Untitled - International Commission of Jurists

injury so inflicted in the absence of any evidence to the contrary and therefore that
these cases also fell within the terms of the mandate.
Excluded and Borderline Cases
Cases were excluded from the Commission’s consideration on the basis of
geographical jurisdiction or territorial ouster where the complaint related to an
incident that had occurred in an area falling within the jurisdiction of one of the other
Commissions; time limitations (incidents occurring prior to 1 January 1988); or other
factors, including insufficient evidence, “disappearance” resulting from private
quarrels, cases of pure physical injury and cases of temporary involuntary removal
where allegations appeared merely speculative. 299
A more difficult mandate issue concerned cases involving suicide resulting from
political threats, observed by the Commission as ‘a novel problem for
consideration.’ 300 Many persons had been subjected to threats, directly through
warning letters and notices as well as indirectly through anonymous calls or warnings
notes, by subversives as well as paramilitary groups, sometimes allegedly instigated
by political opponents). They had thereafter committed suicide allegedly in an ill state
of mental health.
Strictly reading the mandate, the Commissioners acknowledged that there was no
involuntary removal or “disappearance” in the literal sense in these cases. However,
the question was as to whether, instead of a physical injury followed by death or an
involuntary removal, "the threats" which had led to the state of neurotic depression
followed by death, the proximate cause being the act of the victim, could be regarded
as a case falling within the meaning of "involuntary removal or disappearance". 301
On a liberal interpretation of its warrant amounting to a de facto extension of the
mandate and reasoning that, "true nervous shock is as much a physical injury as a
broken bone or torn flesh wound", 302 the Commission accommodated such cases for
inquiry. The view that the felonious act of the victim himself in taking his own life
would not break the chain of causation between the state of neurotic depression he
was said to have been subjected to as a result of threats and his death.
The categorization by the 1994 Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa
Disappearances Commission, though not exhaustively reasoned in quite the same
way, was reflected in the Reports of the other Commissions as well.
299 ibid.
300 ibid.
301 ibid.
302 Eldredge, Modern Tort Problems, p. 76, as quoted in the Final report of the 1994 Western, Southern
and Sabaragamuwa Disappearances Commission, Sessional Paper No V, 1997, at p. 11. Though this
principle was asserted, in the one such case that was examined by the Commission, it was found that
the absence of adequate medical evidence in regard to the claim that "the corpus had committed suicide
in a state of neurotic depression forced by JVP threats" was not sufficient for the Commission to come
to a positive finding on the said claim.
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