Sri Lanka takes major step to establish an Office of Missing Persons

Sri Lanka took a major step towards setting up an Office of Missing Persons, when President Maithripala Sirisena signed an order appointing State Minister for Reconciliation AHM Fowzie to the office.

But the Office of Missing Persons or OMP, will be effectively under President Sirisena, who is

the cabinet minister of reconciliation. Fowzie, as state minister, is his second-in- command.

The next step would be the appointment of seven commissioners for OMP by the Constitutional Council, the country’s supreme appointing authority, said MA Sumanthiran, a lawyer and MP of the Tamil National Alliance or TNA.

But the government has announced that the OMP will take up only “future” cases and not cases relating to the last war. The move disappointed the Tamil community whose members formed the bulk of those missing.

But “enforced disappearance” is a crime under the international law and comes under the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances which Sri Lanka has signed, acts of the past could be taken up for investigation and legal action, said TNA leader Sumanthiran.

"President Sirisena promised the TNA that he would set up the OMP after passing an appropriate legislation. And he has kept his promise."

The process to set up the office has taken up almost two years despite agitations by minority Tamils whose demand for its formation earned strong support from domestic and international human rights lobbies and the UN Human Rights Council or UNHRC.

In October of 2015, the Sri Lankan government told the UNHRC it would set up an office to address the issue of disappearances. The 64,000 who are presumed missing comprise of members from all three ethnic groups living in the island nation.

The delay in setting up the office is attributed to opponents within the government and the opposition who feared that its investigations of disappearances would lead to prosecution of armed forces personnel, who are considered war heroes.

Military intelligence officers, who hunted down Tamil Tiger rebels operating cells for carrying out bomb attacks and assassinations, are blamed for the majority of the abductions.

But pressure from the UNHRC along with domestic and international human rights groups made the government pass the required law to set up the OMP.

But the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a nationalist organisation, objected to a clause in the bill which permitted the OMP to secure funds from foreign sources on its own. The bill then was passed following the removal of the clause.