Despite maintaining 16,966 active files on missing civilians, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) has so far found and verified only 25 missing persons, with another six believed to be alive but awaiting verification, OMP’s Executive Director Dr Jeganathan Thatparan said.
Speaking to the media yesterday (13) ahead of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, which will be commemorated in Jaffna and Matara on 25 August, he said that the OMP had so far established the fate of 31 missing persons, comprising 25 people whose whereabouts had been found and verified and another six known to be living but whose status still needs to be formally verified.
OMP Chairperson, attorney-at-law Mahesh Katulanda said the institution had inherited around 42,000 complaints when it was established, including complaints that had previously been submitted to various commissions, United Nations-affiliated bodies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other State and non-State institutions.
He said that one of the OMP’s biggest initial challenges was identifying duplicate complaints and determining which complaints related to the same missing person. In some cases, he claimed that several complaints had been lodged about the same person, while different people had also filed complaints concerning the same disappearance.
“At that time, we didn’t have a database. During the 30-year war, the technology available was limited. Some people didn’t have National Identity Cards, while some didn’t have any documents at all. The periods of 1971 and 1988-1989 were also not technologically advanced. Records were maintained in books, and we had to begin this process relying heavily on human labour,” he said.
“We have now established a database containing 23,352 missing persons. Of these, 16,966 are active files concerning civilians who remain missing. Military and Police personnel who went missing during operations are handled separately by the OMP as a distinct category.”
Katulanda also said that the number of complaints had changed significantly as the OMP worked through historical records and duplicate cases. He said that the figure had once stood at around 62,000 before being reduced to about 42,000 by around 2021 after the complaints received from different organisations and institutions were consolidated.
“When we examined and analysed all the duplicate complaints, we were able to bring the figure down to around 14,982 genuine cases. From those 14,982 cases, the number increased to 23,352. This increase was due to public confidence in the OMP and the willingness of victim families to file new complaints. However, I believe that there’re still more people in society who may come to us.”
Speaking further, he said that the OMP had personally met around 9,072 families so far to gather information on the circumstances surrounding the disappearances, including external and direct information, the families’ needs and expectations, the relief that they require and the circumstances that may have contributed to the disappearances.
He also said that the Government currently provides a one-off payment to families of missing persons, known as a “revival allowance”, but stressed that it is not compensation. He said that the current Government is also working through a committee on a mechanism that could provide a more substantive form of reparations for victims.
Katulanda said that the Government had recently provided more than Rs. 375 million through a Cabinet paper to cover expenses associated with meeting the families of missing persons. “We can see that this Government has a very high level of political commitment to this matter. We can see that they are continuously looking into it,” he said, and added that the OMP had also received approval to recruit 69 additional staff members, including lawyers, personnel required for tracing work, psychosocial workers and staff for management functions.
He said that the OMP expected to use the additional resources and capacity to work with more than 5,000 families before the end of this year (2026). The planned outreach will focus on families in Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, Mannar, Jaffna, Vavuniya and Batticaloa, he said.