By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BATTICALOA – For over 30 years, Thangamuthu Jayasingam has had the number 158 etched in his memory as a painful legacy of Sri Lanka’s civil war. It is the count of Tamil boys and men, ages 11 to 56, who were “disappeared” from a refugee camp at a national university in Batticaloa on the eastern corner of the island.

The victims’ names are also seared in his mind, the botanist and former vice chancellor of Eastern University told Nikkei Asia in the living room of his house. “I also know the names of the military officers who took them away from the camp.”

Jayasingam has kept their memory alive by participating in an annual event marking that fateful day, lighting 158 candles at the entrance of the university in the morning every Sept. 5. “It is hard to forget; it happened in front of my eyes. … But nothing has happened even after I gave evidence to official inquiries,” he said.

Together with the Northern Province, the East – a region of farming and fishing communities, and interior forests where wild elephants roam – bore the worst of the nearly 30-year ethnic conflict, which ended in May 2009. Jayasingam is among the civilian survivors still waiting for accountability. Now an international project to collect and preserve evidence is raising hopes that they may finally get it, with a critical juncture approaching in early 2024.

The death toll from the conflict is estimated at around 100,000. Alongside this grim figure, estimates of war-related enforced disappearances range from a low of 16,000 to as high as 40,000 or 60,000. The number of disappeared reaches a numbing 100,000 if victims of political violence in the South, which witnessed an uprising by a Sinhala-Marxist party in the late 1980s, are included. Sri Lanka has the dubious distinction of being near the top of the list of countries with the most such disappearances.

Human rights campaigners say the failure of successive Sri Lankan governments to deliver post-war justice has necessitated international alternatives. The latest is the Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP), endorsed by the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which is gathering evidence of alleged war crimes to be used in a future tribunal.

Families of victims are helping by sharing details of the events they witnessed. This is being done quietly, in private and secure settings, to avoid threats from the state’s intelligence operatives, according to those involved.

“A lot of information has been given to the SLAP already through various processes of evidence-gathering, including victims’ testimonies,” said one human rights campaigner on condition of anonymity. “The SLAP has got extensive evidence on disappearances and related impunity.”

Alleged abusers identified in the east range from government troops who clashed with Tamil Tiger separatists to pro-government Tamil paramilitary forces and even armed Muslim home guards. And the SLAP’s proponents say it has raised the bar on past internationally backed reports that documented alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.

“The SLAP is seeking evidence that is credible and can stand in a court of law,” said Ruki Fernando, a prominent human rights campaigner. “There is a higher threshold for the information to meet, to enable criminal prosecution, unlike the previous reports of human rights violations.”

Those who have submitted evidence, like Sandya Eknaligoda, have to wait for the SLAP’s verdict on its admissibility. Eknaligoda, who lives in a Colombo suburb, said her husband, Prageeth, a journalist for a Sinhalese-language publication, was taken away on Jan. 24, 2010, because of a story he was investigating about Sri Lankan forces’ alleged use of chemical weapons on Tamil civilians during the war.

“The government has done little to cooperate about Prageeth’s case or other cases of disappearances,” lamented the mother of two, who has mounted defiant public campaigns to counter official silence even in the face of death threats.

The government strongly opposes the SLAP’s mandate, arguing that it infringes on Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. This stance has fed criticism that the authorities favour the interests of the Sinhalese Buddhist ethnic majority, from where the armed forces drew their recruits, over the Tamils, the largest minority and the community with the most victims.

All eyes are now on March 2024, when the UNHRC will hold its next sessions. The meetings are expected to test Colombo’s arguments that the SLAP is “intrusive and politically motivated.” The outcome could shape the future of the initiative during a subsequent session in late 2024.

The significance of the March sessions is not lost on local and international human rights campaigners. “SLAP’s progress and reporting is vital during the UNHRC’s March 2024 session in order for the victims and human rights groups to lobby for an extension of [the project],” said Shreen Saroor, a human rights activist.

Diplomatic sources in Colombo say some Western governments may draw on the SLAP’s findings to target those accused of perpetrating war crimes, under the principle of universal jurisdiction. There is already speculation that at least 10 Sri Lankans have been named as alleged perpetrators, according to a diplomat from a Western mission.

Some countries, like the US, are using their own investigations to target high-profile figures. Washington blacklisted Wasantha Karannagoda, a former navy chief, and Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva even while he was still serving as commander of the army. Both have been banned from entering the US

Sri Lanka’s government has pushed back against these moves, saying in Karannagoda’s case that unilateral actions “without due process” are “counterproductive” and lodging a “strong objection” to the restrictions on Silva “based on independently unverified information.”

In any case, such penalties are a small comfort for Jayasingam, the former university vice-chancellor. “‘Accountability’ is a word Sri Lanka should scrap from its vocabulary,” he said with a sigh. “Those boys and men were taken away in front of all the refugees — there were 40,000 there in the camp, kept under government care.”

-Marwaan Macan-Markar is Asia regional correspondent, Nikkei Asia where this article was initially published