Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka “There were so many questions from the neighbours like: ‘Why was he arrested? What did your son do?’ … The CID or TID – I am not exactly sure of who they were – would often come by the house to make inquiries of other family members. The arrests affected the other children too. I requested my youngest son not to come home, fearing that they may arrest him too. Because whenever they came, they ask for the whereabouts of the other children. So I was scared” – Mother, whose son was arrested in 2007, Ragala. Women’s Security According to the women interviewed for the study, female family members of the disappeared or arrested persons find it hard to leave the house. They are scared that they might be arrested themselves, or that their Sinhala neighbours would harm them thinking that they have connections to the LTTE. There are incidents in which estate management has stopped relatives of the disappeared from coming to work or asked them to move out of the estate. The women who were displaced in the North and East, and the women who live in plantations face similar types of security issues. One woman said the following: “We are from Nawalapitiya and moved to Kilinochchi due to the riots in 1983. When my eldest son was arrested and tortured, I came back to Nawalapitiya to protect my family. Then my second son was disappeared when he went to Nuwara Eliya one day. Because of these two incidents, I was seen as LTTE and I was also arrested and sent to jail” – Woman from Nawalapitiya. 66