A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Friday, June 16, 2017
Lanka President pledges to release lists of disappeared
President Maithripala Sirisena has pledged to release the lists of those
who had surrendered or were detained by the armed forces during the
last phase of the brutal 30-year civil war that ended in 2009.
During a meeting between representatives of the families of the
disappeared from across all eight districts of the north-east and
President Sirisena, the families handed over a memo laying out five key
demands including releasing a list of all those who had surrendered or
were detained by the Lankan armed forces during and after the war.
They also demanded releasing a list of all detainees held under the Prevention of Terrorism (PTA) and in detention centres.
The meeting was arranged as a result of demands by the families at demonstrations on the 100th day of their protest on May 30.
They demanded that these lists be handed to a representative of the
families of the disappeared and their lawyers and also to release in
public domain findings of all state probes conducted in the past on the
subject of disappearances.
A Tamil civil society spokesman K Guruparan said the demands were read
to Sirisena at the meeting and the president has promised the families
that he would issue directives to the National Security Council to
release lists of surrendees, detainees, and political prisoners that
families were demanding.
The protest by the relatives came amidst the government's action to set up an office for the missing persons.
Despite being legally set up, the rest of the administrative and
logistical action on the office is yet to be completed. Another
amendment to the Act is to be debated in the Parliament this month.
While the affected Tamil minority is seeking justice for their
disappeared relatives, the opposition groups mostly Sinhala majority
nationalists say the entire office of missing persons would betray the
government troops who had successfully countered the terror of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the
security forces during Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to
nearly three-decades long civil war in Sri Lanka with the defeat of
LTTE in 2009.
Government troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels are both accused of war crimes.
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