Human Rights Watch says no progress in prosecuting aid worker massacre

Rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) hit out at Sri Lankan authorities for failing to bring to justice those responsible for the execution-style killing of 17 aid workers 13 years ago.

On 4 August 2006, alleged Sri Lankan security forces murdered local staff members from the Paris-based Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger, ACF) at their compound in the town of Muttur, Trincomalee.

“Thirteen years have not brought the Sri Lankan police any closer to bringing to justice those responsible for the summary execution of 17 aid workers,” said HRW Legal and Policy Director James Ross said in a statement.

 “The ACF case shows the need for the Government to seek international judicial assistance to prosecute these and other killings.”

The killings of the ACF workers – 16 ethnic Tamils, including four women, and a Muslim – occurred after several days of fighting between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for control of Muttur. The ACF team had been providing assistance to survivors of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. 

While the Government of President Maithripala Sirisena had addressed some important human rights problems in the country, the key commitments made to the Human Rights Council in its October 2015 resolution remain unfulfilled, the HRW statement said.

The Government had made no discernible progress on its commitment to a judicial mechanism for investigating war crimes and other serious rights abuses by both government forces and the LTTE.

The October 2015 resolution specifically calls for the participation of foreign judges, prosecutors, investigators, and defence lawyers, which is crucial to ensure that legal proceedings are protected from local pressures and have the independence that a purely domestic process would lack.