Disappearances emblematic of Sri Lanka

Nearly six thousand outstanding cases of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka are being reviewed by the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, according to Amnesty International.
 
Over a thousand of those have occurred since President Mahinda Rajapaske assumed power in late 2005, Human Rights Watch separately said..
 
In a report published on August 30, Amnesty International, the London based human rights organisation accused both the Sri Lankan government forces and armed groups of responsibility for hundreds of such abductions and disappearances since 2006.
 
"There are currently 5,749 outstanding cases of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka being reviewed by the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances," Amnesty International said in an article published to mark the International Day of the Disappeared.
 
 
"Many cases implicate the members of the security forces, others implicate armed groups including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Karuna Group," it further said.
 
The Karuna Group is an Army-backed paramilitary group led by a renegade LTTE commander who defected to Colombo’s side in 2004 after his rebellion against the LTTE leadership was crushed.
 
Amnesty said the victims are often taken in "for questioning" by the Sri Lankan security forces and held incommunicado with no records of their detention available.
 
Amnesty cited the case of the head of the country's Eastern University who went missing in December 2006 while attending a conference in Colombo.
 
"He was in an area of the capital tightly controlled by the army. It is likely that his captors were military agents," Amnesty said. "He has not been heard from since."
 
Abductions and disappearances of Tamils both in the north and east and in the capital Colombo has soared under the regime of President Mahinda Rajapakse.
 
In a report titled "Return to War – Human Rights Under Siege", the New York based Human Rights Watch earlier this month put the number of disappeared between January 2006 and June 2007 at 1,100.
 
In its report, which cites a ‘credible non-governmental organization that tracks disappearances‘ as its source, the HRW stated that in the Jaffna peninsula alone, 805 persons were reported missing between December 2005 and April this year.
 
Inspection of records by HRW showed that the Government Agent (GA) of Jaffna had registered 354 missing persons from April to December 2006.
 
In addition, in February this year, HRW conducted interviews with the families of 37 persons who had "disappeared" over the previous year.
 
Of these, in 21 cases the evidence strongly suggested the involvement of government security forces. In two cases the families strongly believed that the perpetrators were members of the EPDP, a paramilitary group that operates along side the Sri Lankan army.
 
Last week the international ceasefire monitors of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) reported it had received complaints of Sri Lankan army involvement in abductions in the north.
According to the SLMM report the ceasefire monitors had received two complaints on abductions during the week August 6 to 12 alone, where the army was the perpetrator.
 
The monitors also said that according to the complainants abductions were regularly carried out in broad daylight, and the victim was on one occasion driven blindfolded through military check points.
 
SLMM stated that nine cases of extortion and harassment were also reported from Mannar during the same week but no payments were made while the police claimed to have made an arrest and solved the case.
 
The LTTE Spokesperson for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Selvy Navaruban, accused the Sri Lankan government of continuing to target civilians, including government servants and school students in Jaffna.
 
"Sri Lankan Armed Forces and its paramilitaries are responsible for all the killings and abductions in Jaffna. The international community should pay attention to the mass sufferings of the Tamil people in the hands of the Sri Lankan military," the LTTE spokesperson said in a statement.
 
"The Jaffna military commander Chandrasiri and the members of the Sri Lankan armed forces who are responsible for these grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws should be brought to the international criminal justice system" statement said.
 
The 129 page long Human Rights Watch report published on Monday August 6 focused on abuses by the Sri Lankan state and declared the government's respect for international law has sharply declined.
 
"The government often appeared indifferent to the impact on civilians in the north and east...the main areas of concern [are], from violations of the laws of war and extrajudicial killings to unlawful restrictions on the media and nongovernmental organizations and the widespread impunity enjoyed by state security forces," the report said.
 
However Sri Lanka rejected the HRW report calling the accusations baseless and a violation of the country's sovereignty.
 
"It is also regretted that (the) HRW has thought it fit to issue such a largely one sided report weighed so heavily against the legitimate government," said the office of the President in a statement.
 
The President’s office rejected the call by the rights group to create a United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka to end the abuses.
 
"Largely unconfirmed and unsubstantiated allegations and outdated information do not justify the demand for a special U.N. Observer Mission on Human Rights in Sri Lanka." the government statement further added.
 
The government also took issue with charges leveled by HRW relating to abductions and disappearances, saying its numbers on the "disappeared" and displaced were based on "unsubstantiated information."
 
"The work of government agencies to establish the whereabouts of these persons has been ignored. The report also ignores the fact that the numbers of alleged disappearances and abductions have sharply declined in recent months due to the firm action taken by the government," the government statement added.
 
However Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch said following the publication of the report: "the government has repeatedly promised to end and investigate abuses, but has shown a lack of political will to take effective steps."
 
"Government institutions have proven unable or unwilling to deal with the scale and intensity of abuse." he added.

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