Body under the bridge

Stories of the Disappeared Told by their Families– Part Two

by Moon Jeong-ho and Bruce Van Voorhis

The disappearance of Warnakulasuriya Arachige Don Peter Michael

(June 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It was about 12:30am on 5 August 1989, when a group of men visited the home of W. A. D. Peter Michael and his wife Sunila Senanayake in Seeduwa. The group told the couple to open their front door so that they could check their identity cards. While the couple was speaking to the men from behind their front door, some of the men forced open the rear door and entered the house with guns. They warned the family not to scream, or they would be killed. Sunila attempted to give the men their identity cards, but they said that they did not need them anymore. Instead, they wanted to speak to Michael, a commercial filmmaker, for about 10 minutes, they said, and took him outside. Sunila recognized one of the men as the private secretary of the then ruling party member of parliament for the area.

A few minutes later Sunila went outside to look for Michael but as it was dark, she could not see him. At a nearby tailor shop though, she saw a picture of a disfigured person with marks scribbled all over the person’s eyes and mouth. After seeing the picture, Sunila worried about Michael’s safety; to her, it was a clear message that Michael would face the same fate. Although she immediately wanted to go to the police station and report what had happened, she could not due to a curfew being in force. She thus waited until 5am and then together

with Michael’s sister Catherine Beatrice, who lived next door and had witnessed the arrival of the armed men, went to make a complaint to the police.

The police, however, refused to record their complaint. Instead, they told them not to worry, says Catherine, for they said Michael would be dropped off at home the next morning. Having little faith in what the police promised, the family hired three or four vehicles and combed the area looking for Michael, but without success. They once again returned to the police station to file a complaint, but for the second time the police refused to entertain their complaint. Instead the police officers told them that making a complaint would be useless. From their comments, Catherine believed that the police were well aware of what had happened to Michael.

Three days after Michael disappeared, says Sunila, a betel leaf seller told them that he had heard a noise near the Dandugama Bridge the previous night, and that he thought it was the sound of a person being killed and dumped into the river below. Catherine says that upon learning this news, the entire family raced to the bridge, where they saw a pool of blood nearby. “We understand that my brother was murdered by a gun being fired into his mouth,” says Sunila and adds, “The condition of his body was similar to the mutilated photo I saw in the tailor shop that night.”

According to Sunila, the family arranged for a boat to retrieve Michael’s body, and because the body was so badly decomposed, they were compelled to seal the coffin and hold the funeral the very next day. The funeral was attended only by family members. However, remembers Catherine, there were three strange men that no one recognized, who instructed those present not to cry. Some people were afraid to come to the funeral, fearing that the same fate might occur to them too, says Catherine and adds, “Even the funeral arrangements were made by us, the close relatives of my brother, with no one else coming for the funeral.”

However, the funeral did not conclude the saga of Michael’s

disappearance. “After my husband died, I received an anonymous letter informing me that my husband had been murdered by the UNP (United National Party) Mayor of Seeduwa,” says Sunila. “This letter further stated that Michael was abducted in a van and while being taken in the van, someone had broken his neck. His chest too had been burned with cigarette butts.”

This anonymous letter also stated that certain high-ranking government officials had been behind Michael’s killing, says Catherine, and it advised the family not to probe into the reasons of the death. “When we received this letter, being afraid that harm would come to our children if we pursued the matter, we did not push for an investigation,” remembers Catherine. “In the meantime, we heard that certain police officers of the Seeduwa police were also involved in this murder and that
a high-ranking officer had given instructions to the police to kill our brother. Upon these instructions, our brother had been murdered.”

According to Sunila, this was the first murder committed by the Seeduwa police during the violemce. However, she adds that after her husband’s murder, several hundreds more people were murdered by the police, who threw their bodies also under the bridge. Thus, it was not only Michael’s body that was found under the bridge.

Catherine says she has a good idea of who masterminded her brother’s murder. “The UNP government reigned supreme during this time. My brother was also involved in politics, but worked for the opposition (i. e. the SLFP). Thus, the UNPers of the area may have thought that if my brother were not eliminated he would prove a real barrier for their future political activities. Thus they decided to murder him.” She is convinced that these politicians and police officers schemed together and planned carefully to do away with Michael.

Although her brother was an SLFP supporter, Catherine continues, UNP officials who had her brother murdered wanted people to believe that he was killed because he was a Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) activist. This excuse was commonly used to destroy one’s political opponents in the area. And thus, she says, through jealousy and greed for power, her brother’s career was blasted away together with his life. But who was so jealous as to have Michael killed? There was one such person, says Catherine, and he was the Deputy Mayor of the Seeduwa Municipal Council. She adds that she can now name him without fear, because he is dead.

So what then can be done to prevent disappearances in the future? “I strongly feel that disappearances must be treated as a serious criminal act,” says Sunila. “Because there is no rigid law enforced in our country to probe into all types of disappearances and to treat such actions as a serious criminal act. These types of actions may happen in our country in the future too.”

Catherine agrees. “To stop these actions, very rigid laws must be brought in by the government, or similar horrors are bound to recur in the future. As we know, the police officers are now keeping their eyes closed, as there is no local law against disappearances. Thus, the Sri Lankan government must be compelled to bring in legislation criminalizing the causing of all types of disappearances. We must keep in mind that whenever a person is abducted and then disappears, a family loses a breadwinner, a child loses a father, and there is suffering all around. So disappearances must be stopped and there must be some laws against these acts. I do not know how such laws may be enacted, but it must be done.”
_____________________

Editor’s note: We are serializing a series of essays based on the stories told by several Sri Lankan families in the South about the disappearances which took place between 1987 and 1991. They are reproduced from a book published in October 2004 under the title, An Exceptional of the Rule of Law. Many similar incidents would have happened in the North and the East and we encourage the readers to send in their stories known to them. (Contact emails: editor@srilankaguardian.org or feed@srilankaguardian.org)
_____________________