During the Sri Lankan Civil War, which lasted from 1983 until 2009, an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people disappeared (Amnesty, Only 7). Of course, they did not simply ‘disappear’; they were arrested or abducted, often tortured and mutilated, and then almost certainly killed. According to an Amnesty International report published in 1990, none of the parties responsible for such atrocities made any effort to conceal what they had done:

In this case, the perpetrators were the Sri Lankan government forces, although the other two sides in what was essentially a three-way conflict – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were fighting for an independent Tamil homeland in the north of the island, and the aforementioned JVP, a revolutionary left-wing party, which was mainly composed of young Sinhalese – were responsible for similar atrocities.1 Altogether, by the time a ceasefire was finally declared in 2009, at least 100,000 people had been killed (Kingsbury 142). One of the primary objectives of this violence was to terrorize the civilian population, to create a climate of fear that would reinforce the political and military dominance of the party in question – whether it be the Sri Lankan government, the LTTE, the JVP, or even the Indian peacekeeping force that was deployed in the country from 1987 to 1990.