Credibility missing from OMP

Office on Missing Persons Chairman Mahesh Katundala has told an international media recently that there was no evidence to support the claim that those who surrendered to the military had gone missing. He adds that the majority of those who disappeared had been abducted by the LTTE or factions opposed to it and that the OMP had uncovered about 50 cases of people reported missing who were living abroad.

Also last week the Sri Lanka Army in response to a Right to Information request informed that no LTTE fighters had surrendered to it at the end of the conflict. Journalist D. Nirosh Kumar had made a request under the RTI Act seeking information pertaining to the number of LTTE fighters who surrendered to the Army, officials who supervised such incidents, number of LTTE fighters who were arrested during the last period of the war, and officials who supervised such arrests.

Both the statement by the Army and the Chairman of the OMP are deeply troubling and particularly detrimental towards the efforts to address the issue of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka. It undermines the credibility of both these institutions, one accused of enforcing disappearance and the other entrusted to seek the truth regarding missing persons.

The missing persons are a larger group than those subjected to enforced disappearance. The missing include combatants and civilians that are recorded as missing at the end of a conflict situation. In Sri Lanka these include over 5,000 military personnel who are registered as missing in action (MIA). Enforced disappearance is a more specific crime committed mostly by State actors but in the case of Sri Lanka by the LTTE and other non-State actors as well. 

The magnitude of enforced disappearances is unprecedented in Sri Lanka. The country has the world’s second-highest number of cases registered with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. The Government’s own commissions of inquiry have registered over 46,000 disappearances in the south during the period 1987-89 and 23,000 in the north and east. At least 12,000 were subjected to enforced disappearance or were extra judiciary killed in 1971. 

The previous Yahapalanaya Government with Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister took some commendable steps towards correcting this grave injustice. In 2018 it established the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) and in 2016 acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. According to international law as long as a person remains missing the crime of enforced disappearance is ongoing. Therefore, even though Sri Lanka acceded to the ICED in 2016, it can prosecute anyone for a person who disappeared before the country became a signatory, as long as the person is still missing.

The OMP which was established with much hope to address the outstanding issue has eroded its credibility. To date, there has not been a single prosecution under the CED Act, nor a single case resolved by the OMP. In a report on 4 October, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the OMP had fallen short of the “tangible results expected by victims and other stakeholders”. In May this year Commissioner Shiraz Noordeen resigned from his post stating that the OMP is unable to act independently to bring justice to victims. He claimed that since the OMP has to rely on the Justice Ministry for approvals for all its tasks, there is little room for the OMP to function independently.

The OMP has now lost much of its credibility. Individuals such as its chairman are glaringly unsuitable to hold the position he does. He is not alone in that sense. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed a one-time IGP as a commissioner to the OMP who himself is accused of involvement in the disappearance of two Tamil civilians as part of the cover up of the Lasantha Wickremetunga murder. With such individuals at the helm of the OMP there is little hope for justice or closure for the victims. Such individuals should be immediately removed from the OMP if there is any credibility to be salvaged from this most vital institution.