Within less than two weeks since Mullivaikkal commemorations took place on the 18 May for the hundreds of thousands of Tamil genocide victims, another Tamil mother searching for her forcibly disappeared son has passed away.
Mary Fatima Pushparani Arulanantham, an Eelam Tamil mother of Vadamarachchi East and the former president of the Jaffna District Missing Persons Association passed away never receiving justice for her son who was forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan state.
She kept searching for her son for 13 years after losing another son to the genocide in 1996. Puspharani passed away on Sunday (29) at Chavakachcheri base hospital after suffering a heart attack.
At least 115 Tamils have passed away since protests demanding for the whereabouts of their missing loved ones began more than 5 years ago. None of their calls for justice have been tended to by the Sri Lankan state. Instead, the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, has reported that Tamil families of the disappeared are under “increasing verbal, physical, and serious psychological harassment” from the Sri Lankan security forces.
“I see all of these as attempts to weaken us psychologically, so we step away from the protests and make it easy for them to make up false stories about disappearances. If we ever stop doing this, they will just tell everyone everything is fine, and no one disappeared, and we will never find our families or justice. Taking pictures of us at protests, meetings and public gatherings has never stopped but singling out people and posing challenges psychologically has been happening a lot to many of our members recently" a member of the protest movement told research.
Read more here: Tamil families of the disappeared face increasing harassment from Sri Lanka - ACPR
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Mothers of the forcibly disappeared at a protest in Vavuniya as they marked 1881 days of demanding justice for their loved ones
Sri Lanka has the world’s second-largest number of state-enforced disappearances, with the state failing to protect witnesses and families seeking truth and justice and failing to prosecute Sri Lankan war criminals credibly accused of involvement.
As Eelam Tamils continue to pass away in the homeland and diaspora, many families continue to be denied justice for the mass state-enforced disappearances conducted by the Sri Lankan state.
