Human Rights Watch says UN Rights Council should extend crucial mandate on SL

• Opines international monitoring, investigations critical amid ongoing violations, impunity

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that the United Nations Human Rights Council should adopt a resolution on Sri Lanka to enable continued UN monitoring, reporting, and evidence collection of rights violations for future prosecutions.

It said President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected on September 21, 2024, should reverse the policies of his predecessors by cooperating with the UN’s investigation mechanism, ending the use of repressive laws to stifle dissent, and preventing security forces from targeting activists, survivors of abuses, and victims’ families with threats and reprisals.

In his latest report the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, found that “ill-treatment by police and security forces remain prevalent.” He stated that, “long overdue reforms … have not occurred,” and “there are renewed threats to fundamental freedoms.” He described “entrenched impunity” for past crimes and found that “impunity has also manifested itself in the corruption, abuse of power, and governance failures that were among the root causes of the country’s recent economic crisis.”

 “Successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to hold accountable officials implicated in horrific abuses, particularly against Tamils and Muslims, and President Dissanayake, who has pledged to end rights violations, can alter that history by ensuring justice and protecting victims and activists,” said Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly. “The Human Rights Council resolutions are a crucial means of maintaining scrutiny on rights violations in Sri Lanka, offering some hope for justice, and a lifeline for victims who are otherwise at the mercy of abusive authorities.”

Numerous domestic and international investigation commissions, as well as United Nations human rights experts, have made recommendations for reform, which successive Sri Lankan administrations have disregarded. This includes addressing grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes committed by both government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the 1983-2009 civil war, as well as during a security forces crackdown on an insurrection in 1987-1989 by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the party Dissanayake now leads.

The UN high commissioner noted in his report that the government has “rarely even acknowledged the serious violations that occurred.” Several mass graves have been accidentally discovered, but not properly investigated. Victims face “insurmountable” barriers to justice, “even in the most emblematic of cases,” and government authorities frequently disrupt events at which families attempt to commemorate victims.

The UN found that earlier government commissions of inquiry “failed credibly to establish truth and advance accountability.” When the previous government brought a new proposal for a similar commission, victims’ groups broadly rejected it. The then Foreign Minister, Ali Sabry, told members of parliament on 3 September that the purpose of the commission was to “prevent foreign interference.”

Sri Lanka asserted in a statement to the Human Rights Council on 9 September that it has a “constructive engagement” with UN human rights mechanisms, despite rejecting the UN human rights office’s accountability project and having 10 outstanding visit requests from UN special procedures. Despite evidence to the contrary, the previous government claimed, among other things, that it was investigating cases of enforced disappearance and providing compensation to victims’ families.

Repressive laws

The Dissanayake government should review the Online Safety Act, adopted in January, which contains broad powers to restrict freedom of expression, and reject proposed legislation curtailing nongovernment organisations that would severely affect groups already suffering “surveillance, intimidation, and harassment,” according to the UN report.

At the Human Rights Council in 2022, Sri Lanka’s then-foreign minister announced a moratorium on the use of the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). But since then, the previous government used the law dozens of times against perceived critics, especially Tamils. The chilling effect of the law is such that in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” in Sri Lanka restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption. Dissanayake has pledged to repeal the PTA.

Numerous human rights defenders in the Northern and Eastern Provinces have told Human Rights Watch that members of police and intelligence agencies routinely threaten them that they will be accused of terrorism because of their work. “If we talk of Tamil rights, they use the PTA to silence us, saying we are working to reorganise the LTTE,” said an activist in the Northern Province.

Religious minorities

Sri Lankan authorities are conducting a campaign to deny Hindus and other religious minorities access to places of worship and other property in the north and east, and to redesignate locations as Buddhist sites, for the country’s majority religion. A pattern has emerged in which agencies including the Department of Archaeology, the Forest Department, the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the military, and police, along with nationalist Buddhist clergy, have damaged or removed Hindu idols, threatened, attacked, or arrested worshipers, and sought to deny them access to temples and other property. 

At the Veddukkunaari temple in Vavuniya district on 8 March, police and soldiers obstructed and assaulted Hindu worshippers despite a court order allowing them to celebrate the festival of Shivaratri. Eight were arrested and allegedly beaten in custody before a magistrate released them without charge on 19 March. “These types of incidents are causing conflict between the communities,” said a Hindu man who was among those arrested.

Families of the disappeared

Sri Lanka has one of the world’s highest rates of enforced disappearances, including those who disappeared during the JVP insurgency and the civil war between the Government and LTTE. The authorities have for decades refused to reveal the fate of the disappeared or to prosecute those responsible.

In his report to the Human Rights Council, the UN high commissioner described “reprisals against family members of the disappeared engaging with the UN or international actors, including members of the diplomatic community.”

Several relatives of the disappeared recently told Human Rights Watch that the most frightening threats were directed at their other children, including false drug cases. “We can’t raise our voices, we have no freedom to move,” said a woman in the Northern Province, whose husband has not been seen since his arrest in 2008. “They [security agencies] threaten us, and even take action against our family members. We have no freedom to do anything.”

The Human Rights Council should renew for two years the UN mandate for monitoring and reporting, and work on accountability for human rights violations and related crimes in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said.

 “Successive Sri Lankan governments have repeatedly broken their human rights commitments, while targeting victims, their families, and human rights defenders with threats and further violations,” Ganguly said. “The UN Human Rights Council resolution is a vital means to maintain international attention on this dire situation and uphold the principle that those responsible for grave international crimes may one day face justice.”