Sri Lanka: A vital lifeline for families torn apart
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The Sri Lanka Red Cross has helped reunite thousands of families, such as this woman and her grandchild, who were separated after the 2004 tsunami disaster. | |
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After several weeks of no communication, her anxious husband asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to trace his wife and child, who had headed for Vavuniya, a town in the government’s control.
Thousands of Sri Lankans, separated by fighting between the security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), are turning to the ICRC and its local partner, the Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRC), to trace missing family members.
In the war-torn districts of northern Jaffna, Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi and eastern Batticaloa, people are increasingly using the organisations’ Restoring Family Links programme.
In the capital, Colombo, Gayathiry Balakrishnan of the SLRC searched hundreds of patients’ records at the National Hospital and found that Rajah and baby had been transferred from one hospital to another.
“As soon as I knew they were at the Children’s Hospital, I went there,” said Balakrishnan. “When I met the wife, she was so happy to get the message from her husband. She was all alone and had no way of contacting him.”
Through the ICRC’s offices in the capital and in Kilinochchi, where the Tamil Tigers have their headquarters, Rajah was able to send a message to her husband, saying the child was being treated and they expected to return home soon.
A difficult search
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Red Cross volunteers go to great lengths to locate missing people and deliver messages to family members separated by war, migration and disaster. | |
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In the embattled north, the agencies even rely on the LTTE’s radio station, the Voice of Tigers, to broadcast the names of people for whom messages have been received.
“The conflict has made this programme more important than ever,” Surein Peiris, the SLRC’s deputy director-general of operations, told IRIN. “In these circumstances, the greatest thing we can do for a family is to give news of whether a missing person is dead or alive. Just knowing that is of great consolation to the family.”
In these circumstances, the greatest thing we can do for a family is to give news of whether a missing person is dead or alive. Just knowing that is of great consolation to the family.
Much of the agencies’ skills were honed in the aftermath of the tsunami when thousands of people used the agencies' communication links, including satellite phones, to find friends and family.
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Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteers helping members of the minority Tamil community evicted from the capital, Colombo, in June by government security forces. | |
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The requests are not only to track down people separated by the conflict but also Sri Lankans who have gone to work abroad and lost contact with their families. About 1.5 million Sri Lankans are employed overseas, mostly as house help in the Middle East.
“Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka because of the conflict, migration and disasters, we have had a lot of practice in dealing with missing people,” noted Sara Blandford, the ICRC’s tracing delegate.
Thousands of messages
Last year, almost 3,500 family messages were exchanged, according to the ICRC, and so far this year, 1,548 notes have been sent. The SLRC helped 3,236 people in 2006 and has handled 1,665 requests this year.
Civilians can approach the ICRC and give a message with the last-known address of the recipient and have it transmitted quickly through our intranet,” Christophe Sutter, the ICRC’s protection coordinator, told IRIN.
Notes are written on prescribed forms and the contents scanned by the agency’s officers, he explained, before SLRC volunteer workers distribute them.
When the A9 artery traversing both government-controlled areas and Tamil Tiger territory was closed last August to prevent the movement of rebels, a spate of messages flooded the ICRC’s office in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya (collectively known as the Vanni) to be sent to the northern Jaffna peninsula.
Says Blandford: “Most of these messages were from parents in the Vanni wanting their children who were studying in Jaffna to know that they were all right. They simply said, ‘I’m alive’.”
