Prageeth Ekneligoda, a journalist and cartoonist from Sri Lanka, disappeared on 24 January 2010. His wife, Sandya Ekneligoda, has been campaigning for justice ever since.

For more than a decade, Prageeth’s case has moved haltingly through Sri Lanka’s legal system – marked by postponements, procedural obstacles, and long stretches of uncertainty. For families of the disappeared, this experience is painfully familiar. Justice is spoken of, promised, even monitored, yet rarely delivered in full.

For Sandya Ekneligoda, the search for truth and accountability has never been confined to the courtroom alone. While legal justice remains essential, her struggle exposes a deeper reality: when formal justice is delayed or denied, other forms of justice – symbolic, communal, and moral – begin to matter even more.

These forms of justice are not substitutes for accountability. They are the practices that keep truth alive when institutions fail to act.

In countries like Sri Lanka, where impunity remains the norm, I find myself drawn to these acts of refusal. They remind me why I continue to work in human rights – not only as a legal or procedural pursuit, but as a lived practice. Watching women like Sandya persist, I am reminded that justice is also sustained through presence and the courage to remain engaged.

Her persistence has made her an icon. Each time she carries Prageeth’s portrait into court, she asserts memory as resistance.

Symbolic justice is found in acts of remembrance and visibility: holding photographs of the disappeared, speaking names aloud in public spaces, refusing erasure. These gestures insist that disappearance does not dissolve responsibility.

Communal justice emerges through solidarity. Over the years, Sandya has stood alongside other families of the disappeared, forming a community bound not by ideology, but by shared loss and shared resolve. I have seen her reciting pirith with other mothers of the disappeared in Kandy. She has travelled to towns in the North and East to attend vigils, visited countless temples with mothers yearning for the truth, and – wearing her trademark black-and-white sari – has borne witness at innumerable court hearings. This week, once again, she travelled to the Homagama courts.

Where the state withholds truth, community bears witness.

Each year on 27 October, Families of the Disappeared in Sri Lanka gather in Seeduwa to remember those who are missing. By walking together, holding photographs, and occupying public space, families practise collective witness. The repetition itself becomes a form of justice – keeping truth visible when institutions refuse to do so.

Perhaps most enduring is moral justice: the justice practised through refusal. Refusal to forget. Refusal to be intimidated. Refusal to accept that power determines truth. I continue to write these blogs because I refuse to accept that it is normal for someone to disappear and for the state to refuse to establish who committed such a heinous act, and why.

As Sandya marks sixteen years of campaigning for truth and accountability, she invites us to share in that refusal – to reject false promises in place of justice. Despite reprisals, she continues her activism. On the anniversary of her husband’s disappearance, she will carry out ritual offerings at Modera Kali Kovil, cursing those responsible. She refuses to let the perpetrators escape accountability.

That refusal demands scrutiny of concrete state actions – most notably, the ongoing failure to appoint judges, causing unnecessary delays in the Trial-at-Bar proceedings.

In October 2025, the UN adopted a resolution reaffirming the need for continued international monitoring of Sri Lanka’s human rights record, particularly in relation to unresolved cases of enforced disappearance. Yet the case of Prageeth Ekneligoda remains emblematic of entrenched impunity. Delays in judicial appointments and the potential promotion of a senior security officer alleged to have been involved in Prageeth’s disappearance raise serious concerns.

Sandya herself wrote to the President to contest the proposed promotion. Her activism, alongside international pressure, reportedly contributed to the appointment being rescinded. But this came at a cost. She faced reprisals, including a chilling phone call instructing her to measure her own coffin. These are stark reminders of how fragile accountability remains – and of the personal risks borne by those who continue to seek truth.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Yet justice practised – persistently, collectively, and publicly – can still force accountability.

On 24 January, as we remember Prageeth Ekneligoda and honour the extraordinary resilience of Sandya Ekneligoda, remembrance alone is not enough. The Sri Lankan state must be pressed to act: to appoint judges without delay, to protect witnesses and families, and to pursue accountability without political interference. Sri Lanka is at a critical juncture and cases like Prageeth Ekneligoda’s will determine whether the country finally confronts impunity or allows it to endure.

by Yolanda Foster, Board Member at SLC