by Thulasi Muttulingam
A mother died recently. Not news.
She died in mental anguish. Perhaps news.
She died not knowing whether her youngest child, a daughter, was living or dead.
She had been campaigning for 10 long years to find out – and died still not knowing.
While a very few media organisations reported this as news, others wanted to know why it was news-worthy. It’s not news, they said. It’s not new either, they said. People disappeared in Sri Lanka all the time; not just in the North and East, but also in the South, especially during the JVP uprisings. What of it?
News value
When something terrible happens regularly, it doesn’t lose its news value.
We may have become desensitised to it in mainstream news, as the latest dead mother and her still-missing daughter add just one more micro decimal point to a large statistic, but “so what” being the response is hugely problematic.
Was there no way this poor lady could have had closure before her death? Why are so many rolling their eyes at the very idea?
She wanted to know if her daughter was dead or alive – is that so beyond our Government that detained her daughter in Mullivaikkal back in 2009? Shouldn’t the Government be held accountable? Shouldn’t they deliver some answers on what exactly happened to her detained daughter under their watch, instead of continuously obfuscating the matter?
This mother was a native of Mullaitivu, who died there last week (12 February). Until then, despite being an elderly heart patient, she took part in the nearly two-year-long protests by the families of the disappeared, searching for their loved ones.
She had sat in thatched makeshift huts under the burning sun for more than 500 days, holding a picture of her daughter, demanding an answer to where she was. She died, still not knowing.
This mother, Saraswathy, gave birth to four children. Three joined the LTTE and died in battle – she was certain of their deaths. As such, while she definitely grieved over them, she also had closure. Anguish over their current whereabouts or welfare did not rob her peace of mind.
Her last decade of life was blighted solely due to anguish over her youngest child – daughter Parvathy who went missing in the last stages of the war in 2009.
Amidst all the trauma this mother endured – the various trials of war she would have had to undergo until 2009, losing three of her children first to the LTTE, then to death – this last remaining blow of her missing child was likely the most traumatising.
The pain of limbo
I didn’t interview this mother, but I have spoken to many other mothers like her across various protest sites in the North.
Their pain, long years after the war ended, still pulses palpably in the air around them.
The shelling and bombing around them stopped a long time ago, but their inner trauma still holds them in thrall – they neither notice nor care that the chaos has stopped for everyone else. Their world is still in chaos.
The former Defence Secretary and current presidential hopeful Gotabaya Rajapaksa gave an interview to a leading English daily recently, in which he acknowledged, for the first time, the use of white vans by the Government to abduct people.
He maintained that he was not responsible for it, but also maintained that this was something that happened “all over the world” and was done by “all previous governments” in Sri Lanka.
Rather dubious counter assertions. That makes it alright, does it?
He also went on to claim that since 2005, only LTTE persons were thus abducted (patently not true), while in earlier periods under other government regimes, Sinhala youths were arbitrarily abducted. He referred to the JVP eras.
This was one of those puerile counter arguments of whataboutism that always leaves me scratching my head.
It keeps cropping up regularly whenever minorities here speak of what happened to them and ask for justice. What exactly is being purported with these counter arguments? That it happened in the South too, therefore it is alright if it happens in the North and East? It happened to Sinhalese too, so Tamils and Muslims shouldn’t ask for justice over their disappeared and murdered?
The “logic” simply doesn’t compute. Yet, this is the counter argument we receive all the time.
“It happened in the South too.” “Our youths were arbitrarily killed too.”
Yes, that it happened in South and to Sinhala youths too is indeed heinous, but how is that the answer to Tamil parents’ question of what happened to their children?
There are Sinhalese parents looking for answers to their missing to this day. We are aware of that. So why not work to give them answers too, instead of brushing off their very just demands for answers with some tripe version of “all’s fair in love and war! Don’t try to hold the government accountable”?
Accountability
The government is accountable to the people. What’s so hard to understand?
Also, nice work claiming Sinhalese youths were arbitrarily picked up while all Tamils similarly abducted by white vans were only the LTTE.
As a reporter from the Tamil community, let me now reiterate what I have to reiterate every time I bring up issues such as these:
Yes, I am aware the LTTE carried out heinous crimes against humanity.
No, I am not a supporter of the LTTE.
No, my advocating for the pain of the families of the disappeared does not mean that I condone what the LTTE did.
Not all of us Tamils are the LTTE. What’s so hard to understand?
Not all of us who were detained, tortured, and murdered were from the LTTE either.
Just as Sinhalese youths were arbitrarily picked up in the JVP eras, Tamil youths were arbitrarily picked up all over the country in the war years. All the people thus picked up by the Government, whether LTTE or not, have families waiting for them who are owed answers. Yet for now, obfuscation and whataboutism are the answers proffered.
I know a mother searching for her missing younger son – her elder son died in an LTTE claymore attack, and the younger son was arrested for it. Neither were in the LTTE and both were still schoolboys at the time. Yet, when the Army brought a hooded informant to indicate a suspect among all the rounded up youths in the neighbourhood, the thalayatti/gonibilla had nodded at the younger brother.
So he, still grieving his elder brother’s death, was dragged away despite the protests of the family, and has been missing ever since. This is the way justice operates in this country.
She has been searching for her son for two decades now. Is she not owed answers? Can you even begin to compute the level of her trauma?
And as with all other parents similarly traumatised, she said: “I have closure over my dead son. I light a candle to him on every death anniversary of his, but I have no closure over my younger son. Where is he? Is he being tortured somewhere? Is he angry with me for not doing enough to rescue him? I dare not rest for a moment, because I am haunted by thoughts of my son languishing somewhere wondering why I have not come to his rescue yet.
“I have exhausted every avenue possible. I have visited every detainment camp in the country asking if my son is there and begging for him back. People with only dead children are lucky. We with missing children as well are left in torturous limbo.
“No one else, even from our own war-affected community, understands us. They keep telling us to move on. Do they not realise that it’s impossible?
“How can a mother move on in life when her child might be alive and getting tortured somewhere? I have not had a single meal in peace since.”
Her husband, meanwhile, descended into alcoholism after his sons’ tragedy so she had to become the breadwinner as well. They have two daughters to look after.
The effect on the men
One of the effects not often talked about on the families of the missing is how the men cope.
A culture of toxic masculinity ensures that men do not feel comfortable displaying emotion. It is not an accident that the “mothers of the disappeared” hold vigils at all the protest sites. There are plenty of men grieving their children too, but very few of them feel comfortable enough to display it.
Many of the men descended into alcoholism to deal with their loss. Others keep their emotions bottled up and succumb either to depression or somatoform disorders.
At a psychiatrist’s clinic last year, I noticed an elderly couple coming in, the man clutching his heart. He feared he was having a heart attack. The doctor checked – there was nothing wrong with his heart. The doctor then asked him if he had been worrying about anything recently.
“No,” he replied.
“Yes,” replied his wife.
The death anniversary of one child had just passed, and the disappearance anniversary of another was coming up.
“You are both grieving,” said the doctor. “Why not talk to each other about it?”
“I talk about it all the time doctor, but he tells me to keep quiet. He doesn’t want to discuss our lost children. I find solace by talking to other affected mothers, but he refuses to talk to anybody about it.”
“No,” said the man, “I am not thinking of my children. I am alright.”
He went away, still clutching his heart.
One day, that heart too will stop beating, after beating painfully all these years. And some of us will continue to ask: “So what?”
Will we ever get an answer?
(Thulasi Muttulingam is a freelance journalist based in Jaffna. All views expressed are her own and not of any organisations affiliated to her)
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