As the England cricket team commences its 2012 tour of Sri Lanka, the Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYO UK) and the undersigned UK university Tamil societies continue to call on the England and Wales Cricket Board to suspend all bilateral arrangements with Sri Lanka's national cricket team until there has been meaningful progress on ensuring accountability and justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We call for an immediate end to the on-going human rights violations being committed by the Sri Lankan Government and its security forces in the North-East of the island.
Almost three years after the end of the armed conflict, and a year since we first called for a boycott of Sri Lankan cricket - in line with wider trade sanctions, and economic isolation as a means to urging Sri Lanka to act - there has been no significant progress on human rights or accountability. Instead, the time and space afforded to Sri Lanka by the international community, in the name of development, reconciliation and international engagement, have led to an ever increasing and brazen disregard for human rights by the Sri Lankan state and fiercer attempts to prevent accountability and justice.
Instead of repealing emergency laws, scaling down the military, and working to protect and safeguard individual rights and freedoms, the Sri Lankan state has been emboldened by the international community’s continued sanctioning of impunity. It is pursuing an agenda of increased militarisation and colonisation of the Tamil areas, as well as widespread, and systematic human rights abuses. Reports published by international human rights organisations over the past year, have detailed evidence of on-going human rights violations against Tamil civilians in the North-East of the island, including abduction, illegal detention, torture, the torture of asylum seekers deported from the UK, extra-judicial killings, sexual violence, and the relentless clamp down on media freedom.
Sri Lanka’s on-going disregard for human rights is against a back drop of impunity. Three years post-conflict the credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, resulting in the deaths of at least 40,000 Tamil civilians as detailed within a UN Panel of Experts report, remain unaccounted for. The past year has seen nothing but the failure of Sri Lanka’s internal inquiry and continued indignant resistance towards an independent process.
