Global movement urges Sri Lanka Army to release records of war 'surrendees'



Global movement urges Sri Lanka Army to release records of war 'surrendees' [Saturday 2016-06-25 18:00]
A global non-partisan movement, The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice urged the Sri Lanka Army to release the records of the people surrendered to the security forces at the end of the war in 2009. Issuing a statement today, the movement said it has been almost 7 years since the conclusion of Sri Lanka's civil war and there are still many questions that remain unanswered as to what happened to the many hundreds of LTTE 'surrendees', as well as the thousands of Tamil civilians, who were taken into the custody of the Sri Lankan army at the end of the war and whose whereabouts remain unknown.
There is strong evidence to suggest that many of those who did come under the control of the Sri Lankan armed forces at the end of the war were extra-judicially killed, it says. In this context, the organizations says the revelation, made by head of the Army's 58th Division Major General Chanayaka Gunaratna, that the army is in possession of a list of people that surrendered during the final stages of the war, is of enormous significance. The admission came in February during a writ of habeas corpus magistrate's hearing filed by Northern Provincial Councilor Ananthy Sathisaran and several others in relation to missing relatives, when the officer stated that none of those missing persons in question were on a list of names held by the army. "This would apparently be the first time that the army has confirmed that a record of individuals moving across the front-line at the end of the war was kept and - whilst the number of individuals accounted for by the record remains unclear - could potentially be a major development in helping to establish the last known whereabouts of many of the disappeared," Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice says. The movement said the army must disclose this information as a matter of urgency and urged the international community exert pressure on the Sri Lankan government at the ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council. "It is now incumbent on the judiciary and political leadership in Sri Lanka - as well as the international community at the ongoing Human Rights Council session - to apply the pressure to ensure they do so." "Amid the drafting of new legislation for an Office of Missing Persons, and Sri Lanka's recent ratification of the International Convention on Enforced Disappearances, the Sri Lankan state now faces a major opportunity to clearly demonstrate the real depth of its commitment to establishing the truth about the 24,000 plus cases of missing persons in Sri Lanka. Their response will provide one of the strongest indications yet of whether the new mechanisms for investigating the disappeared will be able to prevail over the deep culture of secrecy within the Sri Lankan security forces, and the impunity it creates," the organization said.


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