ICRC deceives families of missing persons to register with OMP: Mariayasuresh Easwary

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 June 2019, 22:57 GMT]
The Head of Mullaiththeevu District Families of Persons subjected to enforced Disappearances Ms Mariyasuresh Easwary has condemned the ICRC for working behind the scene to lock the families into the agenda of the SL Office for Missing Persons (OMP), which her organisation has outrightly rejected. The ICRC, which handed over all the records it had over the missing persons to the SL State and abandoned the kith and kin of the missing persons, has entered the district after several years of silence. Now the ICRC wants the families to register their complaints with the OMP in exchange for 6,000 rupees of financial assistance per month.



Knowing very well that the families of the missing persons had collectively rejected the OMP as a credible mechanism, the ICRC was working behind the back of the collective organisation to deceive the women, she said in a press conference held in Mullaiththeevu on Thursday.

The ICRC was dead silent for ten years despite having clear evidence, as in her case, that the SL military was not giving any trace of hundreds of persons who were handed over to the SL military at the end of the war.

The families are struggling without livelihood assistance. The ICRC is going after the families individually to lock them into accepting the OMP, she said.

The families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances in the North and East are waging continuous protest for more than 800 days.

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