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Monday, 18 September 2017 01:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Prime Minister says that a proposed bill enabling to criminalize enforced disappearance in the Sri Lankan Penal Code will be effective only for the future and not for the past disappearances.
He said the bill has been prepared according to the needs in the future and it does not relate to the past.
Sri Lanka signed the International Covenant on Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance on December 10, 2015, and the government ratified it on May 25, 2016. But enabling legislation to implement the Convention by criminalizing enforced disappearance in the Sri Lankan Penal Code has yet to be debated.
Addressing an event held at the Polpithigama National School over the weekend, the Premier said the convention will be effective only after October this year.
The Prime Minister said under this convention cases could not be filed against anyone connected to past incidents such as disappearance of Ekneligoda or Thajudeen’s killing.
The Premier noted that many enforced disappearances have taken place during the war and Sri Lanka was not able to sign agreements on missing persons until the end of the war.
He said the draft bill related to the agreement signed in December 2015 is in Parliament now and it will come in to force only after the Speaker signed the agreement. The agreement stipulates that every participating state should enact legislation criminalizing the enforced disappearances.
The Premier also said that the burden of the implementation of the agreement could not be transferred to the future generations.
He said even though civil society groups asked why the Thajudeen and Ekneligoda cases were not included in this convention, the law cannot be changed and it has to be implemented according to the Constitution. Any laws relating to those enforced disappearances will have to be implemented after October 2017.
Rejecting a claim made by former minister Prof. G.L. Peiris that the Act is related to the past, the Premier stressed that no one can take any action on enforced disappearances before October this year.
The Prime Minister reiterated that both the President and he had promised that the individuals connected to the war will not be sent to international arena as those can be solved internally. He said that pledge would not be broken. He said the government has no desire to send the country’s soldiers to any court.
