The British Tamils Forum and the US Tamil Political Action Council marked International Day of the Disappeared on Tuesday and called on Sri Lanka to operationalise the Office of Missing Persons.
"Tens of thousands of Tamils have been disappeared in Sri Lanka, primarily at the hands of the state’s security forces and allied paramilitaries. According to Amnesty International, Sri Lanka has a backlog of 60,000 to 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance from all communities since the late 1980s, approximately 20,000 of which are Sinhalese according to Presidential Commissions and the rest are Tamils," the two groups noted in a joint statement.
"Thousands of Tamils comprising rebel cadres, civil servants and community activists surrendered to the Sri Lankan security forces at the end of the war in 2009, and their whereabouts are not known to date, 8 years later. The Sri Lanka government’s own statistics show that 146,679 Tamils remain unaccounted for since the end of the war, Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Mannar noted in his statement to a government commission on January 8, 2011. The Paris-based Tamil Centre for Human Rights documented 26,840 Tamils who were disappeared from 1979 to August 2007."
"Eight years on, the families of the disappeared and dead desperately need to know what happened to their loved ones and why.
It is the responsibility of all of humanity to ask the question from their own governments and the UN, where are the disappeared? Are they Alive?
BTF and USTPAC demand that the Sri Lankan government immediately:
- Operationalize the Office of Missing Persons for action according to a time-bound plan, allow the OMP to access foreign expertise and funding, mandate the release of all available information to next of kin, and institutionalize a judicial mechanism for dealing with perpetrators.
- Release a comprehensive list of all those held in all forms of detention and allow lawyers and family members regular access to them. Also publicise list of detainees and details of any release from detention.
- Incorporate the UN Convention on the Protection of all persons from Enforced Disappearances into domestic law.
We need your support
Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.
Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view
We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.
For more ways to donate visit https://donate.tamilguardian.com.
