Relatives of Sri Lanka "disappeared" demand answers

COLOMBO, Aug 1 (Reuters) Hundreds of relatives of Sri Lankan civilians who have disappeared amid renewed civil war between the state and Tamil Tiger rebels called on President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government today to find them.

Rights groups say hundreds of people, many of them minority ethnic Tamils, have been reported abducted or disappeared this year and 1,000 more in 2006. Rebels, paramilitaries, elements of the security forces, and underworld gangs have all been blamed.

Under international pressure to investigate accusations of abuse by the military as it fights the separatist Tigers, Rajapaksa's administration says the numbers are overblown and many cases are fakes intended to discredit the government.

At a protest meeting of around 300 relatives of the missing, Kandiya Sathiavel, a 61-year-old retired labourer, said he was still hunting for his son a year after he disappeared from a largely Tamil neighbourhood in the capital, Colombo.

''He has a school bus. Someone called him for a hire, but he never turned up. They found the vehicle a day later nearby, but still my son hasn't turned up,'' he said, crying. ''I don't know who to blame. I just want my son.'' No ransom was sought.

A UN envoy has accused elements of the military of helping a renegade rebel faction called the Karuna group, which analysts say is allied to the government, to abduct children as fighters. UNICEF and other aid groups say both the Tigers and the Karuna continue to abduct children, particularly in the restive east.

Residents in the Tigers' northern stronghold have told Reuters their relatives are being forcibly recruited by the rebels, sometimes whisked away in the night to training camps to fight in a war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

HUNDREDS MISSING ''My father went missing and I'm asking from the government and the abductees to release him or tell us what happened to him,'' said 19-year-old Welnayagam Kokuladharshani, whose father disappeared in Colombo in May last year. She has since abandoned her studies to work to feed her mother, sister and brother.

Sri Lanka's Human Rights Commission received complaints of 186 cases of disappearances in May and June alone. Of those, 23 cases were blamed on the Karuna group and seven on the Tigers. The rest were marked as unknown.

In June, two Sri Lanka Red Cross workers were snatched by men who identified themselves as police in Colombo. Their bodies were found two days later. The authorities deny any involvement.

Police have made a series of arrests in recent weeks in connection with abductions and extortion. Among those arrested were a member of the air force and four policemen, but rights groups say the government is not doing enough.

''There are so many bogus cases,'' said government defence spokesman and Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion Keheliya Rambukwella. ''There are a few genuine cases also... We should get together and work for a solution.'' The Civil Monitoring Commission rights group, trying to solve 133 cases of disappearances of mainly ethnic Tamils, has called on the government to prove its claim that many of the reported missing have simply gone abroad or eloped with lovers.

''We are asking the government: What has happened to these people?'' said commission head Mano Ganeshan. ''The government has appointed several commissions to enquire about this, but nothing came of it. Still they are missing.'' Reuters RS DB2259