The UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Subinay Nandy, said the global body would provide technical assistance and contributions to advance reconciliation and find a sustainable solution to the longstanding ethnic grievances, reports ColomboPage . Mr Nandy met with President Maithripala Sirisena on Tuesday, ahead of the release of a United Nations investigation into violations of international humanitarian law committed during the final stages of the armed conflict. The report, released earlier today , found a pattern of violations that suggest that crimes against humanity and war crimes...
A congressional caucus event on the Path Forward for Accountability, Peace and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka, was held by the Senate Human Rights Caucus on Tuesday. Panellists discussed issues relating to the need to demilitarise the North-East of Sri Lanka, further trust building initiatives between the victim community and the need for genuine accountability to deal with mass atrocities in Sri Lanka. The director of the No Fire Zone documentary, Callum Macrae, stressed that victims had no confidence in a domestic process and warned that “what Sri Lanka says to the rest of the world is very...
Freedom From Torture called on the UN Human Rights Council to follow through on a United Nations report into violations of international humanitarian law committed on the island that was released earlier today and ensure that a justice process has “strong international participation”. The UK based charity’s Director of Advocacy and Policy Sonya Sceats said : "Today the UN human rights chief has rightly concluded that Sri Lanka's domestic courts are ill-equipped to prosecute the heinous international crimes exposed by the UN investigation.” "The ball is now firmly in the court of the Human...
The Geneva director for Human Rights Watch John Fisher called on the international community to respond robustly to the Human Rights High Commissioner's recommendations to Sri Lanka and incorporate them into a resolution that is adopted by this session of the UN Human Rights Council. See full statement below. The High Commissioner's report marks a significant step towards justice and accountability for the victims of international crimes and the family members of Sri Lanka’s dead and disappeared. The international investigative team has extensively documented alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, executions and enforced disappearances.
Strong UNHRC resolutions calling for international investigation mechanisms and action to alleviate oppression in the North-East will be vital to fulfil the needs of war victims, the Chief Minister of the Northern Province has said. Speaking at the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) committee meeting on Friday, the Chief Minister, C V Wigneswaran said: “The resolutions should serve to address truth and to provide justice for the affected people. As such an international mechanism to investigate and to take action was predominantly embedded in the NPC election manifesto.” “Hence why we are...
The UK based rights group, Together Against Genocide (TAG), said it "unreservedly welcomed" the report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) , and called on the UN Human Rights Council to "take concrete steps and a concrete timeline to deliver successful prosecutions and thus an end to impunity in Sri Lanka." See full statement here . Reproduced in full below: Together Against Genocide (TAG) unreservedly welcomes the report of the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka. We urge the government of Sri Lanka to accept in whole the recommendations of the report. This is a hopeful first step on the long road to justice. Each of the lives lost remains precious to us and we continue to hope to see them fully accounted for and their families granted Justice.
The nature of the crimes in the report have been lifted from ordinary to international due to the evidence of organisational planning, reports, said the UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Hussein in an interview with Channel 4 News. When asked whether the crimes amounted to genocide, Mr Hussein said, “We haven’t come to that assessment. We believe that we can only say that the patterns we have examined are suggestive of war crimes and crimes against humanity. That is not to say that a court at a subsequent stage will not come to that finding. You yourself have noted that we didn’t have full...
A new infographic created by the advocacy organisation Sri Lanka Campaign highlights that as many as 147,000 people could be unaccounted for after the end of the armed stage of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. Noting that “a wider pattern of mass violence in Sri Lanka” had resulted in the death of thousands on the island “but particularly Tamils over many decades,” a briefing report by the Sri Lanka campaign provides new infographics and insight on Sri Lanka for the UN Human Rights Council's 30th session. In a briefing outlining the organisation’s stance on the UN report into Sri Lanka’s mass atrocities, (OISL), Sri Lanka Campaign, said, “There is now no doubt that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by both sides of Sri Lana’s civil war, and that many of the tens of thousands of civilians who died in the early months of 2009 were murdered by their own government. The single most positive step the new government of Sri Lanka could make is accept this basic truth.” “With tens of thousands dead or unaccounted for, 2009 saw the worst violence Sri Lanka has ever seen, and most of the victims were Tamil. Sadly, this tragedy is part of a wider pattern of mass violence in Sri Lanka which has resulted in deaths of tens of thousands of people from all ethnicities, but particularly Tamils over many decades.”
In his report to the Human Rights Council today, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence, Pablo de Greiff, called on Sri Lanka to take immediate action necessary to achieve sustainable peace. Mr de Greiff called on Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive transitional justice strategy that included in-depth reform of the justice and security systems, the establishment of independent truth-seeking mechanisms and the design of a comprehensive reparation scheme, among other things; and, in parallel, to take immediate action on the fate of the disappeared, land issues, arbitrary detentions, surveillance and harassment, particularly of women in the North-East, and psycho-social support for victims. He added that these steps needed to be taken “in relation to ensuring criminal accountability". Addressing Sri Lanka’s past history of failed commissions he highlighted the failure of past commissions of inquiry and the resulting erosion of trust of victims and society.
The walk to raise awareness for Tamil demands for an international accountability mechanism concluded on Monday, when it reached its destination in Jaffna. The last leg of the walk, from Kaithady to Nallur, in Jaffna, saw participants stop at the site of the Chemmani mass grave, where candles were lit in memory of the Tamils who were buried there.