ICRC asks Lanka to clarify fate of 16,000 war missing

The International Red Cross Committee today asked the Sri Lankan government to make public the fate of over 16,000 people, mostly Tamils, still missing since the end of a brutal war that vanquished the LTTE in 2009.
Releasing the results of a 14-month nationwide survey, the Geneva-based organisation asked the Sri Lankan authorities to "clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing persons".
Thousands of people, mainly ethnic Tamils, were still looking for their loved ones, the 34-page report titled "Living with Uncertainty" said.
Today, however, out of over 34,000 persons that were at some point during the armed conflict considered unaccounted for by their families and reported to the ICRC since 1989, over 16,000 persons are still considered missing by their families, ICRC said.

The survey found that these families primarily want to know the fate and whereabouts of their missing relative and that they also face economic, legal and administrative difficulties in their daily lives, it said.
The report said that out of 395 families surveyed just over one third believed their loved ones were dead while another third were convinced they were still alive somewhere. The remaining third were unsure.

Since the establishment of its permanent presence in 1989 in Sri Lanka, the ICRC has been registering persons reported missing by their families following loss of contact as a result of the armed conflict.

Sri Lanka has one of the largest case-loads of missing persons in the world.
In fact, since 1994 alone, the government commissions have received over 65,000 complaints of missing persons. These include people who went missing during the government's nearly three-decade-long war with Tamil separatists and a Marxist uprising.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) battled Sri Lankan forces for a separate Tamil homeland. A brutal military crackdown ended the 37-year conflict in 2009. Rights groups claim government forces killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the final months of the brutal ethnic conflict.