UN Rights Chief urged to raise Sri Lankan Leader’s statement that Thousands of Tamils who surrendered are Now Dead: TGTE

As the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein begins his three day visit to Sri Lanka, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) wrote a letter, urging him to raise with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mr. Ranil Wikramasinghe, about his statement that thousands of Tamils who surrendered to the Sri Lankan Security forces are no longer alive. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister made this statement on January 15th in Jaffna, when he spoke at a celebration of Thai Pongal, a Hindu festival.

The letter further states that “large groups of Tamil civilians, including women and children voluntarily placed themselves in the hands of the security forces at the end of the conflict in May, 2009 in reliance on assurances that they would be safe and ultimately released. Since then several more have been arrested or have disappeared. According to recent reports abductions and sexual assaults of Tamils are still continuing.”

The letter pointed out that “the Sri Lankan Prime Minister’s comments sent shock-waves through the thousands of Tamil families who still do not know the fate of their surrendered loved ones. The families of the disappeared held a hunger strike on February 4th, the Sri Lankan Independence Day, to highlight their plight.”

“This new revelation by the Sri Lankan Prime Minister reconfirms the Tamils’ firm belief that Tamils will only get justice through an international mechanism such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), and urged the High Commissioner to request the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council to refer Sri Lanka to the ICC” said the letter.

The letter also highlighted the fact that the same security forces that committed these large scale disappearances and other mass atrocities still remain stationed in extremely large numbers in Tamil areas, even after six years have passed since the end of the war.

The letter also pointed out that on December 15, 2015, Sri Lanka signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.