Four Years of the Batticaloa Justice Walk
Photos by Mia Abeyawardene
Every morning for the past four years, come rain or shine, a group of dedicated activists and relatives of the forcibly disappeared have been making the long walk in Batticaloa town from St Sebastian Church to Gandhi Park, a route that has become a daily form of resistance. In a world of fleeting digital trends and mass mobilisations, the Justice Walk offers a different way of thinking about change: one that is slow, mindful and ingrained in the unwavering commitment of everyday practice.
The roots of this movement trace back to Sri Lanka’s emergency periods. When gathering in groups was prohibited and protests required elusive state permissions, a unique form of dissent emerged: the single file march. By walking alone but together – separated by just enough distance to avoid the legal definition of an unlawful assembly – activists found a way to say what needed to be said without uttering a word.
This history of foot pilgrimages evolved in the early 2000s, often led by the mothers of the disappeared. These women would walk from temple to temple or church to church, turning their personal grief into a public call for accountability. The current iteration of the Justice Walk found its immediate spark during the aragalaya in 2022.
When the central protest sites in Colombo were dismantled and curfews were imposed on May 12 four years ago, a small group met in a private home. They were nervous but they decided to reclaim the public space. They began with a plan for five days, which then extended to 10. “It kind of just happened that we wanted to continue,” walker Amara says. From its initial conception, the Justice Walk has spanned nearly 1,500 days of continuous presence.
At the heart of Gandhi Park stands a tree that the walkers have named the Justice Tree. In the absence of a permanent physical office, at different points in time this tree has been their meeting place, their archive and their mailing address. They have even used Justice Tree, Gandhi Park as a formal address to send recommendations to the president regarding new terror laws.
Today the tree remains adorned with artwork, poetry and placards; it functions as a living library of history. Every month the banners change to reflect the names of those who disappeared in that specific month in Batticaloa’s history. One of the walkers, Sharadha Devi, describes the tree as a silent witness: “This tree does not know how to talk. If it could, it would tell many stories… it is the one that bears our pain and suffering.” For the participants of the Justice Walk, system change is not merely about replacing a political leader or a specific government. In the East, where Tamil and Hindu communities have long faced unique struggles regarding land, disappearances and wartime violence, the call for justice is much older than the recent economic crisis.
While the fuel and food shortages of 2022 initially brought thousands into the streets, the walkers realised that true transformation required something deeper than mass mobilisation; it required an internal transformation. “Change has to come from us,” Sarala Emmanuel explains. “We need to talk about history. We need to question things in our everyday practice, whether it’s about the environment, the economy or what we see as entitlements.”
This philosophy explains why they continue to walk long after the height of the aragalaya. When passersby ask, “Why are you still walking? Didn’t you get what you wanted?” the walkers respond with their own questions: “Can you afford food? Have things changed in our neighborhoods?” The walk is a space kept open specifically to ask these questions when the rest of the world has moved on.
The Justice Walk is a space to remember all victims of violence, refusing to take sides in a way that prioritises one grief over another. It commemorates massacres where the military was responsible but it also honours Buddhist monks and the hundreds of police officers killed in 1990. The walkers’ solidarity extends beyond the borders of Sri Lanka. On the seventh of every month, they walk for Palestine and the victims of conflicts in Sudan and other global crises. On the 25th, they carry placards for women living with disabilities who may not be physically able to participate in the walk themselves. In doing so, they connect the local soil of Batticaloa to a global history of resistance, drawing inspiration from the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, who have walked for the disappeared for over three decades.
The Justice Walk encourages a focus on mindfulness. It is not a performance for an audience; it is a discipline. The walkers describe the difficulties of being present – fighting the distractions of the mind and the urge to worry about the next task. Their pace is different now than it was four years ago; it is slower, more deliberate.
As they enter their fifth year, the group admits it does not have a grand plan. “How long are we going to do this? We don’t know,” says one. “But we will walk. That is the only thing we know.”
The Justice Walk reminds us that history is something that we can reflect on every day to have a greater understanding of the present. By walking this route day after day, the walkers ensure that the names of the disappeared are not forgotten, that the struggles of municipal workers are heard and that the future is filled with a persistent, quiet demand for a more just world.
To find out more about the Justice Walk in Batticaloa you can visit its Facebook Page.
