Who Cares About Our Suffering?

"Who cares about our suffering?" This unspoken question lay behind the
stories I heard as I listened to a religious leader in the eastern provincial
town of Batticaloa, on the island of Sri Lanka.  "It is world news when one
person in Israel gets stabbed, but not when sixteen people in Batticaloa
disappear?"

A priest described to me the experience a few days previously of several
families working in their fields.  Soldiers of the Sri Lankan Forces came up
to them and seized the men, whom they marched towards the local army base. 
Their family members pleaded for their release.  The soldiers initially gave
verbal assurances of their safety stating "We have wives and sons as well,
they will be safe".  When the family members persisted in their pleas they
were ordered off at gun point.  Like thousands of other men in the eastern
province of Sri Lanka over the past two years, these men disappeared into the
army camp and have yet to be seen again.

This cleric is one of a handful of people courageous enough to work on the
Batticaloa Peace Committee.  The Peace Committee collects information on
disappeared people, especially for widows.  This information helps the widows
obtain a death certificate which is necessary to receive any economic aid
available through government agencies.  Over the past three years the Peace
Committee has recorded more than 4000 disappearances.  During that time two
of its chairmen have resigned due to threats on their lives or families.  It
is astounding that the Peace Committee has not only survived, but has become
a tolerated intermediary between the armed forces and the local people.  They
have negotiated the right to have all detainees released through the Peace
Committee.  The Peace Committee cannot broadly publish it's facts on
disappearances in order to avoid censure, being labelled as subversive or
being condemned as serving political interests.  It is run completely on a
voluntary basis, and peace committee members purchase what few supplies they
use out of their own pockets.

One of the reasons we hear so little about the situation in Sri Lanka is
because information is tightly controlled in Sri Lanka.  Journalists who are
critical of official policies risk a fate similar to that of the village rice
harvesters.  The murder of a well known Sri Lankan journalist a few years
back still serves as a reminder to media workers.  His death remains an
"unsolved crime".  This can be explained in part by the fact that eye
witnesses identified a senior superintendent of police as part of the
abduction team which kidnapped him.

Although there are 150 periodical publications on the island, critical papers
can find themselves unable to print through lack of paper.  Newsprint is a
controlled substance in Sri Lanka, and can only be imported under license,
along with explosives and fire arms!  Papers producing critical articles have
found their offices sealed by tax assessors in a strange, focused concern by
that government department on media offices.

To combat attacks upon journalism and free expression, Sri Lankan journalists
and media professionals recently joined together to form the Free Media
Movement.  They have been careful not to ally themselves with any Sri Lankan
political party to avoid being labelled a political tool.  The FMM seeks to
inform the public about threats to democratic process contained in the
increasing restrictions on free expression, stop attacks on media personnel,
and curb the blatant abuse of public mass media by the government for its own
political purposes.  Since the middle of 1992 when the FMM formed, they have
held rallies and demonstrations in various parts of the island to protest
proposed restrictions, or bans by local government officials on critical
publications, sometimes directly challenging the ban by selling or
distributing the banned publication on the street.

The banner headline of one major newspaper recently read Batticaloa Returns
To Normal.  Normal for the people of Batticaloa now means accepting having
one's bag checked by a soldier at a check point every time one goes to the
market.  The cleric in Batticaloa told me before we parted, "When I started
work in Batticaloa forty years ago, it was paradise.  There were no murders. 
Occasionally there were domestic disputes, and these people would talk about
them for a long time.  Now all that is gone.  We have lost our innocence and
can never go back to what we were.  Now when sixteen people disappear, the
response is 'Only Sixteen!'".  He sighed and shook his head.

Although the people of Sri Lanka may never regain innocence it is the
dedication and courage of people like the Peace Committee and the FMM that
will rescue and restore dignity to this jewel of the Indian Ocean.
Yeshua Moser

Note: Yeshua Moser is a nonviolent activist living and working in Thailand. 
He was in Sri Lanka as part of the Peace Brigades International volunteer
team of human rights observers.