P’ment ratifies enforced disappearance bill

Speaker Karu Jayasuriya has endorsed the certificate on the bill entitled ‘International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance’ on 21 March, accepting the bill as an act.

“I have certified the bill in terms of the provisions of Article 79 of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,” he confirmed to the House yesterday.

The bill, presented to Parliament on 7 March, gives effect to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; to ensure the right to justice and reparation to victims of enforced disappearance; and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

According to Section 3 of the Act, any public officer or person acting with the authority or support of the State, who “arrests, details, wrongfully confines, abducts, kidnaps” and refuses to acknowledge the arrest, detection, confinement or abduction, conceals the fate of such a person or refuses to disclose the person’s whereabouts will be found guilty of having perpetrated an enforced disappearance. 

Under the provisions of the act, an enforced disappearance is punishable by a prison term not exceeding 20 years and a fine of Rs. 1 million. The persons convicted of the crime of an enforced disappearance will also be liable to pay compensation of no less than Rs. 500,000 to a victim. (AH)