Authorities in Sri Lanka 'discourage and threaten' relatives of the disappeared says US Ambassador

28 January 2016

The lack of proper investigations over the issue of disappearances sends a message of impunity to the perpetrators, said US Ambassador Samantha Power, in an address to the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

Speaking on the ‘Global Challenge of Accounting for Missing Persons’, Ms Power drew on her recent visits to Mexico and Sri Lanka, where she travelled to Jaffna and met with families of the disappeared.

Ms Power stated that both communities showed that there was an “enduring and all-encompassing, searing pain and hardship experienced by families who have had a loved one disappear”.

“In many instances, families’ sense of impotence was exacerbated by the routine failure of authorities to take basic steps to search for the missing or to bring to justice those responsible,” she added. “The lack of proper investigations doesn’t just hurt families – it also sends a message to perpetrators that they can continue to disappear people with impunity.”

“In both Mexico and Sri Lanka, I heard from families who reported cases to authorities, only to see them sit on key investigative leads or misplace crucial evidence,” she continued. “Others were discouraged or even threatened by the very officials whose job it was to help them.”

Ms Power went on to add:

“In Jaffna, Sri Lanka, just a couple months ago a mother told me how, in March of 2009 she had seen men in military uniforms abduct her 16-year-old daughter, and had been beaten when she tried to intervene. Yet despite promptly reporting that crime to officials, the mother told me, she had never heard anything back. She has spent nearly every day of the six years since searching for her daughter, whose whereabouts remain unknown.” 

The ambassador went on to note that some positive steps had been taken by the Sri Lankan government in passing legislation to issue “missing” certificates to the families of victims, stating that steps where needed in places like Sri Lanka, “which lack credible, comprehensive databases, and where building them could help thousands of families obtain answers that they have long yearned for”.

She concluded her remarks by quoting a verse from a song written about mothers in Argentina searching for their children missing from the country’s Dirty War, stating “it rings true for so many families of the disappeared worldwide”.

“We still sing, we still ask,
We still dream, we still wait,
For a different day,
Without burden or fasting,
Without fear and without crying,
Because to the nest,
Our loved ones will return.”

See her full remarks here.