United in fear

It was very early on a Saturday morning. We were all gathered in front of the Fort Railway Station. No, we were not planning to go on a trip. We were the wives and sisters of the four journalists taken into custody on March 7. Saturday is visitor's day at the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID). Family members of the detainees have to gather at the Fort Railway Station between 9 a.m. and noon. There they are checked, bundled into a police van and taken to the TID.

So the five of us huddled together at the station -- half ashamed and hoping nobody would notice us. We reminisced the many times our husbands/brothers had come to this very station to 'cover' various protests but now there were none for them. A man approached us asking if this was the line for those waiting to board the train to Anuradhapura. We waved him on, embarrassed in case he found out where we were really going.

Suddenly a police jeep appeared and all of the families of the detainees got up from their own little groups and surged towards it. There were plainclothesmen shouting at us to form lines -- men on one side and women on the other. There were very few men going to visit people at the TID and most of them had come to accompany the wives, sisters and mothers of detainees.

As this was the first time that I was doing this, I just followed the others as they seemed to know the procedure. The checking began amidst the hustle and bustle with babies crying and plainclothes men yelling at the families to keep to their lines. Loud wails from the checking room were heard as carefully prepared parcels of food were checked in such a way that made them unhygienic or unfit for consumption.

Finally, we were bundled into the large blue police jeep, which one had to climb into. It was too high for everyone and all the elderly ladies had to crawl in on all fours or be carried in by the other members of the family. We were packed liked sardines.

If we got late we would be losing the time we had been allocated to see our loved ones. So we were all eager to go as soon as possible.

One elderly gentleman had a problem with his knee and could not bend it but had to keep it stretched out. A plain-clothed policeman yelled at him, ordering him to put his leg inside the vehicle. The gentleman being a monolingual Tamil speaker was bewildered at this barrage in Sinhala. Those of us who knew Sinhala tried to explain to the police officer the plight of this man. He then yelled at some people who were already in the vehicle to get down and after they got out, he pushed the elderly gentleman's leg inside the jeep and slammed the door shut. The elderly gentleman was in pain all the way to the TID office on Chaitya Road.

We were dropped outside the TID office on the roadside. A police officer in civvies shouted at us to get into the bus that was parked on the side of the road there.

Those of us 'newbies' who were able to do the jump from the back of the jeep by ourselves, scrambled to get the front seats of this bus. As we neared it, the plainclothesman laughed out loud - the bus had all of its tyres deflated. Probably, it was a little joke he was playing to rag the newbies who did not know the system!

Another TID officer came up to the broken bus and asked us for the names of the detainees that we had come to see. Then came the long slow wait in the scorching sun. At first we (the detained journalists' wives/sisters) did not speak with the relatives of the other detainees. Then as the hours dragged on we went from timid smiles to exchanging words. One woman had been a bride of one week when her husband was taken in. He had been detained for three months and no reason had been given to him or to her as to why he was in custody.

Another carried a baby of three weeks. Her husband had also been held for three months without any reason being given for his detention. She said this was the first time that her husband would be seeing his child. Another woman from Kurunegala said she had been making once-a-week visits to this place for the past six months to see her husband, who had not been charged.

As we stood exchanging stories in the blistering sun it became clear that while all our languages, backgrounds and cases were different, what bound us together was fear -- fear of what might be happening to our loved ones inside the TID, fear that neighbours might find out our loved ones were in detention and hound us from our homes, and fear that any of our actions could be misconstrued by the police and TID officers there and that could lead to the further detention of our loved ones.

All of us, regardless of ethnicity or caste, had been warned by the TID officers not to take this matter to courts or involve any lawyers. If we did so then our husbands could be held indefinitely, we were told. I, in my desperation to ensure my husband's release was also thinking that I should not stand up for my husband's rights. But then in the blazing sun I realized that for 20 years my husband had worked for the rights of the people of Sri Lanka and that in his own case he would not want me to stay silent.

In the early 1990s, my husband worked for the Organization of the Parents and Families of the Disappeared - an organization that worked in the South helping Sinhala families get justice for their children who had disappeared. My husband was one of those who compiled the documents that contained the names of the disappeared which the then MP Mahinda Rajapaksa took to Geneva in 1992.

Today he is being accused of being a terrorist for seeking justice for those who had disappeared in the North and East. Here was a man who truly believed in the rights of all people in Sri Lanka, who worked untiringly for peace with the ministers of this government and with members of all parties at the One Text Initative.

He is now being incarcerated for speaking up for the people of his country. When I looked at the tired, scared faces around me, I asked myself whether I should be ashamed of my husband or of my country?

The Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) has filed a motion in courts seeking an order to seal the house of senior journalist and Sunday Times columnist J. S. Tissainayagam just two days before the Supreme Court takes up the fundamental rights petition filed by the journalist.

The TID in its motion filed in the Colombo Chief Magistrates Courts, claimed the house needed to be sealed so that detectives could search it when necessary. Mr. Tissainayagam’s house was searched on March 7, hours after he was detained by the TID
The fundamental rights application filed by him will be heard tomorrow before Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva after the Counsel for the journalist pressed for his release, citing a judgment made by the Chief Justice in February in which he ruled that even persons detained by the TID could not be held indefinitely.

The FR case was taken up for hearing before the three-member bench comprising Justices Asoka de Silva, N. E. Dissanayake and Raja Fernando on Thursday. The judges said that as an earlier order pertaining to the detention of Tamils was made by the Chief Justice, the case could be taken up tomorrow in his presence and the Counsel could support the application for interim relief then.

On Thursday, the State also failed to produce in Court any detention order in relation to Mr. Tissainayagam even though the court had asked for such proof. The court said any such detention order should be produced tomorrow. The journalist has been held by the TID since March 6 without any charges being framed.

Mr. Tissainayagam in his FR petition to Supreme Court said that in May last year he had launched a website “Outreach,” with financial support from a largely German based organization called Facilitating Local Initiatives for Conflict Transformation (FLICT).

President’s Counsel Romesh de Silva with J.C Weliamuna and M.A. Sumanthiram appeared for Mr. Tissainayagam.