In Sri Lanka a white van without a number plate is a symbol of terror and the disappearances that occurred in all parts of the country. Commissions on Disappearances in the South during the last few years of the 1980s have documented at some length how armed men, travelling in white vans without number plates abducted thousands of people who were never seen again. These reports are available at www.disappearances.org. Now such vans have reappeared and do so frequently in the Jaffna peninsular. A report from one family states "the fear of the white van in the day and specially in the night is...