Doors open for him to walk in some day

VEYANGODA (SRI LANKA), March 20: Nearly two years after Wajira Gamlath, a Major in the Sri Lanka army, was reported Missing In Action (MIA),...

VEYANGODA (SRI LANKA), March 20: Nearly two years after Wajira Gamlath, a Major in the Sri Lanka army, was reported Missing In Action (MIA), his wife, 28-year-old Dayani, refuses to believe that he could be dead. Everyday she prays for her husband’s safety and is convinced that he — her childhood sweetheart — will return. "I know he is alive," she says. Since the day he disappeared, Dayani has not gone out except to meet her husband’s ageing mother and his school-going brother. Her response to all invitations is a polite but firm: "Wajira and I will come and see you together some day."

The 30-year-old Major was one of the 1,359 soldiers categorised as MIA after the crushing LTTE attack at Mullaithivu on July 17, 1996. Only 68 soldiers, including two officers, escaped the attack but the army has officially acknowledged that only 55 soldiers were killed. Of these, only 12 were identified.

So the families of the missing soldiers are convinced that their husbands, sons or fathers are alive but being heldprisoner by the Tamil Tigers. Next door to Dayani, 60-year-old Letitia Gunawardene is also awaiting the return of her son, Lt Harshana Pradeep, from Mullaithivu.

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Frustrated by the army’s facile response that the missing men "are not there", the only comfort they find is by reaching out to each other and to the families of five other soldiers in this town, 58 km from the capital Colombo. Now, with the help of the recently formed Association for Families of Servicemen Missing in Action (AFSMIA), they want to bring pressure on the government to hold negotiations with the LTTE on the fate of these prisoners, the recent ban on the organisation notwithstanding.

Last week, nearly 900 grieving families from all over the country attended a meeting of the association in Colombo to chalk out an action plan. The majority are victims of the Mullaithivu disaster, but there were also families of those who went missing in other confrontations with the Tigers.

A delegation will soon meet President Chandrika Kumaratungato convince her that the only way to ascertain the fate of the missing men is for the government to talk to the LTTE. “The main thing is to get the LTTE to acknowledge that they are holding these soldiers prisoners, so that the Tigers become accountable for their safety. For this, the government must start some sort of dialogue with the Tigers,” said Druki Martenstyn, AFSMIA president.

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