Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised the Sri Lankan government’s newly announced Office of Missing Persons’ (OMP), stating that the authorities had failed to sufficiently consult with victims in establishing the new mechanism.

“At the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last year, the government had agreed to hold nationwide public consultations on all transitional justice mechanisms,” said a press release on Friday. “However, on May 24, 2016, Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved the new Office of Missing Persons without talking with the families who have long waited for justice.”

Sri Lanka’s OMP has already come under fire from Tamil organisations across the North-East who said the government had not shown any “genuine willingness to consult the victims”.

Noting that Sri Lanka’s long history of government appointed commissions into the issue of disappearances, HRW  went on to state that “various commissions of inquiry established by successive Sri Lankan governments in response to pressure from victims’ groups and others have produced reports that have largely remained unpublished and have not resulted in criminal prosecutions of those responsible”.

Members of the Tamilar Vidiyal Katchi held a protest outside the United Nations office in Chennai this week, calling on the international body to ensure an independent international inquiry into the genocide of Tamils by Sri Lanka is carried out.

Protestors gathered outside the UN office with placards criticising the UN for failing to stop the massacre of tens of thousands of Tamils during the final stages of the armed conflict in 2009.

Another former LTTE member was arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Department, TamilWin reported on Thursday.

Ayyathurai Mohandas, known as Athavan Master, was arrested at Katunayaka airport, in connection to the suicide vest, discovered by the military earlier this year.

Former president Mahinda Rajapaksa has slammed the Eastern Province Chief Minister Nazeer Ahamed, who berated a navy officer and the governor of the province in the presence of US Ambassador Keshap.
Mr Rajapakse said the incident showed there was a project which aimed to "demoralise war heroes", since President Sirisena took charge.

“The fact that this ugly incident took place in the presence of the American ambassador has added to its seriousness. The Eastern Province Chief Minister who raised an issue of protocol over his place on the stage can be heard shouting at the naval officer repeatedly using phrases like ‘get out from here’ ‘idiot’ and ‘shut up’. On a previous occasion when TNA politicians forcibly entered an army camp in the north, the government went out of its way to portray this as a minor incident and to sweep it under the carpet. This is now the second such incident," he said.

The Sri Lankan government announced the creation of an ‘Office for Missing Persons’ (OMP), in a yet another pledge to tackle the decades long issue of disappearances, on Wednesday.

Announcing the OMP, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera stated that “Sri Lanka has one of the largest caseloads of missing persons in the entire world”. No time scale has been announced for the OMP’s mandate or the scope of its work. The government is also yet to reveal the composition of the office.

Days before the announcement was made, Tamil organisations from across the North-East submitted a letter to the Sri Lankan government, stating that the authorities had not shown any “genuine willingness to consult the victims” in order to set up a justice mechanism for prosecute for enforced disappearances.

The 12 organisations and 26 individuals criticised the government’s lack of engagement with victims in setting up the OMP. Stating that the “process to date has been handicapped by inadequate resources and has made very little progress,” the organisations said, “We categorically state that an OMP that is designed without proper consultation with the victims and their communities would be unacceptable”.

Over the years several government mechanisms have been announced, including the currently ongoing presidential commission on missing persons, which recently requested an extension of its mandate. Reports of the commission encouraging relatives to accept their loved ones have died have been ongoing, with evidence that officials offered chickens in exchange for accepting a death certificates. The commission has also been criticised by both the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, who have called for its abolition.

Mr Samaraweera himself admitted that government appointed commissions have been in existence for over 20 years, acknowledging “that the vast majority of cases still remain unresolved”. Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe though told an audience of Tamils in Jaffna earlier this year that the tens of thousands of missing were probably dead, a claim that he repeated some weeks later.