Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) presidential candidate said he will rehabilitate more than 250 former LTTE cadres, who are still being held in custody and reintegrate them into society.
“There had been around 5,000 Tamil youth at camps even before 2005. By 2015, we rehabilitated all of them except for 274 individuals. They too will be rehabilitated,” Gotabaya told the crowd at a rally in Vavuniya.
At his manifesto launch earlier this month, Gotabaya claimed that his government had taken steps “to pardon, rehabilitate and release 13,784 Tiger members who surrendered with arms.”
Gotabaya was Sri Lanka’s defence secretary during the final phase of the armed conflict where tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed in a 2009 military offensive. Hundreds of Tamils, including civilians, fighters and their families, surrendered to the military during the final days of the armed conflict but have never been seen again. The relatives of the forcibly disappeared have been protesting on the roads of the Tamil homeland for almost 1,000 days, demanding information on their whereabouts.
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