On September 27, 1998, war came to my doorstep. Since that day, I’ve been working for peace in this country. I have three sons, and the two eldest served as officers in the Sri Lanka Army. My second son, Achintha Senarath, disappeared when he was 20 years old. At the time of his disappearance, he was a second lieutenant. He had gone straight from the Diyatalawa Army Academy to the Kilinochchi camp, but never returned on leave after that.
None of my sons had a strong desire to join the military. Given the situation during the 1987–89 insurgency and the pressure young people in my village of Danture (in Kandy district) faced, I believe they decided to join the military for their own safety. At the time, people were being recruited by either the military or the Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya (Patriotic People’s Movement, a military outfit of the People’s Liberation Front – JVP). My father would hide the children under the bed to keep them safe. Danture was a terrifying place back then. I was relieved when my sons joined the army because the village was involved in the chaos. My second son once told me, “People in the village are getting rebel training every evening.” We didn’t send them to the army to fight but to help them become good people and contribute to society.
Achintha, my second son, was a friendlier person than my other children and was popular in the village. He was involved in community and political work, always at the forefront. He would joke that the symbol of his political party would be the “avocado tree” because there were many such trees in the village. Sometimes I would ask him if the MP would come home now. That’s how closely connected he was to the village. Before joining the army, he once said, “Amma, if I could earn 5,000 rupees a month, that would be enough to throw a party with the villagers.”
When people heard that Achintha had disappeared, the entire village was in shock. His absence left a strange void. We used to say that every family needed a strong young man to carry the coffin at funerals. During the war, there were times when it was hard to even find four men to carry a coffin. This is why we, along with wives and mothers from the North and East, advocated to end the war.
Achintha had received two years of training at the Diyatalawa camp as a cadet officer. Afterwards, he was immediately assigned to operations in Kilinochchi. On September 27, 1998, I was preparing some snacks for a relative’s memorial event when I heard the radio news that the army had been attacked by the LTTE in Paranthan and four soldiers had gone missing. Since Paranthan was close to Kilinochchi, I was filled with dread, especially because Achintha had told me that he was heading to Paranthan to attend to a tooth issue. I noticed even our dog started acting strangely that day. I met the Buddhist monks at the temple and mentioned the news, and they promised to bless Achintha during the rituals.
The soldiers at the camp said that Achintha had survived the attack. The next day, my eldest son came home and called the camp to check on his brother, only to be told that he hadn’t returned. From that day on, we did everything we could to search for him. At the time, I had some connections with the Red Cross, and I tried to find him through them.
Every religion has customs for dealing with death, bringing some form of peace to the mind. But disappearance is a far more terrible crime than death. That’s why we have demanded that enforced disappearances be made a crime under the Penal Code.
- Visaka Dharmadasa
Chairperson, Association of Parents of Servicemen Missing in Action
Chairperson, Association of War-Affected Women
