COLOMBO - Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has acknowledged for the first time that more than 23,500 people missing for a decade since the end of the country's protracted Tamil war are dead.
"President Rajapaksa outlined his plans to address the issue of missing persons," said a statement on the president's meeting with UN resident coordinator Hanaa Singer."He explained that these missing persons are actually dead."The statement said most of the missing civilians had been conscripted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which was crushed in a major offensive that ended in May 2009.
Under current law, families cannot access property deeds, bank accounts or inheritances left by missing relatives unless they can conclusively prove they are dead - an often impossible task. International rights groups claim at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the final stages of the separatist war, but the government has disputed the figures.
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