United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial killings, Professor Philip Alston, while presenting his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council recently, said that the situation in Sri Lanka has "gravely deteriorated since his visit at the end of 2005" and that "Political killings continue apace while the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as well as other military groups deny all responsibility and blame the other side".United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial killings, Professor Philip Alston, who had undertaken a mission to Sri Lanka at the end of last year, presented his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council. He stated that the situation in Sri Lanka has “gravely deteriorated since his visit at the end of 2005” and that “Political killings continue apace while the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as well as other military groups deny all responsibility and blame the other side”.
Prof. Alston went on to report that national accountability mechanisms are insufficient for achieving the necessary accountability and that the criminal justice system has utterly failed to provide accountability, and called for the establishment of a full-fledged international human rights monitoring mission that will conduct in-depth investigations throughout the country, report publicly on its findings, and report to a neutral body.
Concerns about the rising number of refugees fleeing to India, internally displaced persons and absence of basic necessities such as food, water and housing and health services, attacks and restrictions on humanitarian workers as well as attacks on places of worship and religious leaders were also raised during the first week of the council by states, independent UN experts and regional and international NGOs who were working with Sri Lankan NGOs present at the council and on the ground.
However, unfortunately, the Sri Lankan government delegation failed to respond positively to calls for international human rights monitoring and attempted to play down the crisis, despite the overwhelming concerns expressed. What was also disturbing was the lack of concern and support towards an appropriate intervention in Sri Lanka by the Human Rights Council, by Asian states such as Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Philippines.
In the context of rising killings, disappearances, displacement and inability of national protection systems, four Sri Lankan activists, including a FORUM-ASIA member from Sri Lanka and a member of the secretariat, supported by regional and international human rights groups, took the stories and cries of Sri Lankans to the UN’s premier human rights body.
Whether the Council will be able to respond decisively remains a question. Already, Sri Lankan civil society and UN experts have put up concrete proposals in the form of international human rights monitoring. The Council also has special mechanisms at its disposal such as Special Sessions that have already been called twice to address serious crisis in the Middle East. Inability or unwillingness of the Council to act on Sri Lanka will not only dash the hopes of thousands of Sri Lankans, it will also erode the council’s credibility within the first year of its inception, in the eyes of victims and human rights defenders, by brining back cries of selectivity and double standards that its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, was saddled with.
Meanwhile, it is good to note that Sri Lanka was placed high on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council during the first week of it’s second session as the gravity of the unfolding humanitarian and human rights crisis seems to have finally caught the attention of the international community.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights set the tone by devoting a significant portion of her opening address to highlight what she termed as “grave breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law” and the “urgent need for the international community to monitor the unfolding human rights situation” in Sri Lanka.
The fact that Sri Lanka was one of the three countries singled out by the UN’s human rights chief in her opening address, along with Sudan and Iraq, seemed to indicate that the crisis was finally being recognized by the international community.
Sunila Abeysekera, representing FORUM-ASIA and member organization INFORM, speaking as an NGO speaker during the opening session, concurred with the High Commissioner in her assessment of the situation in Sri Lanka and referred to the present situation in Sri Lanka as one that “stands next to Lebanon and Darfur as one of the most dangerous places in the world for civilians caught up in armed conflict”.
