More than a thousand people gone missing in four days
Raddoluwa (AsiaNews) - In the last four days, 1,018 people have gone missing in Sri Lanka. Red Cross data show that some 15,000 people disappeared in 2011, 20,000 in 2010, this according to Brito Fernando, president of Families of the Disappeared, who spoke at the 22nd National Commemoration of Disappeared Persons. Held at the foot of the monument to the missing erected at Raddoluwa Junction, the event brought together the country's religious leaders, Christian as well as Buddhist, as well as social activists and the families of the missing.
Anglican Fr Marimuttu Sathivel and Buddhist Venerable Bendiwewa Diyasena Thero criticised Sri Lanka's religious leaders, who "have not always defended their faithful," but have instead often kept silent fearing they might be labelled traitors to the state."
"All of us religious leaders should have the courage to act as did Christ on the cross," they said. "Hence, we can proudly wear don the vest of 'traitor' because nowadays, those who say the truth and fight for the need are traitors," the Venerable Thero added.
A Tamil mother from Mannar District took part in the ceremony. On 22 September, 2008, she lost her son. As he slept, security forces broke into their home and spirited him away. Since then, despite many efforts, she has been unable to find his whereabouts.
"I looked for my son in every camp. I never got any information," she lamented. "It would have been better if they had killed him in front of my own eyes instead of taking him away the way they did."
Another Tamil woman from Batticaloa (Eastern Province) said that she visited camps 175 times, looking for her husband, a fisherman who had gone out to sea and was later taken away.
"Whenever I asked for information about my husband, I was insulted and mistreated, even at police stations," she said.
In order to get rid of her, "the agents would tell me that my husband had not been seized, that he might have run off with another woman."
"Faced with hundreds of witnesses like these, how can our President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, [Defence Minister] Gotabaya, claim that such things have not happened in Sri Lanka?"
.png)
30/08/2021 17:09
