A senior former military official has dismissed war crimes accusations against former army commander Jagath Jayasuriya, who fled Brazil on Sunday after lawsuits were filed against him.

Rtd Major General Kamal Gunaratna, former commander of the 53rd Division which is also thought to have committed mass atrocities during the armed conflict, said the Tamil diaspora orchestrated the charges.

The Acting Assistant Secretary of State of the US, Alice Wells and the US ambassador to Sri Lanka remembered the tens of thousands of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka at an event in Colombo on Tuesday, held to mark International Day of the Disappeared. 

"Today on Int. Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances we honor #DisappearedSL families searching for answers in SL w @State_SCA A/AS Wells," Mr Keshap tweeted. 

The British Tamils Forum and the US Tamil Political Action Council marked  International Day of the Disappeared on Tuesday and called on Sri Lanka to operationalise the Office of Missing Persons. 

"Tens of thousands of Tamils have been disappeared in Sri Lanka, primarily at the hands of the state’s security forces and allied paramilitaries.  According to Amnesty International, Sri Lanka has a backlog of 60,000 to 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance from all communities since the late 1980s, approximately 20,000 of which are Sinhalese according to Presidential Commissions and the rest are Tamils," the two groups noted in a joint statement. 

Amid military intelligence surveillance, Tamil families of the disappeared marched across the North-East to mark the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance. Demonstrations took place across Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Mannar, Mullaithivu, Vavuniya and Jaffna.

A delegation of the US military "saluted Sri Lanka’s war heroes" during a ceremony at Sri Lanka’s National War Heroes monument "for the first time in recent history", according to the army.lk website. 

A former Sri Lankan general who fled from his post as ambassador to Brazil this week should be referred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague said the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils Paul Scully.

Speaking on the case of Major General Jagath Jaysuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Brazil who fled from South America following a law suit filed against him by human rights organisations, Mr Scully said, “it is not enough to hide behind diplomatic immunity or run away at the first sign of legal challenge”.

Officials from the Sri Lankan military have denied war crimes charges against a former military commander who was appointed as the government’s ambassador to Brazil and fled from South America earlier this week.

Speaking after General Jagath Jayasuriya arrived back in Colombo, Sri Lanka's military spokesman Roshan Seneviratne denied all reports of war crimes.

"These allegations keep coming up from time to time, but there is no truth in them," said Mr Seneviratne.

Updated 1300 GMT 

Sri Lanka's ambassador to Brazil has fled the country after human rights groups filed lawsuits accusing him of overseeing war crimes on Monday night.

Jagath Jayasuriya has now returned to Colombo via Dubai after fleeing Brazil on Sunday.   

A former military general, Jagath Jayasuriya stands accused of overseeing Sri Lankan units that bombed hospitals, as well as the execution and torture of surrendees and disappeared civilians amongst a litany of human rights abuses against Tamil civilians and militants during the final phase of the island's armed conflict in May 2009.

There can be no further delay in bringing a solution for families of the disappeared, Tamil civil society groups have said in a statement of solidarity on International Day of the Disappeared.

With hundreds of families of the disappeared protesting across the North-East since February, the Sri Lankan government has failed to answer any of the their demands to uncover the fates of their disappeared loved ones, the groups said.

Sri Lanka's prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe pledged the country would be debt free of the debt burden by 2020, Colombo Page reported. 

Speaking at an event by the Ministry of Housing, Mr Wickremesinghe said, "the government's intention in the next two years is to create an economy with the debt burden is stabilised and increasing income enabling to repay the debt in the future."

"What we have done during the past two years is taking the country out of the debt trap," he added.