A Tamil father who spent years searching for his forcibly disappeared daughter and participating in protests demanding answers has passed away in Vavuniya.
The deceased, identified as Kasipillai (66), was a resident of Periyamadu in the Nedunkeni area. He was the husband of Jeyavanitha, President of the Association of Relatives of the Enforced Disappeared in the Tamil Homeland.
Kasipillai’s daughter, K. Jeromy, was abducted and forcibly disappeared in 2009 during the final stages of the armed conflict.
According to the family, Jeromy’s disappearance was raised during the 2015 Sri Lankan presidential election when a campaign leaflet of former president Maithripala Sirisena reportedly featured a photograph of her alongside the presidential candidate.
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The family later presented testimony regarding this matter before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Missing Persons.
In 2018, British-based ITV News also interviewed Jeyavanitha, after she spotted a photograph with then-president Maithripala Sirisena and a young girl who looked like her disappeared daughter;
“The mother, Jeyavanitha, says she first saw the photo when it was used in a pamphlet during the 2015 presidential election campaign.
She said when she recognized Jeromy she was so overcome by emotion she burst into tears.
When he was on the campaign trail in 2015, Mrs Kasipillai got to meet President Sirisena in person.
She said that when she produced the photo and pointed out her daughter he broke into a cold sweat.”
She faced interrogation in 2020, when she reported that the TID produced a young woman who they said was the girl in the photograph, but Jeyavanitha firmly rejected the claim, saying that the girl in the photograph is her daughter and not the young woman they produced.
Speaking to reporters after the interrogation, she recounted her surprise when officers brought out the young woman during questioning.
“This is not my child,” she recalled telling officers. “The one in the photo is my child, the girl you brought is a different girl. I refused this conclusively.”
File photograph: Jeyavanitha at a protest with photographs of her daughter
US News interviewed Jeyavanitha in 2017, as she recalled the final moments in which her daughter was forcibly taken;
“Kasipillai and her 17-year-old daughter, Jeromy, were running toward safety during a shelling attack when a pickup truck approached. Several men wearing military uniforms jumped out of the truck and, without a word, threw both women in the back, where a group of frightened families huddled together.”
“"Let us jump now, I'd rather die on the road," Kasipillai recalls Jeromy saying. Kasipillai told her not to worry, that nothing would happen in her presence. Minutes later, the men shoved Kasipillai and another mother from the truck. The last she saw of her daughter was her blurring face as the vehicle sped off in the sand.”
For years, Kasipillai remained actively involved in the struggle led by relatives of the forcibly disappeared across the Tamil homeland. He regularly participated in the ongoing rotational hunger strike in Vavuniya, a protest demanding that the Sri Lankan state reveal the fate of thousands of missing Tamils.
The protest, which has been continuing for 3,307 days, is one of several demonstrations organised by families of the disappeared across the North-East.
Through his participation, Kasipillai repeatedly appealed for information about the fate of his daughter.
He died without ever learning what happened to her.
Families of the forcibly disappeared across the Tamil homeland have been engaged in sustained protests for years, demanding truth and accountability for thousands who disappeared during the armed conflict and its aftermath.
