{"id":79375,"date":"2013-03-28T06:52:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T06:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=79375"},"modified":"2013-04-01T07:58:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T07:58:22","slug":"a-missing-person-in-sri-lanka-heartfelt-issues-ground-realities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-missing-person-in-sri-lanka-heartfelt-issues-ground-realities\/","title":{"rendered":"A Missing Person In Sri Lanka: Heartfelt Issues & Ground Realities"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Roberts<\/a><\/span> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr Michael Roberts<\/p><\/div>\n

When I was in Sri Lanka from mid-April to early June 2009 I was on holiday with my wife and not able to pursue investigations in any depth. In contrast my sojourn in May-June 2010 focused on a range of studies and travels. One gem of a life-story surfaced near my second home in Wellawatte when I was able to chat with a domestic servant at a Tamil house nearby, a lady who had been through the crucible of Eelam War<\/a><\/span> in the Vanni Pocket. I shall call her Sambandhi. She was a wizened wiry soul who had survived the war together with husband, but (1) had one daughter killed by shrapnel; (2) one son (who was then aged c. 21) hospitalized in mid-2009 with the loss of one eye and injuries to face and other eye;[1]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> and (3) was wracked with pain because one of her sons had been conscripted by the LTTE and was missing. Khimera is the pseudonym I shall place on this son, a young man born in 1983 and aged circa 26 in 2009.<\/p>\n

Neither Sambandhi nor the middle class Tamil household that had given her employment and other forms of support wished her name or photograph made public.[2]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> Sambandhi has since moved back to the Vavuniya locality, where two married daughters live nearby and where her husband works on odd jobs \u2013 with their circumstances benefiting from the lines of aid generated by their middle-class mentors. Her tales of family displacement and the travails they faced in April-May as she lost track of both her husband and injured son — rediscovering both in IDP camp and hospital respectively \u2013 were riveting stories. In graphic ways they revealed \u2013 reveal — the difficulties through which so many Tamil people, former citizens of Th\u0101mil\u012blam<\/em> (Roberts 2013), underwent between 1 January and 19 May 2009 and then subsequently as they endeavoured to recover normal life in IDP camp (Roberts 2012) and beyond.<\/p>\n

Here then is the case of a missing Tiger soldier, Khimera. His mother Sambandhi and family remain distraught and gut-wrenched because they do not know his fate. There has been no closure, no religious rite they could engage in as final solace.<\/p>\n

As a listener hearing the story in 2010 I could only comprehend a mere snitch of this lady\u2019s suffering.[3]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> But Sambandhi also sought help: could I help locate her son or ascertain his fate? A dilemma this, for me: what could I say? Yes, I had the odd indirect government contact, but what could a government official do![4]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> I simply told Sambandhi that it was apahasui<\/em>, difficult, and gently indicated, partly through body language, that her hopes were futile.<\/p>\n

I knew that Sambandhi\u2019s profound desire was akin to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. How did I reach this conclusion? Simple: I had studied war as a teenager and young adult while pouring over tales of World War Two. These reviews included vivid pictorial imagery acquired in looking over the pictures in the London Illustrated News<\/em> at the school library at St Aloysius, Galle. My approach to social science issues is also grounded in empiricism and pragmatism nurtured through academic life as well as sporting contests in cricket, rugger and soccer.<\/p>\n

To gain some measure of the issues involved one must take note of the Missing in Action (MIA) figures from previous wars. The scale of deaths and thus of MIA in the battlefields of World War One was enormous. Indeed, some bones and bodies are still occasionally discovered during building and other operations. Again, according to Wikipedia figures USA had a total of 405,399 personnel killed during World War Two, while 78,750 were additionally listed as missing. Thus the MIA amounted to a staggering 19 percent. However, in the Korean War the American MIA of 8,177 amounted to 15 percent of those counted as dead; while in Vietnam the percentage of MIA was less than 4 per cent.[5]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

These figures indicate that one cannot refer to any generalized percentage of MIA in war and that each context has to be taken separately. The SL Army was no exception because it suffered heavy casualties, especially during Eelam Wars II and III. Thus the battalions making up the Gemunu Watch had 138 officers and 3031 killed over the 26 years of the conflict making a total of 3,169 dead; whilst an additional 405 (12 officers and 393 other ranks) still remain listed as MIA.[6]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>So, here, the percentage of MIA to dead was 12.7.<\/p>\n

However, what matters is the fact of MIA: it is an inevitable outcome of war. Some cloistered drawing room voice in Sri Lanka may protest that we are mostly speaking here of Tamil civilians caught up in the war. Yes we are. But it should be only too evident to anyone but those imprisoned in the closet entitled \u201cMYOPIA\u201d that the Tamil peoples of Th\u0101mil\u012blam<\/em> were not only subject to multiple displacements from late 2008, but were eventually trapped in the hothouse of war and subject to battlefield conditions. So, there would be Missing Persons from both Tiger and civilian ranks (ranks which merged anyway because the LTTE<\/a><\/span> conscripted heavily and many Tigers did not wear fatigues). In short, the conditions in the Vanni Pocket housing some 330-340,000 Tamils in January-May 2009 must perforce have generated Tamils Missing in the Furnace of War<\/strong> (TMFW) \u2013 some Tiger and many more civilian. Therefore Khimera, Sambandhi\u2019s son, is just one statistic in the many within the cold gaze of a census board.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is a heartless way of presenting the tale \u2013 indeed, down-to-earth literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n

However, how did this situation arise in the first place? The situation in the Vanni Pocket was a LTTE creation full stop. When the LTTE enforced a west-to-east retreat on their civilian population \u2013 a willing move initially on the part of most Tamil citizens of Th\u0101mil\u012blam<\/em> (Roberts 2013) — the people were mostly not subject to artillery danger because their multiple displacements were ahead of battlefield shelling. But from December 2008 the relative security declined drastically as they were corralled within the decreasing space of the Vanni Pocket between the A9 road and the north-east coast.<\/p>\n

Why then did the LTTE enforce such a policy? This was because their people (a) served as just so many sandbags and were \u201ca protective asset\u201d;[7]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> and (b) provided a pool of labourers and raw fighters for the Tiger cause; and (c) provided a picture of impending \u201chumanitarian disaster\u201d which would prompt international intervention. It is the third reason that I highlight here. This was the principal objective driving the LTTE high command\u2019s tough policy.[8]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> The peoples of Th\u0101mil\u012blam<\/em> were, in fact, just a pawn in a gigantic act of international blackmail (one which failed).[9]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>This blackmailing act of holding their own people hostage was made possible by (1) the support of far-reaching Tamil migrant networks; (b) the sympathy and support of human rights (HR) and civil libertarian bodies in Colombo and abroad and (3) the support of some Western parliamentarians in the pocket of the LTTE for ideological or constituency reasons. There is a paradox here: several HR agencies that are beating the anti-Sri Lankan drum in the years 2009-13 have been in fact complicit, whether willingly or unwittingly, in the creation of the crucible we identify as the \u201cVanni Pocket\u201d in early 2009. It was because the LTTE was fully alive to the international support which they had assembled that its leaders repeatedly rejected the government of Sri Lanka\u2019s demand of an unconditional surrender.[10]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The end-product was a situation where some 330,000 or so citizens of Th\u0101mil\u012blam<\/em> were caught in the crucible of the Vanni Pocket between 1 January and 19 May 2009. A proportion of these people managed to escape their hostage situation: a few slipping away by boat, but most of the 57,412 persons[11]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>who got away by 31 March did so by crossing battle lines under severe danger of death from crossfire or from the killing work of Tiger personnel seeking to prevent such moves. Approximately 260-265,000 remained in the Vanni Pocket in April 2009 (IDAG computations: 2013), a figure that included a substantial body of Tiger personnel (among them the raw conscripts and those deployed as auxiliaries building bunds and ditches).<\/p>\n

Note one unusual testimony recovered: during a visit to the northern reaches in November 2012 a Tamil friend introduced me over dinner to a young Tamil lad who had been conscripted by the LTTE in January 2009. He had deserted as soon as he could and with the aid of his family remained in hiding among the trapped peoples. Both he and his family had come out of the crucible alive.[12]<\/strong><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

They were relatively lucky. They had suffered, but they were alive, unlike a sizeable segment of the 330-340,000 or so in the Vanni Pocket. We can underline their difficulties in point form:<\/p>\n