A Tamil father who has spent the last 17 years looking for his forcibly disappeared son has passed away this week.
Vaiyapuri Chandran from Chinnathampanai, Vavuniya died at the age of 69 from an illness.
Chandran has been protesting alongside other Tamil families in Vavuniya to know the fate of his son Jayakanthan who was forcibly disappeared in 2008.
Tamil families of the disappeared have been protesting in the North-East since February 2018 calling for an international investigation into the disappearances fo their relatives, many of whom were disappeared by Sri Lanka's security forces or government backed paramilitary organisations.
The families shifted their demands to the international community after being failed by successive Sri Lankan governments to investigate the disappearances.
The current National People's Power government have also rejected any international mechanisms that will investigate the disappearances and have vowed to use domestic mechanisms instead even though these have repeatedly failed to provide any meaningful answers in the past.