Now Reading: Sri Lanka missing persons commission handles 17,000 active cases
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Sri Lanka missing persons commission handles 17,000 active cases
Sri Lanka missing persons commission handles 17,000 active cases
Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons is investigating nearly 17,000 active disappearance cases, chairman Mahesh Katulanda said on Thursday. Its database holds over 23,000 cases, including those from the decades-long civil war…
The Story in Brief
Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons is investigating nearly 17,000 active disappearance cases, chairman Mahesh Katulanda said on Thursday. Its database holds over 23,000 cases, including those from the decades-long civil war with the LTTE that ended in 2009. Katulanda said duplicate entries and missing-in-action cases have been weeded out.
Set up in 2016 and operational since 2018, the OMP holds one-to-one meetings with families and has already interviewed 9,072. Each family receives a one-off revival payment of SLR 5,000, not compensation, Katulanda stressed. The government has released over SLR 375 crore for the payments. Official estimates say around 20,000 people remain missing from the war alone.
The Indian Opinion
The numbers are staggering, but Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons is at least counting them. Some critics call it toothless; others say the state is finally acknowledging wartime horrors. Neither side has a monopoly on the truth. The real test will be whether the commission can trace even a fraction of the missing, and whether families see justice, not just a one-off payment of SLR 5,000.
Source: hindustantimes.com
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