Tamil mothers challenge the government in Colombo for offering cash without serving Justice
War-affected mothers from Sri Lanka’s North and East continuing their thirteen years of struggle, have condemned the efforts of the current government to escape from liability by paying money without revealing what has happened to their loved ones.
On the 2066th day of their continuous struggle, Tamil mothers protested in front of the United Nations office in Colombo against the recent decision taken by the cabinet to pay a compensation of two hundred thousand rupees per disappeared person. They handed over a memorandum demanding an international intervention to find out the fate of their loved ones.
Government spokesman Bandula Gunawardena had recently stated that the cabinet approval was granted to increase the compensation from one hundred thousand rupees to two hundred thousand rupees, purely based on the confirmation of the disappearance of a person, without the requirement of the necessary certification provided.
Relatives of the forcibly disappeared have vehemently rejected the compensation as a bribe that undermines their fight to obtain justice.
“Tell us what happened to our children. We don’t need any money. We will give you five hundred thousand rupees on behalf of our children. We do not need your two hundred thousand rupees. We will provide you with five hundred thousand rupees. At least show us the corpse of our children. We are asking at least for this as a solution,” a tearful Tamil mother in the protest told journalists in Sinhala.
According to the reporters in the capital, about 150 from the North and East took part in the protest in front of the United Nations office, while displaying placards written in Sinhala, Tamil, and English, as well as photographs of their loved ones who were forcibly disappeared.
Reporters further said that the Tamil mothers handed over messages containing their demands to the United Nations office in Colombo and several other embassies.
Rejecting the compensation program of the Wickramasinghe-Rajapaksa government to assess the value of their children’s lives at two hundred thousand rupees, the Chairperson of the Mullaitivu Missing Persons’ Association’s Mariyasuresh Easwary, had recently held a press conference and accused that there is an attempt to destroy the struggle for justice by giving money.
“ Are the lives of our children only worth two hundred thousand rupees? Those of whom we handed over to the army, those of whom were taken away from our homes right in front of our own eyes, those of whom who were kidnapped in white vans, those of whom were arrested at sea, while staying here as witnesses of the children we handed over; we are still searching for them. By extending money like this the government is trying to destroy the fight that we fight for justice.” she had said when she met the journalists at Mulativu media club.
Adding to that she further stated, “By giving this two hundred thousand rupees to us they are trying to make fools of us to take down the resolution that was passed about Sri Lanka in the Human Rights council session in Geneva. It was the president Gotabhaya Rajapaksa who ran away not being able to face the protest that took place few months back, and who started releasing this compensation scheme to break our continuous struggle towards justice. It’s very sad to say that the current president has also gotten together with them and is trying to fool us.”
The struggle that was started thirteen years ago in search of truth and justice by the Tamil mothers in the North and East to find the fate of their loved ones who were forcefully disappeared, has passed 2050 days of continuous protest.
Satyagraha movements were started in Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee and Ampara districts in February and March 2017 demanding the government to reveal the fate of their loved ones who disappeared in the last stages of the war after taking over the last bits of the war affected areas.
Although the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) was established on February 28, 2018 by the Maithri-Ranil government leadership to find out the fate of the forcefully disappeared persons, the office were not able to find a single detail about them to their relatives.
According to then founding head of the OMP office President’s Attorney Saliya Peiris, who holds the Presidential position over the current Bar Association, at least twenty thousand people have disappeared during the war, most of them were the ones who have allegedly been handed over to the security forces of the Sri Lankan government.
