Society
for Threatened Peoples, Bern, Geneva
I am Sandhya Ekneligoda, wife of Prageeth
Ekneligoda, a Sri Lankan cartoonist and media activist who disappeared on the
24th of January 2010. I became a human rights defender because I am
a victim of a human rights violation. Today is it the 947th day since
Prageeth disappeared.
I am a Sinhalese, a Buddhist and mother of
two sons. We live close to our capital Colombo.
There are many like me in Sri
Lanka today, mothers, fathers, husbands,
wives and children of the disappeared. Many of them are from the north and east
of the country, where even three years after the war ended they live under a
heavily militarized regime. They don’t even have the freedom to cry out in
their sorrow.
In the past years, as a law abiding citizen
of my country, I have gone to every single place that I could, to seek help in
my search for Prageeth – to the Police, to the National Human Rights
Commission, to the Courts. I have written any number of letters appealing for
help to find Prageeth, including to the President, to the President’s wife, to
the Attorney General, to Ministers and to Members of Parliament. Nobody has
taken any responsibility for investigating his disappearance. Nor I have
received any other kind of support from any of them.
Some of you may know that on September 11,
2011, at the review of Sri Lanka’s report to the Committee against Torture,
Mohan Peiris, the Legal Adviser to the Cabinet in Sri Lanka who was a member of
the official delegation told the Committee that the government had received
information that Prageeth was alive and had sought refuge in a foreign country.
For over 7 months after that day I tried to get some verification of this. I
asked the Human Rights Commission to bring Mr. Peiris before a Magistrate so
that we could find out the truth of this matter. Finally, after 7 months, Mr.
Peiris appeared before the Magistrate. When shown the transcript of what he had
said, Mr. Peiris said that he had received the information from a member of the
Intelligence Unit whose name he had forgotten. He said only God knows about
Prageeth Ekneligoda. This is the extent to which officials of the government of
Sri Lanka
care about human lives. If this is the case with me, a Sinhala woman from the
south, what do you think would be the situation of Tamil and Muslim women from
the north and south who are also searching for their missing and disappeared
children and family members?
In Sri Lanka today, disappearance has
become a social issue. When you hear speakers on any public platform refer to
opposition politics, to social issues, to human rights issues, to labour
issues, they often end with the words ‘ Who knows but I be the next person to
be ‘disappeared’ because I spoke for
social justice’. Some social activists have been forced to stop some of their
work. Other than a few who are close to the government, most people in Sri Lanka
today are knowingly or unknowingly caught up in this new reign of terror.
When Prageeth disappeared, many people
asked me why I had done nothing to stop him from doing what he did. But why
should I have stopped him? He was not doing anything wrong. He was doing
something good and positive for our future. Today disappearances have taken
over our political body. It is an anti-social act that is supported by those in
power.
It is in the 1978-1979 period, when the
Tamil nationalist movement began to be more militant, that disappearance first
began to be used as a political tool. Disappearances in Sri Lanka first came to the
attention of the UN and of the Working Group on Disappearances in the 1988-1989
period. That was indeed a reign of terror. The UN Working Group came to Sri Lanka
in 1991 and in 1992. The establishment of the National Human Rights Commission
was one of the outcomes. Today we are asking for the Working Group to visit Sri Lanka
again. This is far more important for us than a visit by the High Commissioner.
Sadly, what is the situation of the
National Human Rights Commission today? It is completely ineffective. My
experiences with them have been very distasteful. After I had written 5 letters
to them, one after another, about asking Mohan Peiris to clarify his statement
to the Committee against Torture, the Chairperson responded to me asking me to
stop writing to them with unreasonable demands. They often refuse to accept our
complaints and appeals. Why must this be so? The Commissioners are all
appointed by the President. They serve the interests of the person who has
secured this position for them, they don’t serve us, the people. The National Human Rights Commission is not
working in keeping with the Paris
principles. It is essential that it becomes an autonomous body that can provide
justice, protection and relief to victims of human rights violations in Sri Lanka.
The report of the government’s Lessons
Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has a recommendation calling for
the appointment of a Special Commissioner on Disappearances. This could be an
important mechanism if it is an independent one, and has the resources to carry
out its work.
Prageeth was the main breadwinner in our
family. After he disappeared our entire family maintenance structure broke
down. It is the same for many of us from the families of the disappeared. We
need to have some system for ensuring compensation and reparation for our loss.
In 1994 under President Chandrika
Kumaratunga, a memorial was built for those who disappeared in the
1988-1989
period. It was called the Shrine of Innocents. The same person who defended the
families of the disappeared in the past, the present President Mahinda Rajapakse,
has had this monument bulldozed and destroyed in order to acquire the land for
an urban development project.
We have never been able to bring the
perpetrators of disappearances to justice in Sri Lanka. Some of those
responsible for disappearances in 1988-1989 have remained in high positions in
subsequent governments. They are not afraid of continuing to commit these
violations. They don’t care about abducting people in broad daylight. They are
confident that they will not be punished. They know they will be protected by
the President and by politicians. This is the worst kind of impunity. It is
only if we set up a system for investigating and punishing the crime of
disappearances in Sri Lanka
that our children will live in a country free of fear.
To summarize our
recommendations, we call on the Government of Sri Lanka
To invite or accept a visit of
the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance and give their observations
and recommendations priority in governmental action.
To appoint an Independent
Special Commissioner on Disappearances endowed with sufficient resources to carry
out his work.
To elaborate a holistic
approach to the issue of disappearances that includes complaint mechanisms,
witness protection, remedy, compensation and reparation for victims of enforced
disappearances.
To urgently take measures to
end impunity in the country, hold perpetrators accountable and do justice to victims
of violence and crimes.
Sandhya Ekneligoda
Geneva, August 31, 2012
Speech
made by Sandya Eknaligida on behalf Society for Threatened Peoples
www.gfbv.ch at the informal UPR briefing
organised by UPR INFO.
