LONGING FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND COMPENSATION AMIDST BROKEN PROMISES

International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances

- By Kamanthi Wickramasinghe

In the backdrop of exhuming one of the largest mass graves in Chemmani, Sri Lanka, families of victims subject to enforced disappearances are still longing to find out what happened to their loved ones, especially during the final stages of the protracted civil war.

But enforced disappearances have occurred throughout the course of Sri Lanka's history from late 1980s during the JVP uprising where tens of thousands of Sinhalese youths were abducted, allegedly by squads linked to the state. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians went missing during the height of the war until its end in 2009. Incidents such as the Kurukkalmadam massacre in July 1990 where at least 150 individuals including Hajj pilgrims were abducted and believed to have been tortured, killed and buried in a mass grave allegedly by the LTTE, is one example.

In view of the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, mothers of the Families of the Disappeared (FOD) walked from office to office to raise awareness about their demands. Starting from the Ministry of Justice, they walked to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Presidential Secretariat, US Embassy, Office of Missing Persons at Temple Trees, United Nations Head Office, Canadian High Commission, Embassies of Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, South Africa, France, the British High Commission and the Prime Minister's Office. In addition, several programmes were held in Jaffna where mothers staged demonstrations with photographs of their loved ones, demanding truth, justice and accountability from the incumbent government.

Concerns on non-utilisation of budgetary allocation