Families of missing Tamils in Vanni turn their protest against EPDP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 17:41 GMT]
The families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military in the genocidal war up to 2009 have turned the focus of their protest against SL Minister Douglas Devananda, who has been a close ally of the Rajapaksa regime. Mr Devananda's EPDP was a former Tamil paramilitary group, operated by the occupying Sinhala military. The families have been irked by the attempts by Devananda to dilute their continues protests that have passed one thousand days this month.

The families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances staged big demonstrations in Ki'linochchi and Vavuniyaa on Monday.

The protesters condemned SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who has been denying to accept that there were missing persons in the secret detentions of the SL military.

The former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was instrumental in escalating the so-called white-van abductions and secret detention of former LTTE members.

When the occupying SL military announced ‘amnesty’ for ex-LTTE members if the families chose to hand them over, many parents and families opted to do so in the hope of reuniting with them after a period of imprisonment and so-called rehabilitation by the SL military.

However, hundreds of former LTTE members handed over to the SL military by the families at the presence of their loved ones never returned, and their whereabouts never revealed.

The Rajapaksa regime has deployed various threats against those who had worked with prosecuting some of the exposed cases involving the Sinhalese.

Mr Devananda's EPDP was also responsible for ‘whitevanning’ and several abductions in Jaffna during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa in the past.



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