Impunity Reigns in Sri Lanka, a new report released by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), examines the failure of successive Sri Lankan governments to service justice for the massacre of Tamil civilians in Kumarapuram which took place over 20 years ago.
The report details findings based on, “interviews with victim survivors from Kumarapuram and the lawyers who represented/assisted them; and interviews with a broad cross-section of human rights lawyers in Sri Lanka.”
In a press statement released on Monday, PEARL’s Human Rights Director, Dharsha Jegatheeswaran, said,
“While Sri Lanka continues to claim that it is capable of domestically prosecuting atrocity crimes without international involvement, the Kumaprapuram case is an illustrative example of the many problems that make it incapable of credibly prosecuting these crimes. These barriers are endemic to every stage of a domestic prosecution of atrocity crimes, particularly those committed by Sri Lankan state security forces against Tamil communities.”
The victim survivors’ anger at the outcome of the Kumarapuram massacre case is representative of the disenchantment justifiably and acutely shared by Tamils across the North-East in Sri Lanka, said PEARL’s press release.
The report was also launched at a side event at the 34th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.
See full press release here.
See full report here.
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