Fate of missing divides scarred nation

In a move towards reconciliation, former Tamil Tiger rebel combatants train with other members of Sri Lanka's disabled volleyball team in Colombo for a tournament in Beijing this month. Photo / AP

His name was Abi, he was 6, and the last his family saw of him was in the frenzied moments after shells struck close to the bunker where they were sheltering. His sisters were injured, his mother too, and the young boy put his arm around her. "Mother," he sobbed three times.

That scene played out in May 2009 on a patch of blood-soaked sand in northern Sri Lanka, where Tamil rebels were making a last stand against the advancing forces of the Sri Lankan Army.

With them were up to 300,000 civilians. Since then, Abi's family has searched for him without success, turning to the authorities, charities and even Hindu priests.

"[I] don't know what happened to him. All I know is that he put his arms around my neck," said the boy's mother, Getharagowri Mahendiran.

The family is not alone. Two-and-a-half years after the end of the operation that destroyed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people remain missing and unaccounted for. Campaigners say the uncertainty for their families is creating a stumbling block for the Government's efforts to work towards reconciliation in a country scarred by decades of violence.

Figures provided by a project set up by the Sri Lankan authorities with Unicef to trace missing children suggest 2592 people, including some 700 youngsters, have been officially registered as unaccounted for.

The Family Tracing Unit, based in Vavuniya, looks only for children, and passes details of missing adults to other officials.

About 30 children have been reunited with their families since the unit started work at the end of 2009. Another 20 are in process.

In another 64 cases, the names of missing children have been matched to those on the unit's database.

About 65 per cent of the children's cases relate to forced recruitment by the LTTE.

"It is not an easy process," said Brigadier J.B. Galgamuwa, a retired army officer who heads a team of three female probation officers that scours police, army and hospital records.

"We are doing our best to help [the families.] We are all parents, or else good sons or daughters, and that is why we realise the importance of this issue."

Family members believe their loved ones may be held by the authorities, may have escaped overseas or else may simply be dead, their bodies not recovered.

Parents fear their children may have become the victims of trafficking or have been adopted by other families.

The uncertainty for people such as the family of Abi adds to the misery of a community still suffering after the war.

Yet the unit's work is sensitive because of the intense dispute over the number of civilians killed in the final stages of the military campaign, and the fact that Government forces and the LTTE have been accused of war crimes.

Officials say that because of the unit's limited resources, and that for someone to be officially counted as missing requires there to be a living relative in a position to register the case, it is likely the Family Tracing Unit's figures represent only a portion of the total of those missing.

"Many people are coming to us, saying can you confirm whether the child is dead or alive, even if you cannot reunite us," said one official.

"With that uncertainty, they don't want to be resettled to their original districts because they feel they should stay here."

Most cases relate to January-May 2009, when the LTTE retreated north and eastwards as the Sri Lankan Army advanced. As they did so, about 300,000 civilians were caught up with them.

LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was planning to use them as a buffer, and witnesses told how LTTE cadres subsequently shot civilians who tried to escape to the Government-controlled territory.

When the LTTE's headquarters of Killinochi fell in January 2009, crowds of civilians flooded east along the A35, heading towards Mullaitivu, close to where the last fighting took place and which remains off-limits to journalists.

Today, in Killinochi and along this rutted road it seems as if almost everyone lost a friend or relative, or is searching for someone.

In a barber's shop in Killinochi, Ponnathurai Suriyakumar wept as he recalled being forced eastwards with his family until they reached the "no fire zone" set up by the Government.

Witnesses have told how the Government and LTTE continued to fire on to and out of this patch of land.

On May 8, a single shell claimed the lives of 13 people taking shelter with Suriyakumar, including his 8-year-old son, Sakinder. Suriyakumar, himself wounded, said his 23-year-old cousin had been missing since that day. Bala Singham, a farmer, said his family fled until they reached the village of Pokkanai, which was seized by Government troops. It was there his brother disappeared.

"All the people ran towards the army. We ran over bodies," said Singham.

"We have searched everywhere. We have gone to the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross], the police, NGOs. I am still searching."

In the absence of hard information, many families turn to priests and astrologers.

In Jaffna, heartland of the Tamil community, a Hindu priest called Sivashanmuga Nandakurkal said people had long asked him for information about relatives who had "disappeared".

Yet the numbers had increased since 2006, after a peace deal with the LTTE collapsed and President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided to renew military operations and end a separatist insurgency.

"They come with the missing person's horoscope," Nandakurkal said. "Through the horoscope, we can tell whether the person is alive or not. If you are talking recent history, most people are not alive."

The priest, who claimed an accuracy rate of 95 per cent, said he never misled a relative as to the fate of their loved one, but he never directly told someone their relative had died.

"We say 'it will be very difficult to find them'," he said.

Farmer K. Sathyanantharaja, who grows rice next to the A35 highway, said his father-in-law and sister-in-law had been killed and his 21-year-old nephew was missing.

Having contacted the ICRC with no result, the family have asked a priest for help. "We don't know whether he was taken by the LTTE or the army," Sathyanantharaja said.

"We approached the astrologers. They said he was still alive. They said he could not come at the moment but that he will return in three or four months."

The Government of Rajapaksa has spent large sums on post-war projects in the north, improving roads and infrastructure, providing emergency shelter, food and financial support, as well as establishing military bases.

Yet campaigners say the issue of the missing remains a source of trauma. Nuwan Bopege, president of Students for Human Rights, urged the Government to release details of captured and suspected ex-LLTE members still held.

The circumstances in which the final weeks of the war were fought remains deeply controversial.

This year, a panel established by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon found "credible allegations" the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE committed war crimes.

The Sri Lankan authorities have rejected the findings.

Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, an MP and adviser to the President on reconciliation, said almost all the 11,000 former LTTE fighters held by the Government had been released and about 200 were to be charged.

"The names [of those being held] are with the National Human Rights Commission," he said. "The names are available to the next of kin."

On the issue of civilian casualties, he said about 5000 people might have died, including those killed by the LTTE, as well as those who died as a result of "collateral damage".

He said the Government had taken steps towards reconciliation, including economic and social development, but believed more had to be done.

Wijesinha added: "We have to persuade people to work towards a pluralistic society."

Meanwhile, for the family of Abi, who would now be 9, there is little to do but wait and hope.

His mother said: "I strongly believe he is somewhere."

Casualties of war

25
Years - the length of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. The armed struggle was notable for brutal insurgent tactics, including female suicide bombers and child soldiers.

80,000
Lower estimate of deaths. The upper estimate is 100,000. The toll included more than 25,000 Tamil fighters, at least 23,000 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen, some 1155 Indian soldiers, and thousands of civilians.

7000
People killed in the last few weeks of the conflict in April 2009, according to United Nations workers. Many of these casualties were blamed on Government shelling of areas that were supposed to be safe zones.

- INDEPENDENT