Thursday, May 24, 2012

Thousands missing in Sri Lanka as people continue to disappear...

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“It’s been almost three years. My son went missing on 14 May [2009] and I have not heard from him ever since. He was not a member of the LTTE or [any] other group. He was just a normal Tamil civilian,” said Aarati*, 56, a mother of three in the northern town of Kilinochchi, in the former war zone. Another son has been missing since 1993.

Ganeshan Thambiah from the town of Jaffna, also in the north, told IRIN he has lost hope. “My son has gone missing for three years. It hurts me a lot but he is probably dead.”

Disappearances occurred on a “massive scale,” especially between 2006 and 2009 during the last phase of the war, said Ruki Fernando from the Christian Alliance for Social Action, a local NGO. “At the end of the war, many who surrendered to the army disappeared, including a Catholic priest and several high-profile LTTE leaders.”

 Fernando includes journalists, human rights defenders and humanitarian workers among the missing, but says the real “tragedy” has been the reluctance of law enforcement authorities and state institutions to confront “this horrible crime, even when some leads are available”. Full story...

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