COLOMBO, (Reuters) – Sri Lanka acknowledged yesterday for the first time that some 65,000 people were missing from its 26-year-long war with Tamil Tiger rebels and a separate Marxist insurrection.
President Maithripala Sirisena’s coalition government has agreed to address past human rights violations through independent probes and to implement a resolution by the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
Former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government had rejected the U.N. recommendations, saying it wanted to address rights concerns without any international pressure. Rajapaksa lost power in January 2015.
“Since 1994 various commissions have documented that there are about 65,000 people missing or not found to be dead,” Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, a former president and head of the new government’s reconciliation office, told reporters.
“We will get a final list later from the office of missing persons.”
The Tamil Tigers began fighting in 1983 for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. Their insurgency ended in 2009. Separately a radical Marxist group waged an armed revolt against the government in 1987-89.
