Sri Lanka’s shame

International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances is observed globally on 30 August every year by the United Nations. Sri Lanka has the world’s second-highest number of cases registered with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. 

The 1971 JVP insurrection which lasted a mere five weeks resulted in over 12,000 enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The Government’s own commissions of inquiry looking into the 1987-89 period recorded over 46,000 disappearances while the total number of persons killed in the second JVP insurgency is estimated between 60,000 to 100,000. 

A committee appointed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa recorded 23,000 to have been subjected to enforced disappearance in the north and the east during the ethnic conflict while the actual number is much higher.

According to international law, as long as a person remains missing, the crime of enforced disappearance is ongoing. Therefore, the cases of these tens of thousands of individuals who have been subjected to enforced disappearance are ongoing cases and no number of years passed is going to end the ongoing crime. In 2016 the State acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED Act of 2016) and has now accepted enforced disappearance as an autonomous crime. Through this act the State also accepts that families of victims have a right to not only find their loved ones, even remains of them if they are dead, but also to know the circumstances of their deaths. Unfortunately, the Attorney General has not used the provisions of the CED act in a single case nor has it successfully prosecuted a single case of enforced disappearance.

The two most prominent cases currently within the judicial system is the enforced disappearance of journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda by the unit of the Sri Lanka Army and the abduction, holding to ransom and enforced disappearance of 11 mostly Tamil men, allegedly by an intelligence unit of the Sri Lanka navy. In both these cases not only has the judiciary, the Government and law enforcement authorities failed miserably in the quest for justice but have often been actual barriers in the path. Yet somehow, perhaps largely due to the tenacity of the families of the persons, these two cases have at least made it to courts.

Recently deposed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was secretary to the ministry of defence and in charge of the military and the police at the time of these crimes. The military are accused of these and other numerous enforced disappearances. 

In a few days Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s personal lawyer and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Sabry is due to make a statement at the UN Human Rights Council as to why there should not be an international mechanism to collect data on crimes committed by the Sri Lankan State. These would be hollow words considering who he represents; both an alleged criminal who is accused of numerous crimes including enforced disappearances and an equally criminal State that has done nothing to correct its legacy of impunity against this atrocious crime.

Anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists mark the beginning of civilisation as the moment the human species began to have elaborate funeral rituals for their dead loved ones. It is one of humanity’s defining characteristics. It is this basic humanity that is denied to tens of thousands of victims of enforced disappearance. Consecutive Sri Lankan governments and its judiciary have amply demonstrated that they are unwilling and most definitely incapable of delivering justice for the victims of this heinous crime. Those who stand in the way of international jurisdiction in this regard are no better than those who committed these crimes in the same place.