Several Sri Lankan newspapers have reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed in a bulletin that 34 people have been abducted over the past three weeks. The Daily Mirror quoted the ICRC bulletin as saying that “families throughout the country continued to report abductions of relatives by unknown persons.”
Last week a report published by three well-known civil society groups in Sri Lanka — the Civil Monitoring Mission, the Law Society and Trust and the Free Media Movement – listed 547 people as having been killed and 396 people as having disappeared during the six-month period from January to June 2007. These three organizations have submitted the names and other details of the alleged victims to the Sri Lankan authorities.
Meanwhile, in a statement issued to mark the International Day for the Disappeared, Amnesty International said that the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances is reviewing more than 5,700 unresolved cases from Sri Lanka.
At the same time, the chairman of the Commission for Investigating Killings, Disappearances, Abductions and Unidentified Dead Bodies, Mahanama Thilakeratna, was reported as saying that many people who were reported to have disappeared have returned home to their relatives unnoticed. However, even according to him, more than 500 disappearances were confirmed to have taken place since Sept. 13, 2006. The chairman added that “currently there is an undeclared war-like situation in Sri Lanka. Incidents such as killings are normal occurrences in a country at war.” However, it is not clear if it is his view that the disappearances are “normal occurrences.”
In fact, forced disappearances have been treated as normal occurrences since 1971 when 10,000 people were reported to have been killed in an attempt to suppress a minor revolt lead by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front), or JVP, during that time. Since then, tens of thousands of people have disappeared in the south, north and east of the country, and various governments in Sri Lanka have treated these disappearances as normal occurrences. In fact, powerful spokesmen for various governments have consistently justified this practice on the grounds that under certain circumstances the law has to be abandoned and any actions, regardless of how inhumane, need to be recognized as permissible.
The present government maintains a state of denial of these gross abuses of human rights and continues a constant attack on critics, both local and international, as a conspiracy against Sri Lanka and an abetment of terrorists. The government and many of its agencies insist that serious investigations should not be initiated on complaints of disappearances as it would disturb the morale of the armed forces.
Unfortunately, not an inch of progress has been achieved through international pressure thus far in persuading the government to abandon this state of denial and to admit to the gross abuses of human rights that are taking place in the country. At the level of international negotiations, what remains is a stalemate. If both local public opinion and the international community are unable to create sufficient pressure for the government to abandon this state of denial, disappearances and other gross abuses of human rights are likely to continue unabated.
Meanwhile, there are reports of unscrupulous criminal elements exploiting this environment to abduct people for ransom. Many of these criminal adventures end in either the killing of, or serious harm to, the victims, some of whom are children. The situation is fast becoming similar to that of Bihar, one of the most lawless states in India. The failure to break this deadlock created by the denial of the government may cause the situation to degenerate even further in the months ahead
Source: Disappearances are not ‘normal occurrences’
Filed under: abductions, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, human rights, rule of law, Sri Lanka
