Lanka disappearances panel to return to former LTTE stronghold

A Sri Lankan government-appointed panel probing the disappearances of people during the nearly three-decade war with the LTTE will hold a second public hearing in the former rebel-stronghold of Kilinochchi next month.
SD Gunadasa, an official of the commission, said the panel's hearing in Kilinochchi would take place from September 18 to 22. The first hearing in the area was held in January.
The official said the new complaints received from Kilinochchi will be probed and public statements will be recorded during the four days of hearings.
So far the commission, set up by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in August 2013 and mandated to probe the all disappearances of individuals between 1990 and May 2009, has received over 16,000 complaints from the families of persons reported missing, and 5,000 complaints from the families of the government troops.

This would be the first public hearing of the panel, headed by Retired Judge Maxwell Paranagama, after an international experts' panel was attached to it by Rajapaksa.
The Sri Lankan President last week named Indian rights activist Avdhash Kaushal and Pakistan lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi to the earlier three-member panel of foreign advisers.

The other three members of the experts' panel are British lawyer of Sri Lankan-origin, Desmond de Silva, and Geoffrey Nice, and US law professor David Crane, all former UN war-crimes prosecutors.
Sri Lanka came under international pressure to for the panel after UN Human Rights Council adopted three successive resolutions since 2012 over alleged rights abused by its forces during the final phase of the military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which ended in 2009.

Sri Lanka continues with its policy of non-cooperation with the UNHRC investigation.