Tamils in Paris, France, held an open air exhibition to highlight Sri Lanka's legacy of enforced disappearances.
The exhibition, organised by the Tamil Youth Organisation- France and the Tamil Coordinating Committee in France, was held yesterday to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
The portraits of 400 Tamil victims of enforced disappearances were displayed at the Trocadéro in Paris, which only captures a fraction of the number of Tamil people were disappeared by Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has the second highest number of enforced disappearances in the world. Over 100,000 people, mostly Tamils, have been forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan state.
The exhibition also drew attention to the plight of the Tamil families of the disappeared who have been protesting since 2017, to know the fate of their forcibly disappeared relatives.
Geneviève Garrigos, a City Councillor, was also present at the exhibition and expressed her support to the Tamil community in their pursuit for justice.
"This tribute carried a particular resonance as it was precisely at this same location in 2009 that the Tamil community launched a hunger strike and several days of demonstrations to alert the international community and call for an end to the genocide taking place in Sri Lanka," S. Nidhusha of TCC France told Tamil Guardian.
Demonstrations were held by Tamil families of the disappeared in Jaffna and Batticaloa yesterday to demand an international investigation in to the Tamil genocide, the fate of those forcibly disappeared and the Chemmani mass graves.
