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Sri Lanka president acknowledges thousands of war missing are dead
COLOMBO, Jan 20, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa
has acknowledged for the first time that more than 23,500 people missing for
a decade since the end of the country’s protracted Tamil war are dead.
Rajapaksa, who played a key role in the military campaign that crushed the
Tamil separatist rebels, told a UN envoy that steps would be taken to finally
provide death certificates for those reported missing, his office said.
“President Rajapaksa outlined his plans to address the issue of missing
persons,” said a statement on the president’s meeting with UN resident
coordinator Hanaa Singer.
“He explained that these missing persons are actually dead.”
Some 5,000 security forces are among the 23,500 people never accounted
for.
The statement said most of the missing civilians had been conscripted by
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which was crushed in a major
offensive that ended in May 2009.
“The families of the missing attest to it. However, they do not know what
has become of them and so claim them to be missing,” the president said.
Under current law, families cannot access property deeds, bank accounts or
inheritances left by missing relatives unless they can conclusively prove
they are dead — an often impossible task.
The last government set up an Office on Missing Persons in 2018 to
investigate those never traced after the 37-year Tamil separatist war, as
well as during a Marxist uprising.
International rights groups claim at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians
were killed in the final stages of the separatist war, but the government has
disputed the figures.
A government-appointed commission established in August 2013 received
23,586 reports of people missing throughout the drawn-out separatist war.
Thousands of people also went missing during a crackdown by security
forces and pro-government vigilante groups on Marxist rebels between 1987 and
1990.
Several mass graves containing skeletal remains have been found since, but
only a handful have ever been identified.
BSS/AFP/SSS/2001 hrs