Tears amidst the rainfall – Tamil families of disappeared demand answers in Mullaitivu

Sri Lankan police officers once more held back Tamil families of the disappeared as they demonstrated in Mullaitivu last week, whilst they protested outside a justice ministry meeting in the city.

 

02 February 2022

The families raised black flags and clutched photographs of their disappeared loved ones, as the Sri Lankan justice ministry’s mobile service visited the town.

Whilst Sri Lankan officials arrived in imported BMW vehicles escorted by armed officers, the families – mostly women – were stood outside amidst a strong winds and a downpour.

The families pleaded with Sri Lankan police officers to sympathise with their plight. Many have been searching for the whereabouts of their loved ones for years, some for decades.

"We have no faith in this government or the judiciary," said Mariyasuresh Eswari, co-ordinator of the Mullaitivu Disappeared Relatives' Association, as a Justice Ministry official eventually came to meet the protestors.

The mobile service is reportedly part of a move by the government to deflect growing international pressure over accountability for atrocities committed during the armed conflict, according to Sri Lanka’s Justice Minister Ali Sabry. According to the Daily News, he added that the “main focus was on the issue of missing persons during the civil war and if there had any injustice to the families of the missing persons, they hoped to issue a death certificate or compensation to them”.

“It appears that this is an effort to give the appearance that action is being taken without tackling the structural, systemic and political obstacles to access to and obtaining justice,” Ambika Satkunanathan, a former commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka told the Tamil Guardian last week, after Tamil mothers in Vavuniya were pushed back by police during another mobile service meeting.

See more photographs from Mullaitivu below.