Govt probing disappearance cases in US Embassy list

COLOMBO: The United States Embassy in Colombo has given a list of 355 names of people whose whereabouts were unknown, the Foreign Ministry said.

The US list of names contained a number of repetitions, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Ministry sources said that of the 350 alleged disappearances, provincewise, 253 are from the Northern Province, 78 from the Western Province, nine from the North Western Province, six from the North Central Province, 2 from the Eastern Province and 2 from the Central Province.

Of the names in the US Ambassador’s list, an effort has been made to verify as to how many cases had been previously reported to the bodies in operation where public complaints are made with regard to disappearances.

Inquiries from the Mahanama Thilakaratne Commission states that out of the list, only 79 had been reported to the Commission. Out of this, 14 cases did not come within the mandate of the Commission due to the time factor, reducing the number to 65.

The Commission has already completed inquiries into 42 complaints and a further 23 cases are yet to be inquired into by the Commission.

Inquiries from the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka states that out of the list, only 53 cases have been reported to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.

However, this figure is confined to cases reported to the Commission’s headquarters in Colombo, as details from Branch offices are not available.

According to the Department of Immigration and Emigration, in a comparison of names and other factors, five persons, indicated in the list have left Sri Lanka or have applied for passports after the dates of their alleged disappearance. Meanwhile the police have reported that 10 persons have been traced alive.

The police also report that Navaratnam Karunai Thasan and Saravanabavanathan Hariharan, who were from Chullipuram and Chunnakam in Jaffna, had been abducted from their residences and subsequently their bodies were found with gunshot injuries.

Police have reported progress of the investigations so far to the court as well as to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and investigations continue.

Investigations into the alleged disappearance of the remaining persons in the US Ambassador’s list are continuing.

Given that most of the cases are from the Northern province, there is a possibility that many persons have entered the ‘uncleared’ areas with attendant constraints on the law enforcement authorities to investigate these cases.

The ICRC indicates that a list of 383 names of alleged disappearances about which complaints have been made to the ICRC, 180 have been accounted for.

It is noteworthy that this includes cases in the ‘uncleared’ areas since the ICRC has access to these areas.

The ICRC was expected to give these lists to the President in Geneva earlier this month but has now postponed doing so, the Foreign Ministry said.