Sunday, 10 Sep 2023
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by Gehan Gunatilleke
Sri Lanka enacted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance Act in March 2018. The new law criminalises enforced disappearance, and grants the High Court in Colombo exclusive jurisdiction to try offences under the law. A question that vexes families of the disappeared is whether the new law applies to persons who...
Few countries in the world can rival Sri Lanka’s legacy on enforced disappearance. Simply defined, an ‘enforced disappearance’ takes place when an agent of the state takes a person into custody, and subsequently refuses to disclose the fate or whereabouts of that person. Few communities in Sri Lanka have escaped experiencing the effects of this phenomenon.
It has remained...