The Union of Missing Persons’ Parents stated that at least 600 civilians were reported to have been arrested by the security forces during 1996 and 1997 and their whereabouts are not known. Although 600 were missing from Jaffna homes during this period, the parents of only 254 children reported to the Union about the alleged disappearances. The security forces admitted that about 167 persons out of these were killed in incidents... during this period.

In December 2002, a committee was appointed under the Human Rights Commission to investigate reports of these 600 cases of disappearances. According to complaints received by the National Human Rights Commission, there is no information about 42 people in Batticaloa and 4 in Amparai disappeared in 2002. Six hearings into a total of 327 cases were held and a report of the findings of the Committee of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission is yet to be made public.

It is clear that once the complaints received by different governmental commissions...are examined and conducive conditions are created to allow the relatives of the victims to lodge complaints, the number of disappeared persons in Sri Lanka will go up.

In 1990, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances stated that perhaps the singlemost important actor contributing to the phenomenon of disappearances is that of impunity. Perpetrators of human rights violations, whether civilian or military become all the more irresponsible if they are not held to account before a court of law. The Working Group further urged that impunity could also induce victims of those practices to resort to a form of self-help and take the law into their own hands, which in turn exacerbates the spiral of violence.

Although, there were not many reports of disappearances since the cease-fire agreement between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan government, the prosecutions of the culprits have been abysmal. Impunity given to the security forces is clear. According to Amnesty International, about 4,000 suspected individual perpetrators were identified out of whom about 500 have been indicted. But these have resulted in only very few convictions in the courts.

In its fourth periodic report, the Sri Lankan government states that the Missing Persons Commission Unit of the Attorney General’s Department, which has received notes of investigations relating to these 1,175 cases, has taken the following action...(as of 31st December 2001)

1. Indicted in the high courts (number of cases) 262

2. Non summary action instituted in the magisterial (number of cases) 86

3. Total number of security force’s personnel against whom criminal action has been instituted — 597

4. Discharged due to want or absence of evidence — 423

The fact that the Sri Lankan government failed to inform the Human Rights Committee about the conviction of single personnel apart from instituting proceedings before the high courts and the magisterial courts is disturbing. It illustrates impunity given to the security forces against systematic and organized disappearances.