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V. Patterns of “disappearances” and abductions

Northern Sri Lanka

In the north, many individuals “disappeared” after security forces conducted large-scale cordon-and-search operations in a particular village or several villages. During such operations, the military either detained people or seized their documents and requested that they report to the army camp or another location to collect their IDs. In both scenarios, some people never came back after they went to collect their documents.

For example, on December 6, 2006, soldiers conducting a cordon-and-search operation in the Navindil area in Jaffna seized the ID card of 23-year-old Rasiharan Somalinghan. The soldiers told him to report to Uduppiddy military camp to retrieve his ID. When he went to the camp with his relatives the same day, the military officials ordered him inside, telling his relatives they would release Somalinghan shortly. He never returned home.

The relatives returned to the camp and saw Somalinghan’s bicycle parked inside, yet the military denied ever arresting him. Another man, detained together with Somalinghan, was dumped at a junction, blindfolded, with his legs and hands tied, three days after being detained. According to relatives, the man was so scared that he refused to talk to them. The family reported the case to the Human Rights Commission, the SLMM, and the ICRC. To date they have received no information about Somalinghan’s whereabouts.¹⁸⁰

Human Rights Watch documented a case in which the military may have had legitimate grounds to detain a suspect during a search operation, yet instead of handing the man over to the police as required by law, he “disappeared” without a trace. The family told Human Rights Watch that on January 23, 2007, 21-year-old Rajkumar Nadesalingam was staying with his friends in the village of Kerudavil, in Chavakachcheri. The villagers later informed the family that military personnel from Kanagampelli camp conducted a cordon-and-search operation in the village and detained a number of young men, including Nadesalingam. During the arrest, he reportedly showed them ammunition depots in the village. The military also reportedly found cyanide on him and Wanni numbers in his cell phone.¹⁸¹

Nadesalingam’s relatives were too scared to inquire directly with the military fearing that they too would be arrested. They went to the Chavakachcheri police who said that they had no knowledge of the arrest and the military had not handed any detainees over to them. The family said that when, at the family’s request, the ICRC inquired with Kanakampuliyady camp, the military said they had released everybody they had arrested in Kerudavil.¹⁸²

A number of witnesses from the Jaffna peninsula told Human Rights Watch that their relatives “disappeared” after they had been stopped by the army at checkpoints or on the road. For example, on May 11, 2006, 24-year-old Tharmakulasingam Kuruparan went from his home town of Chavakachcheri to Jaffna on a motorbike. He never returned home. His relatives heard from eyewitnesses that the army arrested Kuruparan at Kaladdy junction.

That day, an army motorized unit known as a “field group,” consisting of five or six motorcycles accompanied by a Powell military vehicle, closed the road and soldiers were checking the documents of those traveling on the road. According to eyewitnesses, after checking Kuruparan’s documents, the soldiers handcuffed him, pulled his T-shirt up around his head, and forced him into their vehicle. The eyewitnesses said three or four other people were similarly arrested at the junction. Kuruparan’s family suspected that he could have been detained in the Urelu army camp as they believed only this camp had “field groups.” Yet efforts to find him in this and other army camps proved futile.¹⁸³

Two other men “disappeared” in a similar incident on February 17, 2007.

Pathinather Prasanna, 24-years old, and Anton Prabananth, 21-years old, were cycling home from the fish market east of Jaffna town, when, near the village of Nayanmarkaddu, within municipal limits, a Powell military vehicle overtook them. Eyewitnesses later told the men’s families that the vehicle suddenly stopped, reversed, and several soldiers jumped out and ordered the two men to stop. Prabananth’s father told Human Rights Watch:

The villagers told me they saw Pathinather and Anton being interrogated by the military. The military held them at gunpoint. Then the military put them into the Powell, and also loaded their bicycles into their vehicle. The villagers could not see much because the army ordered them to disperse, and now they are too afraid to talk to anybody about what they saw. ¹⁸⁴

Prabananth’s father said that the witnesses believed they recognized the Powell vehicle as it used to be parked at a nearby Thapal Kadai junction and was used to patrol the road on a regular basis. Yet when the family inquired at Thapal Kadai, the military denied carrying out the arrest.¹⁸⁵

The army also has detained a number of individuals in the course of targeted raids that sometimes follow LTTE claymore landmine attacks or similar security incidents.¹⁸⁶ In one of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, a woman said that on July 22, 2006, there was a claymore attack in her village in Meesali that killed three military personnel and injured several others. The same morning, a large group of military personnel came to the house where she was staying with her husband, 26-year-old Shanthakumar Palaniyappan. Palaniyappan’s wife said that the soldiers neither introduced themselves nor produced any documents, but immediately started questioning her husband about the attack. She said:

They just took him away—I kept asking where they were taking him, but they said they would inquire and bring him back. When they left, I followed them. They took him to a place not far from where we live. There was a house there, and for a while they kept him there; he was just standing near the wall and I could see him. The military then chased me away, and I don’t know where they took him from there.¹⁸⁷

Palaniyappan’s wife looked for him in nearby army camps and launched a complaint with the Chavakachcheri police station. She said that several days after the “disappearance,” the Chavakachcheri magistrate who was investigating the claymore attack summoned her and informed her that her husband had not been arrested by the army. The court told her that she would be notified if any information came to light, yet to date her husband’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.¹⁸⁸

Even where the identity of the men participating in raids resulting in abductions cannot be conclusively determined, circumstantial evidence often points to the participation or at least acquiescence of the security forces. Such raids usually happen at night during curfew hours, yet the groups of a dozen or so heavily armed men seem to have no problems moving through the numerous government checkpoints and sentry posts in Jaffna. Nor do they hesitate to invade houses located in government high security zones, or right next to army camps or other military positions.

In an illustrative case, on September 11, 2006, around midnight, a group of about 15 men arrived in a van and on motorcycles to the house of 32-year-old Irageevant Sathiyavagiswaran. The family started shouting for help as they watched the men jumping over the fence and breaking the door. A relative who was present said that most of the men spoke accented Tamil and one spoke Tamil as a native speaker. He explained what happened next:

We were 11 people in the house. We were all begging them to take anything they wanted but not to hurt us. They told us to shut up and pushed us into a corner. They asked our names, and one of them went and checked other rooms in the house. They then asked for our IDs, but as my sister went to get the documents, they grabbed Sathiyavagiswaran. He tried to resist, but they knocked him down and just dragged him out by his feet, like a dog. His mother was trying to grab him, but they hit her with a gun butt on the head and punched his sister who was in their way. He just kept shouting, “Mother! Mother!”¹⁸⁹

The relatives tried to follow the men as they were dragging Irageevant out of the house but the perpetrators put him into a white van and drove away. The family said that there is a military checkpoint only 25 meters away from their house, and the military there could easily see what was happening. However, when they inquired at the checkpoint the next morning, a soldier there told them that he just thought they were shouting and crying because “someone got sick in the family,” and so the soldiers did not think they should intervene.¹⁹⁰

The family also launched a complaint with the Kopay police station and inquired at the Urelu military camp, but the military there said they had no knowledge of the incident. When they inquired at the EPDP camp in the area some 20 days after the “disappearance,” one of the officials there said he believed Sathiyavagiswaran “must still be alive” and suggested that otherwise the family would have found the body.¹⁹¹ The family also reported the case to the ICRC and SLMM, and a number of organizations made inquiries on their behalf. As of this writing, the family has received no further information on Sathiyavagiswaran’s fate or whereabouts.

In at least two of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, night raids by “unknown perpetrators” took place after the army had visited the families earlier the same day.

On January 22, 2007, an army unit from the Colomthurai army camp conducted a search in the house of 28-year-old Junith Rex Simsan. According to family members, the soldiers checked Simsan’s ID and asked him about his connections with the LTTE and what arms he possessed. Upon completing the questioning they left, telling him everything was in order.¹⁹²

The same night, however, at about 12:30 a.m., another group of armed men came to the house. A relative said:

His father opened the door, and the men pushed him aside and then forced us and the children into one of the rooms. Junith Rex came out of his room, covering himself with a bed sheet, and the men grabbed him by the bed sheet and seized him. They wore black pants, green T-shirts, and their heads were wrapped with some black cloth. Later I found out that they arrived in a van, but they parked it on the main road. They smashed the lights bulb in the room and dragged him away. They told him “Come,” in Tamil. He cried, “Mother!” but we couldn’t help him.¹⁹³

Relatives informed the Jaffna police of the abduction and visited various military camps in the area. The family said that in one of the camps the military looked through “a big list of detainees” in their presence, but told them that Simsan’s name was not on their list.¹⁹⁴ The family also appealed to the Human Rights Commission, ICRC, and SLMM. To date they have received no further information.

In October 2006, soldiers from Urumpirai army camp started visiting the house of 28-year-old Sivasothy Sivaramanan. On November 4, 2006, three uniformed soldiers also visited the tea shop run by the family. The soldiers were looking for Sivaramanan, but when his father informed them that he had not arrived yet, they left, reassuring the father that it was “nothing special.”¹⁹⁵

The same night, however, a group of armed men speaking a mixture of Tamil and Sinhala burst into the family’s house, found Sivaramanan, and dragged him away handcuffed. They ignored his father’s effort to inquire where they were taking him. Subsequent efforts by the family to locate Sivaramanan so far have proven futile.¹⁹⁶

Eastern Sri Lanka

Politically motivated “disappearances”—some followed by executions—and abductions for ransom have also occurred in the eastern districts of Batticaloa, Trincomalee, and Ampara. As mentioned above, the Karuna group appears to be the main perpetrator in such cases, often with the complicity of government security forces.

The family of Abdul Wahid Muhammad Fawzal Ameer, a beedi leaves supplier, told Human Rights Watch that on July 22, 2006, he left for Batticaloa in his van, and that was the last time they saw him. The beedi factory owner then received a call from Ameer’s abductors requesting 300,000 rupees (about US$ 2,700) for his release. He took the money to the place designated by the callers, but could not find them.

Ameer’s relative told Human Rights Watch:

All signs are that the people who took him belonged to an armed group which is operating in the east. The area where they asked his employers to bring the money is controlled by Karuna.¹⁹⁷

He added that the people on the phone spoke Tamil with a northeastern accent, and Ameer’s van was spotted two months after the abduction in the Batticaloa area.¹⁹⁸

Human Rights Watch received credible reports from witnesses and international aid groups about the “disappearances” of people suspected of being LTTE supporters in the east. As thousands of people tried to leave the areas of intensified fighting in late 2006 and early 2007, the army and the Karuna group were screening displaced persons fleeing into government-controlled territory.

In a number of cases, these screenings resulted in detentions and “disappearances” of young Tamil men. For example, on February 19, 2007, 20-year-old Danesh Amarthalingam from Kiliveddi, Trincomalee, was traveling with his aunt by bus south to Batticaloa, trying to leave the area before the fighting intensified. His aunt told Human Rights Watch that as the bus made a lunch stop near Welikanda town in Polonnaruwa district, two men who sat next to Amarthalingam on the bus started making frantic calls on their cell phones, pointing at the young man. As passengers boarded the bus, the two men were joined by a third one in a T-shirt and army trousers.¹⁹⁹

Amarthalingam’s aunt told Human Rights Watch:

We all got back on the bus. The bus drove for about 10 kilometers from our lunch stop when a white van coming from the opposite direction swerved and blocked the bus. The bus came to a halt. One man came out of the van and stood outside the van, blocking the registration number from view. About nine men got into the bus. They told the driver, “Don’t shout,” and “Keep quiet.” At this point, the three men who had kept an eye on my nephew once again pointed towards him and got off the bus.

One of the men was masked. He grabbed another boy, who was traveling with us, and my nephew by the collar and dragged them out of the bus. The boys were very scared. They did not say anything. I kept quiet because I was also very afraid they would shoot my nephew. They all had weapons. They said, “If anyone shouts, we will kill these two boys.” The other boy’s mother managed to be dragged outside along with her son. She was shouting and screaming but nobody helped her. The van sped off.

The bus driver stopped the bus at a police check point and told the policemen about the incident. The policemen told the bus driver, “We can’t open a file here. Go and tell Valachchenai police station.”

The woman said that the incident took place in a government-controlled area where the Karuna group operated freely.²⁰⁰ She reported the abduction to the ICRC. To date, she has not received any information about Amarthalingam.

Two other women told Human Rights Watch that their sons, aged 24 and 18, similarly went missing in late 2006 as they were traveling by bus from Vaharai to Batticaloa.²⁰¹

Abductions for the purpose of forced recruitment constitute another large category of cases perpetrated in the east. In many such cases, while the families knew that the Karuna group was taking away boys and young men to be used as soldiers, they had no exact information of their whereabouts and were not able to meet or contact them. United Nations agencies and mechanisms have voiced strong concerns about this ongoing practice.²⁰²

As the Working Group of the UN Security Council was considering the report by the United Nations advisor on children and armed conflict, Allan Rock, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN said that “as a responsible member of the international community, the Government has decided to adopt necessary measures to cause an independent and credible investigation into these allegations.”²⁰³

Despite the government’s pledges to carry out investigations and take action, abductions in the east continued throughout 2007. In February 2007, parents of one abducted child and two abducted young men told Human Rights Watch how Karuna cadres had taken away their sons. The mother of one of the young men said that Karuna cadres abducted the two on the A11 road between Welikanda and Valachchenai in February 2007. When the relatives complained at the nearby Karuna camp in Karapola, Karuna cadres told them not to report the case—or else to say the LTTE took their sons.²⁰⁴

In 2007, UNICEF documented 252 cases of child recruitment by the Karuna group.²⁰⁵

The actual number is likely to be higher because many parents are afraid to report cases. These numbers also do not reflect the forced recruitment of young men age 18 or over. Young adults among the internally displaced in the east have been especially vulnerable to abductions and forced recruitment.²⁰⁶

Reports of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission also do not support the government’s claim that it has taken action to restore stability and halt abductions in the east. Every weekly report by the SLMM in September and October 2007 contained descriptions of new abduction cases reported in the east. In one week alone, from October 1 to October 7, the SLMM registered 13 abductions; two of the victims were children allegedly abducted by the Karuna group. The SLMM report for the week of December 3—December 9, 2007, mentioned 22 cases of abductions, in seven of which the victims were children. The SLMM noted that the police took little action to address the abductions, while the heavily armed Karuna cadre continued to move freely through government checkpoints.²⁰⁷

Colombo

Abductions and “disappearances” in Colombo appear to fall into two general categories. First are those cases involving Tamils, often from outside of Colombo, who are picked up as part of government counter-LTTE efforts. Second are cases of abduction for ransom, in which the victims are usually Tamil businessmen, and in which there is evidence of involvement by non-state armed groups and local security forces.

A clear target of “disappearances” in Colombo is people who come to the capital to apply for visas to travel abroad. Human Rights Watch documented at least 13 such cases, while the media and local groups have reported on many more.²⁰⁸

In May 2007, President Rajapaksa told the media that extortionists use visa applications to choose their targets. He mentioned that the government is aware of cases in which personal financial data, provided to foreign embassies as part of visa applications, was leaked to criminal elements who then targeted the applicants for extortion.²⁰⁹

This may be a plausible explanation for some of the abductions. For example, in one case documented by Human Rights Watch, 26-year-old Sivathasan Kugathasan came to Colombo in June 2006 after making contact with an agent who was helping him apply for employment abroad. His family stayed regularly in touch with him for about 10 days, until on June 22 they missed a call from his mobile phone, and any efforts to contact him afterwards failed. His wife said:

I kept trying to call him but his phone was dead. He had carried 100,000 rupees (about US$ 900) with him and we found that there were cash withdrawals amounting to 300,000 rupees since the time he went missing. The agent told me that my husband had given him 200,000 rupees and his passport, but so far the agent has not returned the money. I went to the place where he was staying but nobody had any information. I went to 18 police stations to check if they were holding him but had no luck.²¹⁰

While in this case and some others the families could not claim with certainty that the perpetrators were government agents, they were devastated by the lack of efforts by the police to find their missing relatives or to identify the perpetrators.

In many other cases, however, the witnesses were adamant that at least some of the perpetrators were the police. For example, in August 2007, 21-year-old Ramakrishnan Rajkumar was staying at the AKB Lodge in Colombo with his wife, waiting for his work visa for Saudi Arabia. According to Rajkumar’s wife, on the night of August 23, police conducted a raid in the lodge, arresting her husband and some others. She said:

It was 12:30 a.m. We were all sleeping. The police came in uniform and we were all there. They asked for our ID cards. When they asked, I saw there were two boys taken from the room next door. They threw my card away and grabbed my husband’s card, and they took him.²¹¹

The woman said that when she tried to ask where the police were taking her husband, a man in civilian clothes who was with them showed her a gun, threatening her.

The police station located across the street from the lodge refused to take the woman’s complaint, and after searching for her husband in many other police stations she managed to lodge a complaint with the Kotahena police station.

The woman told Human Rights Watch that a week after the abduction, two men in civilian clothes came to the lodge. They told her that the other two men arrested along with her husband were found guilty, but Rajkumar was not. They promised they would release him a week later, but at the time of this writing he still has not returned.²¹²

In another case, five men from Batticaloa “disappeared” in January 2007 after they came to Colombo to apply for work in the Middle East. Two of them were seized on January 10, 2007, when they were traveling back to Batticaloa by bus after their visa interviews. Men traveling in a white van stopped the bus and said they were from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police. They took the two men away, along with one other person who was later released, and informed their families.²¹³

Three others stayed in Colombo at the South Asia lodge. The lodge owner informed their families that on the night on January 12, a group of men arrived at the lodge in a white van (license plate 253-0467) and, showing CID identity cards, took the three men away.

The efforts of the men’s families to locate them so far have proven futile.²¹⁴

In another group of cases in Colombo, police detained people allegedly for questioning in relation to criminal cases, yet did not provide the families with an “arrest receipt” as required by law, and did not notify them as to where they took the suspects. Following the arrests, the individuals disappeared without a trace.

In an illustrative case, around midnight on January 7, 2007, a group of uniformed policemen came to the house of 40-year-old Vairamuththu Varatharasan in Colombo. His wife told Human Rights Watch that one of the policemen came inside and requested their identity papers. She went to one of the rooms to get the documents, but by the time she came out the policemen and her husband were both gone. She ran out of the house and saw a van parked on the street, but by the time she got there the vehicle started and left.²¹⁵

The next day, a group of army personnel conducted a search of the house, telling Varatharasan’s wife that because she was Sinhalese she had to help the law enforcement agents by handing over weapons they believed were hidden in the house. Their search, however, produced no weapons. Varatharasan’s wife said that prior to her husband’s “disappearance,” the CID used to come to their house regularly to question her husband. After the assassination of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar by the LTTE in Colombo in August 2005, the CID arrested and held Varatharasan for two days.²¹⁶

She registered a complaint with the Grandpass police station, as well as with the HRC, but so far has received no information on her husband’s whereabouts.

A significant number of cases in which the victims have “disappeared” are abductions for ransom. These cases seem to be the least reported category as victims’ families usually try to pay the requested sums of money in the hope of getting their relatives released, rather than filing a complaint with the police or human rights organizations.

In a typical scenario, a group of perpetrators, often seen traveling in a white van, abduct Tamil or, more recently, Muslim businessmen and take them to undisclosed locations in Colombo or elsewhere. The families then receive phone calls with requests for large sums of money (usually millions of rupees) that they are supposed to deposit in a specified bank account or bring to a place designated by the perpetrators.

When the ransom demands are not met the abducted individuals remain missing, and in some cases are believed to be killed. But even meeting the request does not guarantee the release of the victim. In some such cases, the perpetrators release the victim, warning him and his family not to report the cases to any authority. In other cases, however, the families do not get their loved ones back even after delivering the requested ransom to the perpetrators.

In one case documented by Human Rights Watch, on July 7, 2006, four men in a white van abducted 27-year-old Ariyadas Pushpadas from a lodge that he owned in Colombo. The men said they were from the CID, but when the family made inquiries, the CID denied ever arresting him. On the night of the abduction, the perpetrators called Pushpadas’ brother on his cell phone, requesting ransom for his release. His mother told Human Rights Watch:

They demanded 10 million rupees.  They told my second son, “If you give that money, we will release your brother.” I was on the road from Jaffna to Colombo at that time. When my son called me to tell me about this ransom demand, I told him that we didn’t have this much money and he would have to tell them to wait till I got back. After I got back to Colombo the following day, the same men kept calling and negotiating on the phone. They told us that if we complained to anybody, they would shoot us.²¹⁷

By July 19 Pushpadas’ mother collected the money and handed it over to a Tamil person in Dematagoda, Colombo. She said the man told her to go back home and wait for her son to return. However, he did not come back. At the time of the interview, more than six months after her son’s abduction, the mother had heard nothing about his fate. She said that she had been talking to her son before she handed over the money, but after the ransom was paid her efforts to contact him were unsuccessful. Eventually the family reported the case to the local police which referred it to the CID. So far, however, there has been no progress in the investigation.²¹⁸

In several statements made in 2007, Sri Lankan authorities addressed the ongoing spree of abductions, acknowledging that the groups perpetrating them included acting and ex-servicemen, as well as criminal elements.

In March 2007, police chief Victor Perera and top police detective Asoka Wijetilleke talked about “police, soldiers, and deserters” working together with "underworld gangs" to carry out abductions, extortion of money, and killings.²¹⁹ In July, the government announced that the police had arrested a former air force officer, a serving airman, and four police officers for their alleged involvement in abductions and extortion cases.²²⁰ In none of these cases were charges filed against the alleged perpetrators, though they reportedly remain in custody.

The number of reported abductions for extortion in Colombo dropped in the latter half of 2007, though they are still occurring. Unless perpetrators are held responsible for such abductions, including any public officials involved, however, there is every reason to believe the incidence of such abductions will return to previous levels.