Colombo Court orders Jeyakumari to continue to be held in detention

February 24, 2015

A Colombo Court on Tuesday has ordered Balendran Jeyakumari, who has been searching and campaigning for the release of her son, to continue to be held in detention custody till March 10, as per the request made by the Terrorism Investigations Department (TID).

Jeyakumari, who was arrested on March 13 last year on suspicion of harbouring former rebel cadres at her home in Kilinochchi, was transferred to the Welikada prison only last week, where she was allowed to meet briefly her 13-year old daughter Vibushika, who is also in the protective custody in Kilinochchi.

After the meeting with her daughter on last Tuesday, she expressed hopes that the new government would release her soon.

Like hundreds of thousands of Tamil families in the North and the East, her family too has suffered hugely during the war. Two of her elder sons have been killed during the war while her youngest son has been made to disappear since the end of the war in May 2009.

Citing reliable eye witnesses, she claimed that her younger son surrendered to army with the facilitation of a Church priest, who is also reportedly missing.

Jeyakumari and her daughter had taken part in several street demonstrations organised to protest against the enforced disappearances and unlawful detention of thousands of Tamil youth even five years after the end of the war. They were often seen in photographs and television footages crying and screaming at demonstrations, pleading for the release of Mahindan.

Their photographs and video footage at the demonstration near the Jaffna library during the visit to Jaffna by the British Prime Minister David Cameron last November were widely published in many local and foreign media outlet.

For those who know her well, the only crime she has committed was demanding the release of her son. Jeyakumari informed the Human Rights Commission, the ICRC and the Sri Lankan prison authorities that her son’s photograph had appeared in the government’s Lessons Learnt Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report, which was later published as a book by the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

According to the published report, her son, Balendran Mahindan was alive and was going through the government’s “rehabilitation program” at an unknown ‘rehabilitation’ centre.

It is based on this government report that she has been demanding her son to be released. This has caused serious embarrassment of hawkish government of deposed president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Because, if it denies that her son Mahindan has not surrendered then it cannot explain how his photographs appeared in the LLRC report, and if it accepts that he had surrendered and was going through rehabilitation, then it has to produce him alive or release him.

It is under these circumstances that the government forces arrested her, aiming to prevent her from giving witness to the investigation by the office of the UN Human Rights High Commissioner, who has last week deferred the report from being published from March to September this year, giving the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena time and space to put his house in order.

Several local and international right organisations have campaigned for her early release.