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Tamil families of the disappeared in Mannar told the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) that there has not been any constructive action taken by the office in investigating the disappearances of their relatives.
On October 28, a meeting was held at the Mannar District Secretariat where Tamil families of the disappeared and civil society representatives expressed their deep frustration to OMP officials, over the office's ongoing failure to respond to the families seeking information on their loved ones who were forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan state.
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The families and activists told the OMP officials, including the the OMP chair Thambiaiah Yogarajah, that they had provided a comprehensive document containing details and photographs of over 300 people who were disappeared. Despite these efforts, the OMP has failed to adequately investigate the disappearances.
Civil society representatives reiterated the deep mistrust that Tamil families feel toward the OMP given that it has not revealed the fate of any forcibly disappeared people although the office has been operating since 2017.
Due to the failure of domestic mechanisms such as the OMP, Tamils in the North-East continue to demand an international investigation into these enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses committed by Sri Lanka.
The OMP has been routinely criticised by international human rights experts and Tamil family members of the disappeared. In 2022, the UN High Commissioner highlighted that the OMP "has not been able to trace a single disappeared person or clarify the fate of the disappeared in meaningful ways".
During the last session at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the Sri Lankan government under president Anura Kumara Dissanayake will address human rights abuses through domestic mechanisms.
