Bearing Witness in Seeduwa

Photo courtesy Yolanda Foster

I have just returned from Sri Lanka where conversations with disappearance activists left me deeply unsettled. Barely a month after Sri Lanka presented its report before the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in Geneva, families once again gathered in Seeduwa to show that international pledges have meant little without political will at home. Despite recent government assurances to strengthen domestic accountability mechanisms and provide reparations, those working closest to the issue told a different story. More than four decades since the first mass disappearances, families are still waiting for truth, for recognition and for justice.

The Office on Missing Persons remains largely inactive; few investigations have advanced and the promise to pay a temporary allowance to affected families is progressing painfully slowly. “Every government says the right words in Geneva,” one activist told me, “But when we come home, it’s the same silence.”

It was against this backdrop that I travelled to Seeduwa on October 27 to attend the annual Families of the Disappeared (FoD) memorial – an event that has sustained families’ calls for justice amid a wider societal amnesia. For decades, FoD has kept this issue alive in the national conscience creating one of the longest running civil memorials in the island’s recent history.

“We have been coming here for 35 years,” said Brito Fernando, Chair of Families of the Disappeared. “Governments change, they make promises and then they forget.” Ahead of the event, Brito reminded Sri Lankans that the president had promised to “wipe away the tears of these family members” but that “continued silence has caused frustration and pain mixed with anger.” Speaking later to journalists, he warned that “justice delayed is justice denied and denial is a crime repeated.” For Brito, justice delayed is not just injustice; it is a slow erasure of truth. “If we delay justice any longer,” he said, “many of these families will not live to see it. Their hopes will die with them and history will remember us for our indifference.”

His words stayed with me as I arrived in Seeduwa where families from across the island had already gathered. What began in the early 1990s as a small act of defiance has evolved into a ritual of persistence – part mourning, part protest and an act of endurance. I went this year not just to observe but to sense what remains after decades of waiting. What mood holds those who have been campaigning for so long? What expectations, if any, survive?

By the time I reached Seeduwa at 10 am the crowd had already formed. They came from Hambantota, Kandy, Batticaloa – mothers and sisters carrying portraits of sons, brothers and husbands whose absence still defines their days.

I recognised one mother, Sithy Ameena, whom I first met in 2015. She was carrying a poster with her son’s story. When she saw me, she embraced me tightly and asked, “Why has my son still not been produced?” Her question cut through the official speeches and lingered long after they ended. This lack of closure – the endless waiting – is perhaps the deepest wound of all.

The rally

The speeches that followed highlighted the shocking scale of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, a tragedy that cuts across north and south, across ethnicity and generation.

Professor Deepika Udugama spoke with conviction about the need for a national framework on disappearances, a structure capable of addressing both justice and truth telling. Dr. Arjuna Parakrama called enforced disappearances “a scandal of our state,” warning that silence is complicity.

Then Brito returned to the microphone, repeating that no meaningful action has been taken by the Office on Missing Persons. Families continue to suffer economically; the previous government paid a modest sum to 4,000 families but while this government allocated Rs. 1,000 million to support families of the disappeared, almost nothing has been disbursed. Families still wait for the Rs. 200,000 compensation they were promised, a modest recognition of suffering now entangled in bureaucratic neglect.

Several family members spoke, grounding the event in lived experience. Their words carried the power of raw testimony as they held up photos of their loved ones.

R.A.D. Mallika from the Galle District said the present government should solve this problem as they were also victims of the 1988-1989 repression. She shared how her family was devastated by the loss of five members from her husband’s family, including her husband who disappeared.

Sithy Ameena from the Colombo District told the story of her son Mohammed Hakeem, who disappeared on March 21, 2009 in Colombo. She has filed complaints, visited police stations and written letters. In 2010, her son was seen again when the president announced some detainees would be released. Various detainees were taken to the President’s House and her son was there. “But no one,” she said, “has brought my son home.”

The memorial

As the rally drew to a close, the crowd began to move towards the memorial. Families came forward one by one, laying flowers beneath the wall of names and photographs. I watched as a woman pressed her head against the tiles – a sign of anguish at not really knowing what has happened.

The memorial itself, designed by artist Chandraguptha Thenuwara, rises with deliberate simplicity, a grid of tiles, each bearing a photograph. There is no grand monumentality here, only the repetition of absence. Its weathered tiles seem to hold both absence and endurance with each photo a fragment of truth preserved against forgetting. Thenuwara’s design resists spectacle; it is austere, almost quiet, yet it vibrates with the collective weight of memory. The wall becomes both archive and altar, a space where art and mourning meet, insisting that remembrance is itself a form of resistance.

Many of the women wore the red “Bring Them Home” heart badges pinned close to their blouses. One mother touched hers gently and said, “I wear this on my heart.” The simplicity of that gesture – a daily act of remembrance – felt as moving as the memorial itself. In those moments, the politics of disappearance became something deeply human, sustained not by institutions but by love and endurance.

From memorial to protest

In Seeduwa, remembrance is never passive; it gathers force, turning memory into activism. After the memorial, FoD had arranged buses to take participants from Seeduwa to Colombo where the call for justice would continue. The first stop was the Ministry of Justice,and later the Presidential Secretariat.

The demands included:

• To the Minister of Justice and National Integrity – please answer our letters in writing.
• To the president – we have thrice invited you to speak with the families; please give us a date to discuss our issues.
• Pay the 200, 000 Rupees allowance you promised.

Outside the secretariat, families stood once more in the harsh sun, holding aloft photographs of their missing loved ones. The poignancy of that moment was unmistakable, this yearning for truth still alive after so many years, their resilience undeterred by long journeys and indifference. As they shouted for justice, I could sense both grief and grit, the knowledge that their cries might go unheard and yet the conviction that they must still be voiced.

Reflections

The day’s progression from remembrance to protest revealed how activism in Sri Lanka has become a form of ritual continuity. These families, mostly parents and older women, bear the moral weight of keeping this struggle visible. And yet, as Dr. Parakrama reminded us, this is not only their burden. The wider society must also find the courage to acknowledge these disappearances not as a chapter to be closed but as a wound that must be tended if the country is ever to heal.

It’s time for change. Victims’ families need the government to provide reparations; it is unjust that the burden of survival has fallen mostly on single-headed households. I met one woman who shared how she had reluctantly travelled to Kuwait to work as a maid so that her three children could have the basics. The government must respond to the extraordinary endurance of mothers who have carried both grief and responsibility for decades.

Being on the poverty line is why the issue of the Rs. 200,000 temporary compensation is a rallying call. This does not mean reparations are all families seek. Talking to women on the buses as they travelled into Colombo to protest, I also heard a deeper message: they need confidence in truth telling mechanisms that will finally deliver justice. What unites families from north to south is the shared demand that those responsible for these terrible crimes be held to account. Justice must reach beyond symbolism – it must lead to responsibility.

If Sri Lanka is to move beyond its cycles of silence, these voices must not only be heard but they must be acted upon. The mothers of Seeduwa have carried remembrance long enough; now the state must carry responsibility.