Sri Lanka, the land of the disappeared​ – a photo essay​

Moises Saman’s latest work captures the terrible aftermath of the country’s civil war among its Tamil minorityIt is nearly a decade since the civil war in Sri Lanka ended, but for many families the long struggle will never be over. During the conflict, many thousands of people from the minority Tamil community in the north of the country were “disappeared”. Amnesty International estimates that there are at least 60,000 of these “missing” people, perhaps as many as 100,000. Their families do not know if they were killed or imprisoned by the government forces. Many were teenagers or young adults when they were lost.The photographer Moises Saman travelled in the north of Sri Lanka earlier this year. His pictures are an attempt to photograph absence. They are haunted by the memory of the people who should be in them. You see those people, perhaps, in the empty rooms and the empty landscapes, in the ruined houses and the unslept-in beds. Continue reading…
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