The United Nations Department of Peace Operations should "immediately suspend the deployment of Sri Lankan peacekeepers" over Sri Lanka's failure to investigate and prosecute international crimes and the promotion of "alleged war criminals to perform high-level state functions," Yasmin Sooka, Executive Director at the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) wrote for Just Security. "Sri Lanka has explicitly stated that it will not hold accountable its 'war heroes' amongst them Army Commander Shavendra Silva and Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratne, who have been named by UN High...
Writing in Just Security , Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, highlights the urgency for members of the Human Rights Council to exercise its power to “establish a mechanism that builds on prior U.N. efforts to investigate atrocity crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict and collects and preserves evidence to support international and foreign prosecutions”. In her statement she slams the proposed consensus resolution being put forward by the Sri Lankan government as a ploy to shield perpetrators from facing justice. “This proposal for a consensus...
Alan Keenan, senior consultant for the International Crisis Group, has called for the UN Human Rights Council must go beyond looking at issues of accountability to focus “on preventing a return to violence and be followed by a sustained international effort to persuade the Sri Lankan government to pull back from its dangerous trajectory”.
The daughter of murdered Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge said that “Rajapaksa’s election has closed every door to human rights and accountability in Sri Lanka” in a piece for the Washington Post this week, as she called for the international community to ensure “murderous autocrats pay a price”. “I hold Rajapaksa responsible,” wrote Ahimsa Wickrematunge.
Writing in Just Security, Dharsha Jegatheeswaran, Co-Director of the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, a human rights think-tank based in Jaffna, illustrates how the “Tamil families of the disappeared have shown, there is no hope for truth and justice domestically in Sri Lanka”. “The only way to provide these families their long-overdue answers and justice to all victims in Sri Lanka is to break the seal around the military through international accountability”, she maintains.
Writing in Just Security, former Senior Lecturer in Law at University of Jaffna, Dr Kumaravadivel Guruparan, highlights the failure of the international community to hold Sri Lanka’s war criminals to accounts and calls for “an honest debate on the inherent limits of the human rights system in preventing ongoing violations and dealing with historical atrocities”.
In light of previous futile domestic efforts to prosecute Sri Lankan war criminals, Andreas Schueller, Director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) highlights the failure to prosecute Sri Lanka's war criminals under universal jurisdiction and highlights the need for a UN investigative mechanism to pursue accountability for Sri Lankan war crimes. Germany's one-sided prosecution of war crimes Commenting on the track-record of international prosecutions, Schueller highlights Germany's as "highlight troubling"...
Writing in The Diplomat this week, Tamil Guardian features editor Thusiyan Nandakumar said the February coup in Myanmar “should serve as a wake-up call when it comes to Sri Lanka”. “As armored vehicles rolled through Myanmar’s capital early February, thousands of miles away, in another Asian state led by fervent Buddhist nationalists and under increasing militarization, a different army accused of genocide also marched troops through the streets,” writes Nandakumar. “Sri Lanka’s former defense secretary turned president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was overseeing an oversized military parade on the...
(Photo of Kilinochchi protest 20 February 2021) Writing in Just Security, Tasha Manoranjan, Executive Director of People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), highlights that a failure to address impunity in Sri Lanka has “very real consequences, even beyond the preservation of international rule of law”. “Its consequences are lived daily by Tamil survivors, who continue to live in a heavily militarised security state,” writes Manoranjan. In Mullaitivu, she notes, there is one soldier for every two civilians. She further remarks on the suffering of Families of the Disappeared stating: “...
Writing in the Hindu, Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asian Director at Human Rights Watch, calls upon India to fulfil its obligations and support a strong resolution at the next UN Human Rights Council session which aims to “reduce the growing risk of future atrocities” in Sri Lanka. In her piece, Ganguly highlights not only India’s commitments , to ensure that Tamils in Sri Lanka “live with equity, equality, justice, peace and dignity”, but also the worsening human rights situations in Sri Lanka. Ganguly notes the increasing abuses Tamils have faced in the North-East; the attacks on the rights of...