“Govt. not conducting the inquiry with sincerity on case of disappearances”

(December, 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The bishop of war-plagued Jaffna has complained to media about the lack of sincerity evidenced by government authorities in searching for a Tamil priest missing for more than a year.

Father Thiruchchelvan Nihal Jim Brown of St. Philip Neri Church in Allaipiddy and his assistant Wenceslaus Vinces Vimalathas, a father of five, disappeared Aug. 20, 2006, in Jaffna, on the peninsula at Sri Lanka's northern tip, 400 kilometers north of Colombo. At the time, Vimalathas was accompanying the priest who was traveling by motorcycle to celebrate Mass.

During a visit to Colombo, Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam of Jaffna told the reporters, "Two weeks ago, a police officer who had no working knowledge of Tamil (language) came from Colombo to collect evidence from the Tamil people on the disappearance."

The 69-year-old prelate asserts that police are not taking seriously the priest's disappearance in the war-torn, Tamil-majority area. "The state is not conducting the inquiry with sincerity," complained the bishop, who recently explained his concerns to Tamil media. "Officers in the Criminal Investigation Department in Colombo know local languages, but 15 months after the disappearance, the state has sent a police officer who does not know Tamil."

While priests and people worry, the bishop said, "the state procrastinates." In his view, the case of Father Jim Brown, as he is commonly known, will become one of hundreds of missing cases in the country that just gather dust.

According to media, the number of such disappearances is in the thousands.

"We expected a free and fair investigation with sharp eyes," the bishop said, since it is a criminal case and should be investigated with the assistance of the local community, but no proper inquiry has been held.

Bishop Savundaranayagam said people have offered prayers and staged demonstrations, and he has done all he can. He has repeatedly raised the issue with relevant state authorities, humanitarian agencies and visiting foreign ambassadors, including Archbishop Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to Sri Lanka.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka has issued several statements calling on the state to investigate the disappearance, and Pope Benedict XVI raised the disappearance of the priest in April, during the state visit of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse to the Vatican.

The Catholic Church also has made many public appeals for an end to the disappearances, abductions, killings and civil war. Separatist Tamil rebels have been fighting the Singhalese-led government for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority ethnic group since 1983. The more than 70,000 people who have been killed include religious leaders of various faiths.

During a commemoration gathering in Colombo this past August, the mother of the missing priest pleaded with bishops, priests and laypeople attending the event to tell her "whether my son is alive or dead."

Dealing with the disappearance has been a struggle for her family. They had to give samples of their blood to check the DNA against that of a torso found in March on a beach in Jaffna after media speculated it was that of the missing priest. A Jaffna court ruled in October that it was not.

James Selvaratnam, 68, a retired postmaster from Mullaitivu, Father Jim Brown's hometown, told the reporters, people just want finality.

"We just want to know we can do the final rituals," Selvaratnam said. "We feel we have lost a person in our family. We wait and wait for word on the fate of Father (Jim Brown), and then we can go for the rituals."

When Sri Lanka's Catholics conduct funeral rituals at home and in church, they hoist black or white flags, display photographs of the deceased, and offer alms to the deceased's relatives and to the poor.