Addressing the issue of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) leader C.V. Wigneswaran maintained that there also be a settlement of Tamil political problem, providing self-governance to the North and East.
Sri Lanka has the world’s second-highest number of cases registered with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances”. An estimated 100,000 people have been forcibly disappeared. Whilst such disappearances affect all communities on the island, the vast majority of victims, particularly during the final phase of the war, were Tamil.
His comments come in response to statements by the Buddhist monk, Karawilakotuwa Dhammathilaka, who stated that there cannot be reconciliation without solving the problem of the “Disappeared”.
Wigneswaran supported the statement emphasising that “they were made to 'disappear' surreptitiously and covertly”. He urged the government to not only pay compensation to the families of victims and issue death certificates but to also address the political demands of Eelam Tamils.
The government must “grant the freedom that the Tamils in the North and East have been asking for over 70 years and allow the Tamil speaking people of the North and East to rule themselves uninterfered by the Sinhalese politicians”, Wigneswaran maintained.
Read Wigneswaran's full remarks here.
