Never disappearing issue of enforced disappearances

EVERY year, 30 August is marked as the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Annually it casts a long and painful shadow over Sri Lanka as a country with an appalling and outstanding record of this horrendous crime. At least 60,000 people are believed to have been subjected to enforced disappearance during the 1987-89 JVP insurgency, in addition to thousands more during the civil war in the northeast.

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Through an irony of history, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), once a movement that saw its cadre youth brutally silenced in the late 1980s, now leads the Government. One would imagine that such a Government, born from a generation scarred by disappearances, would be deeply committed to uncovering the truth and giving closure to the families. Instead, we see no urgency.

Rather than dismantling the structures that enabled mass disappearances, the current administration appears trapped by them. The military apparatus that carried out these crimes still looms large. Any call for justice is painted as an attack on the military, as though the pursuit of accountability threatens national security. This logic is not only false, but also corrosive. Justice does not weaken a country, impunity does.