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The Valvettiturai police registered the complaint, but advised the women to search
for their men in the forest; they mentioned that previously a man taken away by the
military had been dumped in the forest, blindfolded, yet alive. The families searched
but failed to find their husbands there.
The two wives told Human Rights Watch that they kept visiting Point Pedro and
Polikandy military camps, and that on December 25 the military from the Polikandy
camp came to verify the places of residence of the two men with their village leaders.
The military, however, kept denying having any knowledge of the men’s whereabouts.
The women also reported the “disappearances” to the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC), the HRC, and the SLMM. The ICRC inquired with the military, the
women said, but received the same response.
At this writing, the fate and whereabouts of the two men remain unknown.
Perhaps the best known case from the Jaffna peninsula is that of Reverend Fr.
Thiruchchelvan Nihal Jim Brown, a parish priest in the village of Allaipiddy on Kayts
Island, who went missing with another man, Wenceslaus Vinces Vimalathas, on
August 20, 2006. The two men left Allaipiddy in the early afternoon for the nearby
village of Mandaithivu, but the Sri Lankan military did not allow them to enter. On
the way back to Allaipiddy they were stopped at a navy checkpoint, and they have
not been seen again.
Inquiries into the fate and whereabouts of the two men proved futile. The navy
denied having detained them, and the investigation into the “disappearance” has so
far produced no results.
Father Jim Brown was known to have helped many civilians to move from Allaipiddy
to the town of Kayts after fighting in the area between the Sri Lankan Navy and the
LTTE. In fighting a week before his “disappearance,” on August 13, 2006, at least 54
civilians were injured and 15 lost their lives.
Human Rights Watch asked the Sri Lankan government about the army’s authority to
arrest or detain civilians in Jaffna, as well as the number of persons the army is
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