Sri Lanka may be a speck on the world map, spanning just 65,610 square kilometres, yet its history bears the weight of a profound and unrelenting tragedy. Since the 1980s, mothers across the island have wept for their children, victims of enforced disappearances, an ongoing crisis with no answers or closure continuing to haunt the nation. Today, Sri Lanka remains the country with the second-highest number of enforced disappearances globally, with an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 cases reported during its long-drawn conflict and several youth uprisings.
While enforced disappearances have long been a polarising issue in Sri Lanka, last week served as a stark reminder that this tragedy has transcended social class, religion and ethnicity. The perpetrators showed no regard for these divides, driven instead by their allegiance to those in power or by their own opportunistic exploitation of the country’s turmoil.
Remembering Ranjithan
In 2016, at the age of 80, Valliamma Rajamany Gunaratnam found herself holding a press conference to raise concerns about the safety of her son, Premakumar Gunaratnam, better known as Kumar, the leader of the Frontline Socialist Party (FLSP). Despite her frail health, Rajamany’s plea was urgent. Kumar, an activist since his university days with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) before founding the FLSP, was imprisoned after being sentenced to one year for violating immigration laws. The press conference was called to express her worries about his sudden transfer to a different prison.
Rajamany’s fears were not unfounded. Just four years earlier, Kumar had allegedly been abducted by armed men from his home near Colombo, forcibly loaded into a white van and taken to an undisclosed location. During this ordeal, he claimed to have been tortured by men believed to be from the country’s military before being released, thanks to the intervention of the Australian Government. Rajamany’s concern for her son’s safety was also likely fuelled by the tragic fate of her older son, Ranjithan Gunaratnam, an activist who had disappeared in 1990.
Every year Ranjithan’s sister, Niranjani Gunaratnam, takes to social media to remember her brother on March 23, his birthday. The second child in a family of five, Ranjithan was born on March 23, 1961 in Anguruwella, Kegalle to Aadimoolam Pillai Gunaratnam and Valliamma Rajamany Gunaratnam. Having studied in the Sinhala medium, he later entered the University of Peradeniya to study Engineering.
Ranjithan Gunaratnam
Ranjithan was said to be highly proficient in all three languages. Among his friends and University peers at Peradeniya University, where he studied Engineering before being expelled by the Udalagama Commission and taking up full-time JVP politics, he was known as a poet, an artist and an eloquent orator. He was also the convenor of the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF) at the time.
“We were captivated by the way he spoke and his unique style. I can still remember how he would speak, gesturing with his index finger. I am still deeply saddened by all the lives lost, including his. No one ever talks about the atrocities committed by the military under Premadasa’s orders,” recalled his fellow university peer, Chithrani Abeygunawardana.
Ranjithan spearheaded the one-day national protest on October 25, 1985, where 1,000 schools participated against certain provisions of the White Paper on Education. As a leader, he confronted and overcame the challenges faced during the most turbulent periods of the IUSF. He was instrumental in preventing the disbanding of the IUSF after the tragic assassination of Daya Pathirana on December 15, 1986, successfully countering the ideologies of university student leaders who supported Tamil separatism on the national issue.
Ranjithan with his mother
Under Ranjithan’s leadership, several significant victories were achieved by student activists at the time. The removal of police from the Peradeniya University on December 27, 1983, the nationwide protests against the murders of Peradeniya Medical Faculty student, Pathmasiri Abeysekara on June 19, 1984 and Rohana Ratnayake in Colombo on June 21, 1984, the resistance against the Kingsley Silva reforms in 1984, the defeat of the Government’s attempt to divide Universities in 1986 and the successful 1987 hostel struggle in Kelaniya, which secured hostel facilities for bhikkhu students.
In his final speech to a crowd of over 1,000 university students at the opening of the Weerasuriya Memorial Exhibition at the Colombo Public Library on November 12, 1987, Ranjithan stood on a chair and passionately declared that the Independent Students Union must not be allowed to turn the University of Colombo into a Thai-style Thammasat University.
Ranjithan’s vision was clear. He believed that the pursuit of meaningful knowledge and the high ideals of the Sri Lankan student movement were inseparable from the struggle for the political and economic liberation of the oppressed classes.
Marking his 64th birth anniversary, his sister Niranjani recently recalled Ranjithan’s time in captivity before being declared ‘missing’.
“Yesterday was March 23. If my elder brother Ranjithan Gunaratnam was living, he would have turned 64. But he was tortured and killed during the dark period in ‘89 by the Premadasa- Ranil regime, along with thousands of other dear ones. I personally know that my brother was abducted and held at the Wahara Camp in Kurunegala because we, myself, my mother and my father were also taken to the same camp.
The army personnel confirmed (t0) us that my brother was under their custody. We were kept separately and we were shown to him several times. But unfortunately we couldn’t see him as we were blind folded. Definitely he would have seen us. We were detained there for five days. I can still remember how my mother wrapped me with her saree and held me tight, close to her. There are no words to express the fear the agony and the mental torture that we went through. But above all we lost our dear ‘Periya’.
It is believed that Ranjithan was captured by the Sri Lankan Security Forces in January 1990. He was allegedly tortured and interrogated while in custody before being summarily executed by a paramilitary death squad aligned with the State. His body was disposed of, and he remains classified as one of the “missing” to date. Born in 1961, Ranjithan was 29-years- old at the time of his untimely death.
Balendran Jeykumari
The story of Balendran Jeyakumari, a Tamil mother from the North, mirrors the views that Ranjithan’s mother, Valliamma Rajamany Gunaratnam, a Tamil mother from the South holds.
On March 26, Jeyakumari, a resident of Kilinochchi, visited the Presidential Secretariat to hand over a letter to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and seek his support in finding information about her missing son, Balendran Mahindan.
Jeyakumari at the Presidential Secretariat Pix Courtesy – Niranjani Gunaratnam and Vikalpa
Jeyakumari has suffered many losses similar to Rajamany. A widow, she has lost two sons out of the three during the war, with the remaining Mahindan going missing in 2008.
According to Jeyakumari, her son Mahindan left their home in Kilinochchi on December 18, 2008, in search of work. “But he never returned home, and I have not seen him since. I lost all contact with him. During the final stages of the war, when we were displaced, several people told me that my son was looking for me. Two of them died in the last stages of the war and I could not locate the other one. Later, another person informed me that they had witnessed my son being taken away by the Army, along with three others,” she wrote in her letter to Dissanayake.
She described how, over the past 15 years, she tirelessly searched for her son, particularly after seeing two photographs published by the Irish Times on June 25, 2009, which showed her son among a group of former LTTE cadres being rehabilitated by Government authorities. She had also identified him in another photograph released by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), which featured a similar group of rehabilitated combatants. Based on this evidence, Jeyakumari remains convinced that her son, Mahindan, is still alive, despite being officially declared missing.
“You are the fifth President to be elected since my son went missing. We place our trust in you, as the current President and someone who understands the struggles of ordinary people. We hope you will listen to our cries, our tears and our pain,” she said, addressing the President.
Jeyakumari has just three requests to President Dissanayake: a private meeting to discuss her son’s disappearance, support in locating information about the rehabilitation camp in Ambepussa and an update on the complaints she has filed with the police and other relevant authorities.
The tragic stories of Rajamany and Jeyakumari are a stark reminder of the enduring pain of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, a tragedy that has yet to see justice or closure for countless families. Ranjithan’s mother, Valliamma Rajamany Gunaratnam, like Jeyakumari, faced years of heartache and a long wait for answers that were never delivered. Despite the passing of decades, no justice has been served and the fate of the disappeared continues to be denied. As Jeyakumari seeks the truth about her son’s disappearance, the hope remains that her path will not follow the same tragic course as Rajamany’s and that her search for answers will not end in silence and despair.
