PM misquoted on OMP – Tittawella

The Office of the Missing Persons Act (OMP) will be retrospective, said Secretary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms (SCRM) Mano Tittawella, contrary to media reports which indicated otherwise.

He reiterated that the media reports pertaining to the Prime Minister had been misquoted to indicate that the OMP will not be retrospective and that it will only come into effect after it is signed.
The Prime Minister was referring to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, ratified by Sri Lanka, will only be effective for the future, and not for the past.

Tittawella noted, “OMP has already been passed. The statement by the Prime Minister has been wrongly quoted. The Prime Minister was referring to enforced disappearances. OMP is about missing people it has got nothing to do with the Enforced Disappearances.
What the Prime Minister would have been referring to would the Bill on Enforced Disappearances, which was supposed to be taken later this month in Parliament. However, I think it has been postponed.”