There were widespread disappearances after the Army captured Jaffna in 1996. The fate of 540 Tamils arrested by the security forces still remains unknown. The skeletal remains of 15 people were found in Chemmani after the burial sites were identified in August and September 1999 by soldier Somaratne Rajapakse who had been convicted for the murder of Krishanthy Kumarasamy.
The skeletal remains were sent to Colombo for forensic examination and it was said that foreign assistance had been sought in the investigation. Four army officers and a police officer were arrested in March 2000 suspected of involvement in the murder of the 15 people. They were all released on bail in June 2000.
GAPAD members travelled to Colombo two years ago to meet President Chandrika Kumaratunge and to call for an independent enquiry. The President assured them that a Commission would be appointed into the Jaffna disappearances. Six months later, the most senior state officer in Jaffna, the Government Agent (GA), had promised that there would be some action within three months. But there was none.
After a visit to Sri Lanka in 1999, the UN Working Group on Disappearances had also recommended the appointment of a commission to investigate the disappearances after 1994. There have been four police enquiries into the disappearances in Jaffna. But no independent investigation has been carried out into disappearances after Kumaratunge’s People’s Alliance took power in 1994.
The PA government appointed three regional commissions in November 1994 to investigate disappearances during the period 1988-94. These commissions investigated 16,742 disappearances. In May 1998, a fourth commission was appointed to probe a further 10,000 disappearances during the same period. But its mandate was not extended to cover the period after 1994.
According to the UN Working Group, Sri Lanka remains the country with the second highest number of unclarified disappearances, next to Iraq, in the world. The Working Group also says that the government has brought charges only against 500 of the 4,000 perpetrators identified by the national commissions.