Tamil civil society activists have written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressing their concerns that Sri Lanka will use an upcoming visit from Pillay’s team to propagate a manufactured view of progress in post-war efforts on the island, reported TamilNet on Saturday.
Extracts reproduced below:
“While we welcome the visit of the team, we are concerned that the team might not be given the access that would enable an independent assessment of the Government of Sri Lanka’s performance of its obligations under Resolution A/HRC/19/2.
“To avoid giving the GOSL the opportunity of appropriating the UN OHCHR team’s visit for their propaganda purposes we consider it important that your office seeks guarantees from the GOSL that the mission will have sufficient freedom in being able to devise their own agenda... particularly during their visits to the North and East parts of the country.
“We also believe that your office should ... make public any restrictions that the GOSL may have imposed on the UN OHCHR mission.
“As people on the ground we are afraid that nothing concrete has materialised in terms of real change for the war affected Tamil people in the North and East of Sri Lanka since the passing of the March 2012 Resolution. The purpose and objective of the resolution still remains a distant dream and the trajectory of the GOSL does not indicate by any means that the situation will improve.
“We are afraid that the November 2012 Universal Periodic Review on Sri Lanka and the March 2013 review of the Resolution will result in the endorsement of the GOSL’s National Action plan on implementing the recommendations of the LLRC thus giving more time to the GOSL to continue and complete its agenda of Sinhalisation of the North and East.
“If the mission is given adequate access to assess for themselves the situation in the North and East we have no doubt that they will arrive at the same conclusion that we have described above."
