The leader of Sri Lanka’s main opposition party accused the government of responsibility for the country’s worsening human rights record.
United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who attended a gathering of the relatives and friends of missing persons, in Colombo on April 9, charged that the ruling United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA) regime was responsible for the bad reputation of the Sri Lankan state's Human Rights record.
"The attitude that, if a war is to be waged, all Tamils should be annihilated prevails in Sri Lanka," Mr. Wickremesinghe said.
"All political parties should unite in safeguarding the human rights of all people," he said. "The situation, if allowed to continue, would tarnish the entire image of Sri Lanka."
"We hear that persons abducted from Colombo and its suburbs are being held in Polonnaruwa. The United National Party would not hesitate to do what it can to trace the places where the abducted persons are said to be held," Mr. Wickremesinghe said.
Eighty-eight people have been either abducted or gone missing since August 2006, the Civil Monitoring Committee (CMC), an ongoing initiative by a few involved politicians to monitor involuntary disappearances, abduction, extra judicial killings and arbitrary arrests and detentions in Sri Lanka, noted at the gathering.
"The President of Sri Lanka has chosen to dismiss the present disappearances as not worthy of local and international attention," said a resolution passed by the gathering.
“We consider human lives as sacred and that no one, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, caste, social status etc., deserves to be "disappeared",” the resolution said.
“We are particularly pained at the inability or unwillingness of the government to adequately investigate this situation and their rejection of our efforts and those of local and international groups trying to help us.”
CMC chairman Sirithunga Jayasooriya, Jaffna district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran, UNP parliamentarians John Amarathunge and Ravi Karunanayakke, CMC convenor and Western People's Front leader and parliamentarian Mano Ganeshan, and others spoke at the confluence attended by hundreds of relatives and friends of persons abducted or missing.
