The families of the missing have small seats along the road or are scouring the scars in the devastated north of Sri Lanka, with photos of tens of thousands who disappeared during the brutal civil war in the country. In each place, parents and grandparents ask the authorities a simple question: Where are our children?
The protests continued virtually uninterrupted for more than four years, allowed by a government open to accounting for the human toll of the war. Now the already desperate protests seem hopeless. Sri Lanka has transformed a new government that even remembers into an act of resistance.
Since Gotabaya Rajapaksa took over as president at the end of 2019, authorities have cracked down on newspapers, harassed and investigated journalists and activists, jailed human rights lawyers and writers and detained them for months without charge, dogs like Amnesty International and Human rights. Look say.
Investigators investigating war abuses have been jailed, forced to flee the country or placed under travel ban, in a clear message that the government views liability for crimes in the past as an insult.
It is no coincidence. Sri Lanka’s new government is led by the same people who brought the war to a cruel end in three decades in 2009, and then drove its discussion out for half a decade. During the last, cruel phase of the civil war, Mr. Rajapaksa, a former army officer, served as defense minister.
“We have no more hope,” said Leeladevi Anandanadaraja, the secretary of the Association for the Relatives of Forced Disappearances, whose own 34-year-old son went missing after being arrested by the army in 2009. ‘We think we need international intervention in this matter. ”
The deterioration of Sri Lanka’s human rights situation will be high on the agenda when the United Nations Human Rights Council meets on Wednesday.
Critics of the government want Sri Lanka to return to its recently abandoned commitment to cooperate with the investigation into war crimes committed by all sides during the war. They also hope to curb the gloom of a government dominated by the largely Buddhist Sinhalese ethnic majority.
Human rights groups have accused the Rajapaksa government of alienating and discriminating against ethnic and religious minorities, including the predominantly Hindu Tamils in the north. Such policies evoke the same tensions that fueled the civil war in the first place, when Tamil rebels responded to repression by establishing a breakaway state.
The UN Council will consider the findings of Michelle Bachelet, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who in a February 9 assessment expressed deep concern about the direction of the country and even the possibility that the case would be referred to the International Criminal Court. , expressed. .
“Developments over the past year have substantially changed the environment for reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka, eradicated democratic control and civil space, and enabled the emergence of a dangerous exclusionary and majority dialogue,” Bachelet wrote in the report.
Dinesh Gunawardena, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, on Tuesday during the opening speech to the Human Rights Council called the frightening UN report the work of ‘elements working against Sri Lanka’ and declared it an infringement of the country’s sovereignty.
Mr. Gunawardena called on member states not to adopt a resolution against Sri Lanka based on the report, as it would lead to a “loss of morale among countries involved in the fight against terrorism.”
“The council must keep the scales level,” he said.
Sri Lanka, along with Myanmar, has for a short time been seen as a success story emerging from the shadow of the conflict as a thriving democracy.
In 2015, an unlikely political coalition defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent president whose government crushed the Tamil uprising in 2009, and the older brother of the current president.
The new government pledged to account for wartime abuse, began to address wartime grievances and opened up space for civil society to emerge, which put the country on the path to the wounds of the to destroy devastating war. The families of those who disappeared during the war began to shout about what had happened.
“The supervision does not stop completely. They did not demilitarize, ”said Ambika Satkunanathan, a former member of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission, about the security structures during that period. “But because there was space, civil society encouraged him to challenge it.”
But the next four years were marked by sloppy fighting within the coalition, which paralyzed the government. This disagreement contributed to the decay of security that allowed a major terrorist attack on Easter Sunday in 2019 when more than 250 people killed coordinated bombings.
In that moment of fear, Gotabaya Rajapaksa projected himself as the strongman the country needed. He won elections later that year, despite criticism of his leadership during defense. His brother, Mahinda, the former president, became prime minister.
The civilian space that has emerged “is now gone”, Ms Satkunanathan said, adding that the recent return of Myanmar to the full-fledged military dictatorship was a warning.
“The lesson is that sometimes we are happy with pieces and do not call a government if they do not reach agreements – it works,” she said.
Reports by human rights watchdogs say Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has piled up his government with former military officers, has obstructed investigations into past crimes and called the efforts ‘political victimization’ of security officials. They also accused him of adopting policies that benefit the Sinhalese of the country but are offensive to minority communities.
One policy that has drawn heavy criticism is the forced cremation of people who died at Covid-19, due to the protests of Muslims who say it despises their faith and the insistence on burial. The government continues the practice, saying that funerals pose a health risk, despite assurances from medical experts and the World Health Organization that this is not the case.
MSM Fahim, whose 20-day-old son died in a hospital to Covid-19, said the government continued with the cremation, even when it objected.
“I waited six years to have a son,” he said. Fahim said. “When he died, I was very sad, and when he was cremated, it made me worse. I could not even properly say goodbye to my son. ”
Much of the fear for the direction of the country stems from the increasing intolerance of free speech and memories of atrocities in the past. Gotabaya Rajapaksa paints the ongoing protests for the missing and the calls for justice in contempt of an army that defeated an insurgent that used violent acts of terror.
Activists say harassment by security officials has taken the ranks of protesters down, although many persist in their campaign to find answers about the plight of their loved ones.
Sandya Ekneligoda, who is campaigning for justice for her missing husband, political cartoonist and columnist Prageeth Ekneligoda, said those who had provided her with a network of support for years were now afraid to deal with her.
To celebrate 11 years since Prageeth’s disappearance, Ms Ekneligoda – who is raising two teenage boys alone – shares an archive of his work, including his unfinished cartoons. With the launch last month, she laid down paintbrushes and other drawing tools.
“I do not feel lonely because I am busy with the campaign and gardening – everything is expensive now, so I plant vegetables in the garden to get the corners together,” she said. Ekneligoda said. ‘I still share everything with Prageeth. I talk to him in my head when I’m alone. It helps. “
“I never wondered if Prageeth was alive or not,” she added. “In reality he may be dead, but to me he lives a lot.”