Campaign for Peace and Justice urges President Sirisena to release list of all detained/released during war

Rights group Sri Lanka Campaign For Peace and Justice is urging President Sirisena to fulfil a pledge to release a list of all those who surrendered or were detained by Sri Lankan authorities during the final stages of the civil war.

An extract from a statement from the website claimed the following , " the response of the government of Sri Lanka to the campaign, and these events, has been disappointing. Both an informal email reply to our campaign press release from Presidential Adviser Austin Fernando, and the official response from his staff which followed on 17th August, were marked by misinterpretation, obfuscation, and – at times – hostility towards our request."

Further the statement said  "While we have chosen not to publish that correspondence, we can reveal that the response was in line with what has been stated publicly by members of staff from the President’s Office since: that the call for the release of the list is redundant because the President has, they suggest, already fulfilled his pledge. To support this claim, they refer to the publication of a list, on 29th July, of all of the individuals with pending trials or cases against them under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA)."

"Quite simply, this is not the list that protesting relatives of the disappeared are demanding. The list of all those who surrendered or detained during the end of the war that they seek is both distinct from, and far broader in scope than, the list of PTA detainees referred to above. The President himself appears to have acknowledged this when he made the pledge to families of the disappeared earlier this year. A press statement issued by his Office on 14th June clearly stated that: “[the President] promised that he would instruct the National Security Council to release lists of persons who surrendered to the Armed forces in the final phase of the war.” 

"The latest line of defence from the President’s Office thus appears to be based on either a negligent, or wilfully disingenuous, reading of the campaign demand – one which we went to lengths to make clear in the ‘Explainer’ section of our appeal age. In our letter of reply to the President’s Office, we once again clarified the nature of the list being sought by the protesting families and invited further response. As of today, we have not received one."