IDENTITY AREA |
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| Reference code
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ESC1
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| Title
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Records of the Secretary, S. H. C. de Silva, 1990-2018 (ESC1)
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| Date(s)
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n.d., 1990-2001, 2008, 2014-2015, 2017-2018
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| Level of description
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Sub-fonds
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| Extent and medium
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1421 items; textual records
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CONTEXT AREA |
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| Name of creator
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S. H. C. de Silva, Secretary to the Embilipitiya Disappeared Schoolchildren’s Parents’ Organisation (EDSCPO)
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| Administrative history | The EDSCPO was established by a group of affected parents in 1991 following the enforced disappearance of 48 schoolchildren from the Embilipitiya area, who were abducted, tortured and detained at Sevana Army Camp between August 1989 and January 19990. The President of the Organisation was Shelton Handuwale (deceased), the Secretary was S. H. C. de Silva (deceased) and the Treasurer was S. K. Gunaratne.
Please refer the downloadable finding aid below for further contextual information on the activities of the EDSCPO.
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| Biographical history | S. H. C. de Silva—born February 4th, 1939—served as an Engineer for the River Valleys Development Board (R.V.D.B.) between 1960 and 1990. He later served as the Civil Superintendent of the Embilipitiya Paper Mill between 1995 and 1999. S. H. C de Silva’s son, S. H. Nilan Manelka de Silva, was a student at Embilipitiya Central College. He was one of the 48 students forcibly disappeared by soldiers attached to the 6th Artillery Regiment. S. H. C. de Silva served as Secretary to the EDSCPO. He passed away on September 24, 2021.
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| Immediate source of acquisition | The physical collection is in the custody of S. H. C. de Silva’s family. A number of items of correspondence created and received by S. K. Gunaratne, who served as the Treasurer of the EDSCPO, were found in this collection. It is assumed that some of S. K. Gunaratne’s records were handed over to S. H. C. de Silva. The physical records have not been acquired by chdmlka.org. Instead, the digitised collection—catalogued up to item-level and digitally preserved—is stewarded by chdmlka.org under the terms and conditions of an agreement with S. H. C. de Silva.
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CONTENT AND STRUCTURE AREA |
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| Scope and content | The sub-fonds comprises records created, received and maintained by the Secretary to the EDSCPO between 1990 and 2018. The records include newspaper clippings; correspondence; reports; leaflets; booklets; scrapbooks; court documents; and miscellaneous records—all of which capture the specifics of the enforced disappearance of the schoolchildren; the narratives of the affected families; the interventions by numerous international and local actors and institutions; and the families’ struggle for truth and justice.
The newspaper articles—many clipped and filed, whilst the rest were pasted in scrapbooks by the Secretary—focus on the case of the disappeared schoolchildren, interviews with the parents, reportage on the court proceedings, statements by politicians as well as activists, and various other issues of concern, including killings, detention, mass graves, memorialisation, torture, impunity, the struggle for justice, establishing the truth, financial assistance, economic hardships, rule of law, and the trauma of the affected families. 700-800 letters were written by the EDSCPO to various local and international actors and institutions between 1990 and 2018, highlighting the details of the abduction, detention and torture of the schoolchildren; the progress of the legal proceedings; the identity of the perpetrators, and the families’ collective demand for the truth to be established and for justice to be meted out to those responsible. Most of the letters dispatched by the EDSCPO in this collection (ESC1) are typed or handwritten file copies, which were filed as carbon copies. In some instances, photocopies of original letters—sent by international activists and institutions—were posted to the EDSCPO for its reference and then filed. After 1997, some of the letters in this collection were sent to their recipients without the usual reference number (e.g., ESC/XXX). The other parts of the fonds, which have not been digitised, are with the families of the late President, and the Treasurer. chdmlka.org will be digitising and processing the former’s collection during the first half of 2022.
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| System of arrangement | The correspondence and newspaper clippings were arranged by the Secretary in files according to chronological order. There were other unmarked and miscellaneous files that had newspaper clippings, leaflets, reports and other records. The original order of the physical files has been maintained and no rearrangement has been carried out.
However, after completing the digitisation of the collection, the Archivist arranged the digitised files in the ‘Correspondence’ series, creating separate files for national correspondence and foreign correspondence. This was done since the Secretary maintained a separate file titled ‘Foreign Correspondence’, with some records kept therein, and therefore it was decided that this should be extended across the entire series. The latter arrangement will be applied to the physical files at a later stage. Six other series were created by the Archivist to account for the different accumulations of records and their particular form, specifically reports, leaflets, booklets, scrapbooks, court documents, and miscellaneous records, which were kept in unmarked files with no discernible order.
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CONDITIONS OF ACCESS AND USE AREA |
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| Conditions governing access | Access restrictions apply to certain court documents and to correspondence received and created by private individuals on the grounds of protecting personal data. These records are closed until the death of such persons or until permission has been granted for individual or wider public access. However, no physical access restrictions apply to non-confidential correspondence from public institutions, and newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, leaflets, reports and booklets in the collection.
The records will not be circulated and must be accessed at the premises of chdmlka.org.
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| Conditions governing reproduction | The records have been digitised for preservation purposes and, if unrestricted, are made accessible solely for education and research purposes. Rights may be reserved under national copyright law. Responsibility for securing permission to publish, reproduce and all other uses solely rest with the user.
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| Language of material
Script of material
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English; Sinhala
Latin; Sinhala
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| Physical characteristics | Yellowing paper and foxing due to oxidation were observed throughout the collection. The newspaper clippings were in a poorer condition when compared to the items of correspondence, some of which were carbon copies and photocopies of original letters. The entire physical collection has been stored inside a lockable wooden cabinet for over thirty years. The temperature and relative humidity of the room was recorded at 28.8°C and 69% respectively (in the month of January). During the inspection of the collection, silverfish were discovered in the files. There is clear damage to some of the records caused by the surface grazing of the silverfish. Rusted staples and pins were removed during inspection as a basic preservation step. Most of the material has minor tears, creasing due to folding, stains and discoloured margins due to undersized file covers providing inadequate protection to the material. The rehousing of the collection could not be carried out due to successive lockdowns imposed in response to the CoVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions after March 2020.
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| Uploaded finding aid
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Finding aid, Records of the Secretary, S. H. C. de Silva, 1990-2018 (ESC1)
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ALLIED MATERIALS AREA |
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| Location of originals
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As of December 2021, the original records are still located at S. H. C. de Silva’s residence in Embilipitiya.
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| Location of copies
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The digital copies of S. H. C. de Silva’s collection are stewarded by chdmlka.org.
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DESCRIPTION CONTROL AREA |
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| Rules or conventions
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ISAD(G)
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| Date(s) of description
Language(s) of description |
May 2020—December 2020. Updated, and corrections made between January 2021—July 2021.
English; Sinhala |
REPOSITORY DETAILS |
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| chdmlka.org
For further information, please contact: Archivist chdmlka.org 25 Elibank Road, Colombo 5
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