farmer 2003
Mrs J 6 Husband LTTE cadre - 20 yrs 2002
Mrs L 7 Husband Labourer - 27 yrs Before 1990
Mrs P 8 Husband – March 1999
Nephew 17 yrs
Mrs P 9 Daughter Student - 10 yrs 13 March 2002
 341

END.