The Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse has claimed that no civilians at all went missing during the final phase of the armed conflict and that ICRC records tallied with those of the army, reported the Daily Mirror.

“This is another factor that many people have forgotten. Take the large number of people who were coming by sea. Where did they go first? They went to the Indian hospital; it was manned by the Indian Army. They reported to them first and from there only did they come to the welfare camps. And the ICRC was present whenever they surrendered.

“There was a procedure followed when registering these people. Not a single person is missing from that list.”

“That’s a false allegation. Of course you have to understand that when you say missing, people should realise that in these areas there were people recruited by the LTTE and they were fighting the Army, if you take the Army alone I think even today you have about 3000 missing personnel. We couldn’t find the bodies.

"If you take the North of Sri Lanka it was dominated by the LTTE so we didn’t have the military going in and arresting people. Nobody talks about these things. These people were terrorists who died in action. For their parents they may be missing because they were taken forcibly and put to fight by the LTTE and they died and their parents didn’t know what had happened to them. So to their parents they are missing. You have to understand this.”