IN PURSUIT OF AN ELUSIVE JUSTICE FOR OVER A DECADE

AS THE NEW SRI LANKAN PRESIDENT COMMENCES HIS FIRST STATE VISIT TO INDIA, TNIE HIGHLIGHTS THE EXPECTATIONS OF MARGINALISED LANKAN TAMILS IN RESOLVING LONG-PENDING ISSUES

- PON YASANTH BA

THERE is a sameness to the manner in which families affected by enforced disappearances in Tamil-speaking northern Sri Lanka narrate their stories: names, dates, documents. The homogeneity arises not just from the similarity of their experiences but also from the countless times they've had to tell their stories over the past decade - to journalists, human rights activists, law enforcement agencies and commissions of inquiries - in their elusive pursuit of truth and justice for their loved ones.

who disappeared during the armed ethnic conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan government which ended in 2009.

"Can I bring the pictures?" asks 48-year-old Sasikumar Ran janidevi at the beginning of her conversation with TNIE in Mullaitivu last month. This is how a conversation with almost every affected person begins - they all have laminated photographs of their disappeared loved ones.

The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the UN Human Rights Commission defines enforced disappearances as the "arrest, detention, abduction on any other form of deprivation of liberty" by the state, followed by a refusal to acknowledge such action and concealing the where abouts of those disappeared.

Sri Lanka has ranked among the countries with highest rate of enforced disappearances, owing to the three-decade-long violent ethnic conflict and the two unsuccessful armed uprisings by the Janatha Vimukthi Pera muna (JVP), which heads the present ruling National People's Power (NPP) coalition, in the 1970s and 1980s. While the majority of disappearances have been attributed to the Sri Lankan state, outfits like the LTTE have also been accused of such crimes.