Those present at the site were the close relatives of the missing, abducted and disappeared, who number more than 800 country wide over the past year, with over a hundred from Colombo and its environs alone. They had come to register their losses with the Civil Monitoring Committee, of which Mano Ganeshan is the most prominent member. Some of those present had come with their little children and with photographs of their loved ones. I spoke to a random sample of four.

The brother of Dharmaraja Uthayakumar (aged 26) said that his brother had lived in Trincomalee for the past ten years, although the family was originally from Kandy. On January 23, 2007 a white van with Sinhala-speaking persons had taken him away from the shop where he worked.

The Sinhalese wife of Madasamy Jayshankar (aged 34) who lived in Wellawatte said her husband had been picked up on January 9, 2006 in Borella, at the Sports Ministry, by persons who had claimed to be from the STF.

The sister of Kalimuttu Selvaratnam (aged 30) who lived in Chilaw said that her brother had been asked by the police to report to them on three occasions, which he had done. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared from his van on July 6, 2006.

The wife of Kanapathipillai Pubhaneswaran (aged 33) said her husband had come to Colombo from Batticaloa to go abroad. He had been taken from the lodge at which he was staying along with four others in a white van by persons who claimed to be from the CID.

One fact that was striking was that they all said that they believed, or had been told, that their loved ones had been taken away by Sinhala-speaking people. But it is not only the government forces who are suspected of being responsible for the spate of killings, abductions and disappearances that have been taking place at a high level over the past year or so. There is the Karuna group that is believed to be working in collaboration with the government forces, and who are operating in government-controlled areas, including Colombo. There is also the LTTE which remains a formidable force in the north and east, and also outside of it.

On my way back, the three wheel taxi driver who had observed my interviews said that in the period 1988-89 he had been a driver in the security forces. They used to change the number plates of their vehicles and go to pick up JVP suspects. When the relatives used to come to look for their loved ones the number plates had been changed back, and only a bland denial was forthcoming. This was the era of Black Cats and PRRA, which at that time were believed to be the hit squads of the military and of a paramilitary group.

Transnational

The controversy over the reported admission by police chief Victor Perera of involvement by some sections of the security forces in the current spate of killings and abductions may be seen as part and parcel of Sri Lanka's continuum with the past, and also as an ongoing international reality. In the Philippines, a country at a comparable stage of political and economic development, attention has fallen on the armed forces as a seemingly unstoppable wave of killings and abductions take place against members of left wing political parties. Like in Sri Lanka at the present time, these human rights abuses have badly tainted the reputation of the Philippines for being generally disrespectful of human rights.

The killings and disappearances in the Philippines have risen sharply over the past two years, which has seen the military intensify its efforts to root out a long running Communist insurgency. As in Sri Lanka, concern over the killings by the international community led by the US, EU and Japan have put pressure on the Philippine government to unmask the assassins and to put a stop to further attacks. And indeed, the preliminary findings of two recent investigations, one by the UN Special Rapporteuer Philip Alston who also reported on Sri Lanka and the other by a Presidential Commission appointed by President Gloria Arroya have implicated the armed forces.

According to media reports, the Philippines military has strongly and tirelessly denied that it is behind the killings in interviews and in evidence given to investigators. They have blamed the killings on internal strife within the left movement and also complain that an equivalent attention is not given to the much larger number of killings by the insurgent group, the New People's Army, on whom two to three times as many killings are attributed. The Philippines parallel to Sri Lanka is remarkably clear, and not only in the effort of IGP Victor Perera's efforts to deny the statement attributed to him. It is also reflected in the Sri Lankan government's decision to deny the charges levelled against the government by the human rights lobby.

This points to the transnational dimension of the problem of counter terrorist operations. President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines is not perceived as a monster who violates human rights to preserve her hold on power. But many believe that she could do more, as Commander-in-Chief of the Philippines armed forces to check the abuses by sections within the military. It is natural that there should be a similar expectation of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who was a champion of human rights in the late 1980s and early 1990s when over 60,000 Sinhalese were killed or disappeared in the south. On one notable occasion he was caught at the airport taking out dossiers of human rights victims.

Unlike in the heyday of President Rajapaksa's campaign to protect human rights the victims today are mostly from the north and east and are Tamil. The victims are generally suspected to have had some links with the LTTE which, it is widely believed, is planning ruthless acts of terrorism in Colombo and elsewhere. This has enabled the government to convince most people that the counter terrorist operations are necessary to protect the country from terrorism. The opposition to the counter terror operations by the political mainstream is hardly in evidence.

New cycle

At the beginning of the JVP insurrection in 1988, another of Sri Lanka's presidents, J R Jayewardene, possibly the most erudite leader this country ever had, quoted an ancient Roman statesman as saying "In times of war the laws are silent." There was a great deal of controversy at that time as to whether the President had actually said this and misquoted the Roman or said the reverse. But the practical reality on the ground was that the government met the JVP's terror with more severe counter terror operations of its own. Until the JVP was effectively defeated in 1990, the laws were more or less silent when it came to killings and disappearances on the ground.

On the other hand, throughout the period of terror there were exceptional actions that exemplified the higher human aspirations to care for all victims, whether terrorist or not. The late lawyer Kanchana Abhayapala filed a few hundred Habeas Corpus applications on a voluntary basis without payment on behalf of the Sarvodaya Legal Aid Services in the courts of law on behalf of the victims. But these cases came to a virtual halt when a number of human rights lawyers were killed. Kanchana Abhayapala himself was gunned down in his home at the age of 28.

At the height of the JVP insurrection in 1988-89 with no quarter being given by either the government forces or the JVP rebels, both the mainstream opposition parties and civil society were marginalized. It was only after the extra judicial killing of almost the entire JVP leadership, and the effective vanquishing of the rebel movement, that the space began to open up for regular political and civil society campaigning on behalf of human rights.

Only thereafter came the period of important human rights work that was championed by opposition politicians Mahinda Rajapaksa and Mangala Samaraweera. They were able to fight against the excesses that were being committed by the victorious government. Civil society groups were able to find niches for highly effective international lobbying and the filing of legal cases to uphold human rights. These efforts culminated in the challenge given to the government by Amnesty International to implement a list of 31 recommendations or face the sanctions of the international community.

On the other hand, the present phase of conflict between the government and LTTE is quite unlike that of the post 1989 period. Despite having suffered defeats and reversals in the east, the LTTE is by no means like the defeated JVP of 1989. If the parallel with the Philippines is to be taken, the intensified effort by the Sri Lankan armed forces to flush out the LTTE from Colombo and the north and east will continue, and be coupled with a high level of human rights abuses.

There are some positive initiatives at the present that can restrict the slide to impunity and anarchy with regard to human rights. An important initiative is the Presidential Commission to investigate Serious Human Rights Violations headed by Justice Udalagama, and which is supplemented by an international eminent group of observers. While this commission is tasked with investigating only 16 out the several hundred serious cases of human rights violations, and does not intend to undertake many more, the principles of investigation and accountability it lays down can have positive outcomes. In addition, local human rights groups are lobbying with their counter parts in Geneva and elsewhere.

But in the final analysis, only a revival of the peace process can effectively bring the terror of human rights violations to an end. Therefore, if the current human rights initiatives are to be truly effective and not merely cosmetic, they will need to be tied to a campaign that brings the government and LTTE back to the negotiating table.

By Jehan Perera

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