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Earlier this year, Suyambu Nadar Ketheeswaran parked his bus 300 meters from his home and called his wife to say he was coming home. Shortly after, he disappeared. Ketheeswaran and his brother are two of about 1,000 people, many of them ordinary citizens, who have gone missing since last year in this war-torn country.
There is a growing suspicion that government security organizations are involved in the disappearance cases.
The civil war has continued for over 20 years between government forces, which mainly consist of majority Sinhalese, and armed groups of minority Tamils, who are seeking separation and independence.
Some of the countries that had been supporting the government of Sri Lanka are suspending economic assistance, citing the deterioration of human rights situation in the country.
Around 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 this year, Ketheeswaran, 31, and his younger brother, Suyambu Nadar Kanapathyradar, 26, disappeared from a parking lot.
Using a bus they had bought with a loan, the brothers had made three transportation service trips on a regular route in Colombo.
Immediately before he disappeared, Ketheeswaran parked the bus, called his wife, K. Amalajasy, 31, and told her, "I will go home now."
His wife has not heard from him since.
Before he went missing, Ketheeswaran, whose family members were all Tamils, was questioned by police twice about how he had obtained the money to buy the bus.
Police apparently suspected that he had received the money from an organization affiliated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the largest armed group of the Tamils.
Another missing person is port laborer Vairamthu Varatharasan, 40. He was taken away in a white car early in the morning on Jan. 7 by a group of men, some wearing police uniforms. Since then, his whereabouts have been unknown.
According to his wife, Y. R. Badrarugunagea, 38, when the group of men came to the couple's house, one of them, who was wearing a police uniform, ordered the Tamil couple to show their identification cards.
While she went into a back room to get the cards, her husband disappeared, along with the group of men.
Four months later, the wife was called to a local police station where she was told that her husband had been detained because he had been involved in LTTE activities. However, she was not able to recall anything that connected him to the LTTE.
Along with other people whose family members had also disappeared, she went to the central police station, and asked one of the senior officers to look into the disappearances.
However, the officer told them: "We don't know who snatched your family members. If local police took them away, they should have reported the cases to us."
The remark apparently contradicted what the local police station told her.
She has five children. The oldest is a 14-year-old girl and the youngest is 1-year-old boy. Without a father, it is difficult to earn a living.
"I'm considering going to the Middle East to earn money by making the eldest daughter take care of the other four children," she said.
According to the Sri Lankan government's investigative committee on the disappearance issues, a total of 2,020 people disappeared between September last year and February this year.
Of the 2,020 people, 1,134 were found by late July. The whereabouts of the remaining 886 people were still unknown in July.
D. Jayawickrama, chairman of the government's Human Rights Commission, who had taken part in the investigations, denied the involvement of government organizations in the 1,134 cases in which missing people were found.
He told The Asahi Shimbun that they had disappeared for personal reasons. For example, some of them had gone to other places to work as migrant workers and others had run away with their lovers, he said.
As for the remaining 886 cases, he said that the government is still investigating.
"Unfortunately, some disappearance cases have taken place. But the reports on those cases are exaggerated," D. Jayawickrama said.
On the other hand, the Civil Monitoring Commission, which consists of opposition parliamentary members and legal experts investigating the cases, says that government organizations could be involved in the disappearances.
One of the parliamentary members, Mano Ganesan, said, "There is a high possibility that the police, the military and armed groups that broke away from LTTE and are now cooperating with the military took away people whom they had suspected as those related to LTTE."
The military and the police have set up checkpoints not only in Colombo, but also in northern and eastern parts of the country where many Tamils live.
Therefore, if government organizations were not involved, it should have been impossible for the kidnappers to pass through the checkpoints, Ganesan said.
The commission suspects that the organizations are identifying LTTE-related people based on photos of gatherings organized by the political division of LTTE or those taken around the buildings of organizations related to LTTE.
The commission has confirmed that a total of 127 people have disappeared since January last year in and around Colombo alone.
It is difficult to implement similar investigations in northern and eastern parts of the country where the civil war is raging.
Judging from the information from the government and private organizations, however, about 1,000 people have disappeared there.
Most of them are Tamils.
In February and March this year, an international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, interviewed family members of 107 missing people. It found that 70 percent of the families suspected the involvement of government organizations in the disappearances.
In the city of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, for example, a person disappeared during the government-imposed curfew.
In those hours, people other than members of government security organizations cannot move around.
Meanwhile, the LTTE has also taken away young people in order to make them work as its soldiers. Therefore, some disappearance cases could have been caused by LTTE members.
However, the number of these cases is unknown.
It is not only disappearance cases that target Tamils. On June 7 this year, police forcibly transferred 376 residents living in cheap apartments in Colombo to the northern or eastern parts of the country by bus, saying that they did not have appropriate reasons to live there.
The transfer was reported widely not only in the country, but also abroad. As a result, human rights organizations criticized the government strongly. In response to the criticism, the government sent the residents back to Colombo.
Those cases have apparently resulted from the government's view that the LTTE is sending terrorists into Colombo. Because of the view, the government is eager to expel "suspicious Tamils" from the city.
The international community has concerns about the deterioration of human rights situation in Sri Lanka.
Britain had previously promised to give q13 million (about 740 million yen) in grants to the Sri Lankan government to reduce its debts. In May this year, however, it postponed payment of q11.5 million.
At that time, the British government said it will pay the remaining half if Sri Lanka meets the conditions agreed on by the two countries, including the improvement of human rights situation.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher also said when he visited Sri Lanka in May that the human rights situation in the country is deteriorating, and the U.S. government is concerned about the kidnappings.
Boucher also said that the U.S. government called off the implementation of one of its support measures.
Asahi
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