The Sri Lanka Core Group has raised concern over the continued use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and reports of harassment of human rights defenders, in a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, while again stopping short of the international accountability that Tamils have long demanded.
The statement was delivered on 16 June, during the Council's 62nd session, by the United Kingdom's Human Rights Ambassador, Eleanor Sanders, on behalf of the Core Group, which comprises Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, North Macedonia and the United Kingdom. Sanders thanked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for its continued work on Sri Lanka, in remarks on the High Commissioner's annual report.
The group acknowledged what it called government efforts to enable communities to commemorate "peacefully, and without disruption, the loss of life at the end of the armed conflict in 2009", a reference to the Mullivaikkal genocide, in which tens of thousands of Tamils were killed by Sri Lankan forces. While noting "some progress in long-standing human rights cases", it said reports of intimidation of witnesses and family members persisted, and that meaningful progress was "essential to address impunity and restore public confidence". It urged reforms to the criminal justice system to expedite prosecutions in other emblematic cases.
On mass graves, the group said it acknowledged "developments in certain mass grave investigations", and urged that "excavations meet international standards and much greater progress addressing enforced disappearances", adding that a "credible, inclusive reconciliation process supported by affected communities remains vital". The intervention came as court-supervised excavations at the Chemmani mass grave in Jaffna have uncovered more than 360 sets of skeletal remains, many of them children and infants, at a site long tied to the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing of Tamils by the military. Families of the disappeared have repeatedly called for international monitoring of the excavations, citing the failure of Sri Lanka's domestic investigative processes.
The group described continuing reports of harassment of human rights defenders, "especially women defenders", as "troubling".
It also voiced concern over the continued use of the PTA and urged the government to introduce legislation consistent with its international human rights obligations. The Act remains in force despite years of pledges to repeal it, and continues to be wielded against Tamils, most recently in the arrest of the rapper Sangeethsan Ganeskumar, known as Hiphop Sangee, over a performance at a temple festival in Chavakachcheri.
The group said it stood "ready to support Sri Lanka in advancing reforms, in line with its international commitments". The statement made no mention of an international accountability mechanism, which Tamil groups and the families of the disappeared continue to demand, citing the repeated failure of the island's domestic processes to deliver justice in the seventeen years since the war's end.