UN welcomes move as a “significant milestone”

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday signed the Office on Missing Persons Act, paving the way for a mechanism that seeks to help families looking for their missing relatives.

Announcing the move on Twitter, President Sirisena said: “This marks another step forward in Sri Lanka’s path to sustained peace.”

For over a year since the Act was passed in Parliament, sections have been pressuring the government to operationalise the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) amid mounting criticism of the apparent delay. Following President Sirisena’s announcement on Thursday, the UN welcomed the move as a “significant milestone” for all Sri Lankans still searching for the truth about their missing loved ones. “The Secretary-General looks forward to the OMP becoming operational as soon as possible, starting with the appointment of the independent commissioners,” a statement from his office said on Friday.

According to Human Rights watchdog Amnesty International, Sri Lanka has at least 60,000 cases of enforced disappearances since the 1980s, including tens of thousands of Tamils who went missing during the island’s three-decade civil war as well as scores of Sinhalese youth who mysteriously disappeared during the insurrections led by the leftist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

In the post-war years, concern over allegedly enforced disappearances has remained a key issue in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority north and east. Relatives of missing persons have been agitating for months now, their patience wearing thin after petitioning at least four commissions since 1994. Last month, President Sirisena met relatives of disappeared persons in Jaffna and assured them that the government would soon release a list of those who surrendered to the armed forces in the last phase of the war. The families are awaiting the promised details.

While the setting up of the OMP has drawn international praise, activists on the ground appear sober about the development. “We should be careful about raising hopes of distraught families yet again, by rushing to uncritically welcome the latest announcement,” said Ruki Fernando, a human rights activist. Among families, the OMP has evoked more scepticism than hope, he observed, emphasising that “immediate steps” such as releasing the list of those who surrendered or were detained, expediting ongoing court cases, and swiftly issuing certificates of absence, are crucial to the process gaining credibility.

“If and when the OMP is finally operationalised later this year or next year, it does have the potential to discover the fate and whereabouts of some disappeared persons, irrespective of their background and date or place they disappeared,” he added.