“I have been looking for my son since 2009. I am now 72 years old and I will leave this world soon. Maybe I will get to see my son again or at least find out where he is buried,” said Kamala*. 

Kamala belongs to the Association for the Relatives of the Enforced Disappearances in the North and East Provinces, a civil society group created to search for the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict.

She has visited refugee camps, scoured mass graves in villages and staged peaceful demonstrations with other mothers and wives of the disappeared, asking authorities: Where are our children? Where are our husbands?

“When we started our struggle we had big hopes that we would get justice, but we have lost faith in the government,” she said.

Although Sri Lanka’s war ended 15 years ago, families of the disappeared are still waiting for truth, justice and reparations. Without knowledge of the fate and whereabouts of loved ones, enforced disappearances haunt entire communities, undermining the country’s efforts for reconciliation, human rights groups say.

As the majority of the disappeared were men, it is mostly mothers and wives who are leading the search for relatives and the fight for accountability, battling numerous legal and procedural obstacles and a campaign of harassment and intimidation.

“It is very difficult to explain the pain of mothers,” said Laxmy*, 62, who is also looking for her disappeared son. “We have fought for a long time without knowing if our children are alive or dead. We have also faced financial problems,” she said.

Kamala’s and Laxmy’s sons, from the Tamil community, disappeared in the north of the island in May 2009 during the final phase of the conflict. To this date neither of the two know what happened to their sons. Fighting back tears, they spoke of the anguish suffered by families and their inability to find closure.

 “I need to know where my son is. Without knowing we cannot have peace in our minds,” said Laxmy. “There are religious rituals we have to do for the peace of the soul. I do it for my dead husband, but I cannot do it for my son.”

Accountability

Last week, a report from the UN Human Rights Office said Sri Lanka must confront the legacy of enforced disappearances by holding those responsible to account. The report called on Sri Lanka’s government to acknowledge the scale of disappearances and the involvement of State security forces and armed groups, and to take action to disclose the fates and whereabouts of the disappeared.

Sri Lanka has suffered from waves of enforced disappearances over decades. Used primarily by Sri Lankan security forces and paramilitary groups as a tool to intimidate and oppress perceived opponents, enforced disappearances have targeted tens of thousands from the 1970s to the end of the conflict in 2009. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam also engaged in abductions, which the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances described as “tantamount to enforced disappearances.”

Enforced disappearances impacted not only the Tamil community. Thousands of suspected left-wing insurgents from the Sinhalese community also were forcefully disappeared.