COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s police have arrested a woman and her 13-year-old daughter in what human rights activists say is part of the government’s continuing efforts to intimidate families of the country’s civil war-missing into silence, a human rights activist said Friday.

Balendran Jeyakumari and her daughter Vithushaini were arrested in the northern Kilinochchi district Thursday night after hundreds of military and police held them house-bound for hours, the activist said on condition of anonymity fearing military reprisals.

Jeyakumari had been vocal in calling for the release of her 15-year-old son, a child recruit of the Tamil Tiger rebels whom she had handed to the military as fighting ended in 2009. Both the mother and daughter have been in the forefront of protests demanding details of war missing and were prominently featured in media photographs and videos including when British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the country last year. Jeyakumari has a strong case against the government because it published a photograph of her son in a government book depicting the release of rehabilitated rebel fighters.