Sri Lanka: UN experts submit report

Sri Lanka: UN experts submit report

(New York, April 12, 2011) – The report by a panel of experts to
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on April 12, 2011, about
laws-of-war violations in Sri Lanka should be used to pave the way for
justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Ban commissioned the report in
May 2010 after the Sri Lankan government failed to investigate
violations committed in the final months of its decades-long conflict
with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Ban's office said today that he will make the report public after he
shares it with the Sri Lankan government.

"Secretary-General Ban's creation of a panel of experts and his
decision to make the report public show that the UN has not forgotten
Sri Lanka's war victims," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human
Rights Watch. "In the face of two years of stonewalling by the
government, the public release of this report will help move justice
forward in Sri Lanka."

Serious abuses by both government and LTTE forces, which may have
amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, escalated in the
last five months of the war, during which tens of thousands of
civilians were killed and injured. On May 23, 2009, shortly after the
end of the war, President Mahinda Rajapaksa endorsed a statement
promising Ban that the government would investigate alleged
laws-of-war violations.

Almost two years later, however, the government has taken no steps to
hold anyone on either side of the conflict accountable for serious
violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Two ad hoc bodies established by the government
after the conflict have failed to lead to any criminal investigations,
let alone prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

The government opposed Ban's appointment of the panel, calling it an
"unwarranted and unnecessary interference with a sovereign nation."
Shortly after the panel was appointed, a government minister staged a
disruptive demonstration outside the UN headquarters in Sri Lanka's
capital, Colombo, which eventually led the UN to recall its resident
coordinator temporarily and to close one of its offices. The
government has refused to cooperate with the panel or to allow its
members to visit Sri Lanka on acceptable conditions, contending that
its own domestic mechanisms are capable of ensuring accountability.

However, a committee of experts created by the Sri Lankan government
in November 2009 in response to a United States State Department
report on wartime abuses never finished its work or published any
report.

A second body, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, was
only empowered to hold hearings – not to conduct serious
investigations. It had no program to protect victims or witnesses who
testified before it, and it demonstrated a strong government bias in
the conduct of its hearings. Its interim recommendations in September
2010 did not contain a single recommendation related to justice or
accountability. It is slated to submit its report to the government in
May, but there is no requirement to make the report public, either in
full or in part. The government has not released the report of a
previous commission set up by Rajapaksa, the 2006 Presidential
Commission of Inquiry.

"The government has opposed the panel of experts from the beginning
and has done nothing to suggest its position has changed," Adams said.
"UN members that care about justice for grave crimes should now make
sure that they show all possible support for Ban's efforts."

Sri Lankan officials continue to insist, despite mounting evidence to
the contrary, that the Sri Lankan armed forces committed no violations
during the conflict's final months. In response to the release of the
latest US annual human rights report on April 8, which among other
allegations said that extrajudicial killings and enforced
disappearances continued to be a problem in Sri Lanka, a military
spokesman said that "all these allegations are baseless." Referring to
the last months of the war, he continued, "The humanitarian operation
was carried out under the law of war and we know that there have been
no such acts committed by the armed forces."

On April 7, however, Human Rights Watch released new information
about enforced disappearance by the Sri Lanka military during the
final days of the war, including video footage of government soldiers
interrogating one of the LTTE officers, who later "disappeared." A
military spokesman said that all those taken into custody have been
accounted for and their relatives notified. But several women have
testified before the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and
filed complaints with the police claiming that the military detained
their husbands and that their wives have had no news about them since.

"The lack of a single known criminal investigation of any of the
numerous serious war crimes allegations in two years speaks for
itself," Adams said. "The government has demonstrated that
accountability and justice in Sri Lanka will only come about through
international action."

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on violations of the laws of
war in Sri Lanka, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/en/asia/sri-lanka

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional
non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia,
documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional
reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The
Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

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