continued persecution of the families of victims of forced disappearance

Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of enforced disappearances in the world, with thousands of victims going missing during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency and the civil war with the Tamil Tigers. Human Rights Watch denounces the continued persecution of victims’ families through surveillance, intimidation, and arbitrary detention. Despite the Missing Persons Bureau, almost no cases have been solved. Families are calling for international intervention.

Colombo () – Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of enforced disappearances in the world, including those who disappeared during the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency (1987-89) and the civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (1983-2009). Sri Lankan authorities have for decades refused to reveal the fate of the missing or to prosecute those responsible, prompting the UN human rights office to call for international prosecutions. And even now, the Sri Lankan government continues to persecute families of victims of enforced disappearance who try to assert their rights, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. “Security forces continue to persecute families through surveillance, intimidation, false accusations, violence and arbitrary arrests,” said HRW, recalling the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, which was celebrated yesterday, 30 August.

On August 29, 2024, a court in Trincomalee upheld a police request to ban relatives of missing persons from holding a procession on the occasion. Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Relatives of the missing suffer the daily torment of not knowing what happened to their relatives, which state agencies have cruelly compounded by trying to silence them.” She added that many of them died without truth or justice in their hands. In his annual report on Sri Lanka, presented on August 22 to the UN Human Rights Council, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk described “a persistent pattern of surveillance, intimidation, and harassment of journalists and civil society actors, particularly those working on enforced disappearances… and reprisals against relatives of missing persons who engage with UN or international actors, including members of the diplomatic community.”

In May, Human Rights Watch met with relatives of missing persons in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, mostly wives or mothers of the victims. “They described a pattern of ongoing abuse. Many are facing prosecution after being detained during protests, including three who were hospitalized due to police violence against protesters,” it reports. Describing the bitter experience of a woman from the Eastern Province who is struggling to learn the fate of her husband, it says she believes she is subject to regular surveillance by security agencies, including the police Criminal Investigation Department, the Terrorism Investigation Division, the Special Task Force, and the military.

“We cannot raise our voices, we have no freedom of movement,” said a woman from the Northern Province, whose husband has not been seen since his arrest in 2008. “They threaten us.” [los organismos de seguridad] “They take action even against our relatives. We are not free to do anything.” The women said police officers routinely hand out stay-at-home orders – banning them from attending commemorative events or protests – in the middle of the night, when they are dressed in evening clothes and taking photographs. “If my gate is closed, the police jump over the wall or cut down the fence to give the stay-at-home order,” one said. Several mothers of missing people said the most terrifying threats were directed at their other children. One said that when she takes part in protests, police tell her: “You have to take care of your son, who is still alive.” Another said that just days after she was arrested during a protest in 2023, her son was arrested on a supposedly fabricated drug case and sent to “rehabilitation.”

In 2017, the Sri Lankan government set up the Office of Missing Persons (OMP), which is supposed to determine the whereabouts or fate of missing people, but it has solved almost no cases. Relatives have accused the OMP of pressuring them to accept compensation, which they fear will lead to their cases being dropped without further investigation. “We used to trust the OMP, but after they hired some commissioners, we lost trust,” said the mother of a missing person from Mannar, northwest Sri Lanka, referring to the appointment of former senior security force officials to the agency. She said she rejected compensation offers because “I need to know what happened to my son.” Many relatives of missing people are also skeptical of the current government’s proposal to set up a new national truth and reconciliation commission, after numerous similar bodies have failed in the past to ensure truth or accountability. “We don’t accept it. “We don’t trust her,” said one of them, stressing the importance of international participation, including in criminal investigations.