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Throwing down the gauntlet ahead of a key UN Human Rights Council session next month, Tamil political parties represented in Parliament have joined forces to urge ‘decisive action’ by the human rights body, including the acknowledgement that all hope had ended for a domestic process to investigate and prosecute rights abuses during the armed conflict in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s pursuit of justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of the brutal Civil War will be under scrutiny when the 46th session of the UNHRC kicks off in Geneva on 22 February.
In a joint letter to the heads of mission of all 47 UNHRC Member States, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) and the Tamil Makkal Tesiya Kootani are calling on the Council to declare in a final Resolution that Sri Lanka had failed in its obligations to investigate allegations for violations committed during the armed ethnic conflict and atrocity crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
The main Tamil parties representing the people of the North and East, who bore the brunt of the violence during 26 years of conflict in the island, are calling on UNHRC Member States to urge that alleged war-time atrocities in Sri Lanka are taken up by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in a new resolution on Sri Lanka during the upcoming UNHRC session.
The Tamil parties also called for the establishment of an evidence-gathering mechanism similar to the International, Independent, Impartial Mechanism set up for Syria, as a subsidiary body of the UNGA with a “strict timeframe of 12 months duration”.
“Leaders across the political spectrum in Sri Lanka, including from both the major political parties, have categorically and without exception stated that they will protect the Sri Lankan armed forces from prosecutions,” the Tamil parties noted in its letter to the UNHRC Member States.
“It is now time for the Member States to acknowledge that there is no scope for a domestic process that can genuinely deal with accountability in Sri Lanka,” the joint letter urged. The Tamil parties said the Member States should reach this categorical conclusion by way of a ‘Final Resolution’ when the Council meets to evaluate the Government’s commitments under the previous UNHRC resolution.
The letter also referred to continuing and intensifying oppression against the Tamil people, including militarisation, indefinite detention of political prisoners, land grab in the name of archaeological explorations, intensifying surveillance of political and civil society activists and the denial of the right to memory. It also made a reference to the denial of burial rights to Muslims in Sri Lanka during the coronavirus pandemic, to highlight the deteriorating situation in the island.
The Tamil parties are also urging Member States to mandate that the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) continues to monitor Sri Lanka for ongoing violations and maintain a field presence in the island.
Several civil society organisations based in the North and East have also joined as signatories to the missive.
The joint call to action by the Human Rights Council is significant because the three Tamil parties, led by former Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan, Parliamentarian Gajen Ponnambalam and former Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, have major political differences on multiple issues facing the people of the war-torn districts.
The collaboration highlights the importance of the forthcoming UNHRC session in Geneva and the almost total reversal of justice and reconciliation processes on the ground in Sri Lanka over the past year, with victims losing all hope of achieving justice for violent crimes in the country, human rights activists said.
