A procession was held in Allaipiddy on Thursday marking 20 years since the disappearance of Catholic priest Fr. Thiruchchelvam Nihal Jim Brown and his lay assistant, demanding that the truth about their fate be revealed.
Fr. Brown, a priest of the Jaffna Diocese, was serving as parish priest of St Philip Neri Church in Allaipiddy when he disappeared on 20 August 2006. He was travelling by motorcycle with his assistant, Wenceslaus Vincent Vimalathas, when the two were forcibly disappeared near a Sri Lanka Navy camp in the area. No information about their whereabouts or fate has emerged in the two decades since.
Protesters marched from the Allaipiddy junction to St Philip Neri Church, calling for the truth about the two men to be made public, Tamil Guardian reported. A special Mass was held at the church afterwards.
Navy at the centre of long-standing suspicion
Allaipiddy was under a strict Navy lockdown at the time of the disappearance. According to Tamil Guardian, witnesses reported seeing the pair pass through a Navy checkpoint before armed men followed them into the village, and reported seeing those armed men subsequently communicating with naval personnel at the checkpoint. Navy officials denied detaining the two men but declined to produce checkpoint records requested by police.
Fr. Brown had been assisting civilians during escalating violence in the area and had reportedly faced hostility and death threats from Navy personnel after his church was shelled. Earlier reporting documented threats against him from the commanding officer of the Allaipiddy naval camp. Subsequent investigations did not establish accountability.
Call for an international inquiry
The central demand of Thursday’s demonstration was not a further domestic inquiry. Demonstrators said they have no confidence in Sri Lanka’s domestic investigative and justice mechanisms, which they say have failed them over 20 years in this case and in many other disappearances. Placards carried at the march read “No, no. We do not want a domestic investigation” and “Yes, yes. We want an international investigation.”
They called instead for an independent international investigation capable of establishing the truth where successive domestic processes have not.
