Rajiva Wijesinha

“ Like Human Rights Watch, which with unlimited resources produced a glossy book of Sri Lankan disappearances in early 2008, only three of which related to 2007, IFJ too must stop trotting out age old figures that take attention away from the few real problems we now face. ”

“ Sri Lanka is grateful to the Asian Legal Resource Centre for giving it the opportunity to clarify a misconception about our engagement with the Working Group on Disappearances. A loose reading of his printed text by the ALRC Spokesman gave the impression that we were ignoring over 5,000 cases of disappearances. In fact, as ALRC knows well, and as the graphics of the Working Group make clear, the vast majority of these cases related to the period 1989 and 1990. ”

“ The spate of LTTE propelled disappearances during the Ceasefire Agreement period, of Tamils from groups that had accepted democracy but continued critical of the terrorism of the LTTE, disappearances which could not be reported to Geneva because non-State actors do not fall within the mandate of the Working Group, led to a reaction which we have made clear was unacceptable, and this has now stopped. ”