AI calls on Rajapaksa government to investigate enforced disappearances

On Friday, 30 August 2013 

The London based human rights group Amnesty International (AI) has called on the Mahinda Rajapaksa government to investigate thousands of cases of enforced disappearances reported in Sri Lanka.

According to AI, in Sri Lanka, some 12,000 complaints of enforced disappearances have been submitted to the UN since the 1980s – making it second only to Iraq. But it says the actual number of disappeared is much higher, with at least 30,000 cases alleged up to 1994 and many thousands reported after that.

“The number of disappeared people in Sri Lanka is astounding. The government has to stop making empty promises and once and for all seriously investigate the tens of thousands of cases of enforced disappearances,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka expert.

This year’s Day of the Disappeared coincides with the visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to Sri Lanka.

Pillay has met the family members of some of the disappeared.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in the country has given the security forces wide powers to arrest suspected opponents of the government and detain them incommunicado and without charge or trial for long periods – conditions which provide a ready context for deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture.