- BY Dhanushka Dharmapriya
Amid the circulation of video footage showing a group of Tamil women being forcefully taken away from the Jaffna District Secretariat by the Police, with no context provided and implying that families of missing persons seeking justice for their disappeared loved ones were forcefully chased away, the Chairperson of the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) has clarified the situation.
Speaking to The Daily Morning, OMP Chair Mahesh Katulanda said that no forceful chasing away of members of the public who had come seeking justice had taken place in Jaffna. He stated that the group that was taken away was a politically motivated group that had attempted to disrupt the commemoration of the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
"The commemoration of the International Day was held at the Secretariat, and 350 families of the disappeared from many areas, including Kilinochchi, Vavuniya, Jaffna, and Mannar, were invited. They were taken to the premises after scanning a quick response code, and the event followed a welfare programme for them, including an eye test and a health camp," he said.
"But another group protested outside the gates, trying to prevent the selected families from entering the Secretariat. When they failed, they started to forcibly enter the premises for the attention of the international media. They were taken outside the premises," he added.
He further stated that, as far as it had been found, the group that attempted to enter the premises had no relation to anyone who had disappeared.
He also said that it was announced at the commemoration that the third phase of the Chemmani mass grave excavations had recently been concluded, with an expenditure of Rs 57.8 million, and that 584 skeletons had been found to date. He said that measures would be taken to accelerate the process of collecting blood samples from the families and conducting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tests to identify the recovered bodies.
However, longstanding tensions between some parties in the North and the OMP persist, amid accusations that the OMP has not conducted satisfactory investigations, as only 25 of the 16,996 reportedly missing persons have been found to date.