Thousands still missing as Lanka marks war anniversary

Still reeling from the Easter terror attacks, Sri Lanka commemorates this weekend 10 years since the end of a bloody civil war that killed at least 100,000 people, from which the scars are still not healed.

Security was tight in the north of the island, home to Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils, ahead of solemn ceremonies on Saturday.

Sri Lanka’s government and top military brass were due to hold their own commemoration in Colombo on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena granted an amnesty to 762 convicts to mark a key Buddhist anniversary, but resisted calls to release a firebrand Buddhist monk.

Addressing inmates at the main Welikada prison, Sirisena promised financial support to re-integrate them in society, but made no reference to monk Galagodaatte Gnanasara, whose release was demanded Friday by the Buddhist hierarchy.

Sri Lanka has declared two days of holidays for nation-wide celebrations of Vesak, or the commemoration of the birth, enlightenment and passing away of the Buddha.

Those who benefited from the amnesty had been serving short jail terms for minor offences and none had been convicted of murder or rape, officials said. The 762 released on Saturday included several women.

“An increase in the prison population is a sign of the declining moral value of any country,” Sirisena said in a nationally televised ceremony.

He said Sri Lanka’s prison system was designed to accommodate 11,000 inmates but as of Saturday there were 24,332 convicts as well as remand prisoners in judicial custody. Many Buddhist leaders had urged Sirisena to grant a special amnesty to monk Gnanasara on Vesak day.

On May 18, 2009 government forces brought their no-holds-barred military offensive to an end at a lagoon in the northern coastal district of Mullaittivu with the killing of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka’s then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa declared an end to the 37-year separatist conflict — marked by massacres, suicide bombings and assassinations — between Tamil militants and the central government, which is dominated by the majority Sinhalese.

But for thousands of war widows and other victims on both sides, this marked the start of a new struggle: to find out the fate of their loved ones. About 20,000 people are still missing, including 5,000 government troops.

Anandarasan Nagakanni, 61, is still searching for her son Arindavadas.

“He was last seen with the Sri Lankan army, and after that we haven’t seen him,” she told AFP at a tiny makeshift office in Mullaittivu, where a notice board was covered with dozens of photos of missing people.

Nagaraja Sureshamma, 65, who lost one son and is still looking for the other, recalled the horrors of the final months and how civilians scrambled to escape indiscriminate attacks and shelling.

“We were all going together, but my son happened to go on a different route... Ever since, we have not been able to find him,” Sureshamma said.

“If they are not alive, then they need to tell us that at least,” said Mariasuresh Easwari, an activist trying to help find the missing. “Did you murder them? Did you bury them? Tell us.”

Sri Lankan forces have been accused of killing about 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the war, a charge successive governments have denied.

Several mass graves containing skeletal remains have been found in the past two decades, but only a handful of those buried have ever been formally identified.

Until recently, even remembering the war dead was considered subversive and annual memorial services by Tamils were trashed by government forces.

Government forces have set up memorials in the north for fallen security forces and bulldozed Tiger cemeteries, obliterating any sign of the rebels who at their zenith controlled a third of Sri Lanka.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a recent report that the new government’s promised political reforms and accountability for wartime atrocities have failed to materialise.

“For many Sri Lankans living in the bitterly contested north and east, the war has never quite ended,” it said.

Agence France Presse