HRW: 40,000 Reasons Why Sri Lanka Is No Model for Nigeria

by admin
Jun 15, 2014
‘It’s hard to imagine a worse idea,’ said Human Rights Watch Media Director Andre Strehlein, commenting on Nigeria’s announcement to use the ‘Sri Lanka model’ to tackle issues faced with militants in Nigeria.        

Extracts from his opinion piece reproduced below.         
But, before opting for “the Sri-Lankan method” to deal with an insurgency, Nigeria would do well to examine what that actually means.

Sri Lanka's war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), particularly in its final stages in 2009, caused tremendous and unnecessary human suffering.

The military repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled the area, including a government-declared "no-fire zone" and hospitals trying to care for the sick and wounded.

In the last months of the conflict, as many as 40,000 civilians died, according to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts report. And since the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, serious abuses against ethnic Tamils by the military, including systematic rape of suspected LTTE supporters, have continued to the present.

Those responsible for the numerous wartime abuses on both sides have yet to be investigated, let alone brought to justice. For years, Sri Lanka tried to block an international inquiry into alleged war crimes, but in March 2014 the UN Human Rights Council endorsed an investigation into Sri Lanka’s wartime atrocities.

Is this really the model Nigeria wants to follow?

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button