Justice for the disappeared 

This week started with the International Day of the Disappeared being commemorated on 30 August. On the day, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) – a transitional justice mechanism set up to investigate enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka and recommend reparations and compensation to victims of the crime and their families – organised a virtual discussion via Zoom, where the overarching point put forth by the Government was that forgiveness is the only way to achieve true reconciliation. 

Below the tweet announcing the discussion, Sandya Ekneligoda – wife of disappeared journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda – surmised the present situation best in her response, when she queried: “Can the missing be brought justice when the perpetrators are acquitted?”

Sandya’s response captures the sense of helplessness currently being felt by those that are still awaiting answers, let alone justice. To understand their plight, one must first understand the history of the OMP.

Although legislated in 2016, the OMP only became operational in early 2018. Prior to this, since the early ’90s in fact, at least 10 Presidential Commissions of Inquiry had been launched into the matter of enforced disappearances with little by way of recompense.

The final report of the Paranagama Commission – appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to look into disappearances – was tabled in Parliament and hosted on the website of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms – a website that is no longer available and appears to be defunct. The final report of the commission appointed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga – the Commission of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons (All-Island) – is however available in the National Library. In it, it is revealed that 90% of disappearances at the time were attributed to the Sri Lankan Military and Police, while the remaining 10% were chalked up to paramilitary groups such as the LTTE. In fact, the report named several Police and Military personnel whom there was enough evidence on to prosecute. That, out of the 21,215 verified cases of enforced disappearances in the report, less than 500 have resulted in indictment, is damning.

The OMP finally coming to pass was meant to be a game-changer in this sense. While the commissions that preceded it merely handed over its findings to the Government – though successive governments have failed to act on these findings – the OMP was set to investigate on its own further findings uncovered by it or any previous commissions. However, the latest moves by the Government have seemingly made this task even harder. The first was the appointment of retired Judge Upali Abeyratne to the post of OMP Chairman, following the resignation of Saliya Pieris in 2019. This was a move that raised alarm bells, as it was Abeyratne that had previously exonerated military officials accused of abduction and murder in several emblematic disappearance cases.Shortly after there was the appointment of former war-time Police Chief former IGP Jayantha Wickramaratne as a member of the OMP. Activists and victims alike expressed concerns over his presence, stating that it might undermine the office and put witnesses and complainants at risk of reprisal. And it’s hard to argue against these worries when the history of the OMP and the investigations that preceded it are taken into consideration. It’s quite incredible really that Wickramaratne, who had been in charge of three Police units named by the United Nations investigation as involved in mass enforced disappearances at the end of the war, is now being tasked with investigating the disappearances himself.

The OMP was put in place to improve accountability, but it is seemingly being systematically defanged. It is therefore astonishing that the Government feels it is incumbent on the victims of these disappearances to offer forgiveness. The justice the families of the disappeared demand does not have to be retributive, but the Government cannot expect true reconciliation by attempting to sweep everything under the proverbial rug either.