Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe says that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, ratified by Sri Lanka, will be effective only for the future and not for the past.
He said that the convention will be effective only after October this year. The Premier also said that the government has no desire to send the country’s soldiers to any court.
Last year, the Sri Lankan Parliament ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. But a bill to implement the Convention by criminalising enforced disappearance in the Sri Lankan Penal Code has yet to be debated.
Sri Lanka will seek to enact legislation making disappearance a crime under national law in accordance with the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
Also in 2016, Parliament passed a bill to establish the “Office of Missing Persons”. The Office of Missing Persons is operational from Thursday (14).
