Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international rights watchdog, has called for a UN human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka in the wake of the Sri Lankan government quitting the 2002 ceasefire agreement with the Tamil Tigers.
The New York-based group said Thursday new monitors were needed to replace the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), hitherto tasked with supervising the truce and which is pulling out due to the abrogation of the ceasefire.
"The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was deeply flawed, but its monitors helped to minimize abuses against civilians," said HRW's deputy Asia director Elaine Pearson in a statement.
"Now the need for a UN monitoring mission is greater than ever," she said.
"Civilians caught up in the fighting will have a harder time finding safety once the monitors have withdrawn."
Writing in a Sri Lankan newspaper this week, James Ross, Legal and Policy Director of HRW, said the Sri Lanka government has failed to "seriously investigate and prosecute those responsible for the horrific abuses of the past two years – the unlawful killings, the “disappearances,” the Army-backed paramilitary Karuna group’s abduction of children.
“The cover-up is the government’s determined effort to keep the issue off the international agenda,” he said. “The cover-up machinery has been in high gear.”
“Cover-ups work only so long as they can be kept secret, but Colombo’s tactics are hard to hide. … Either the Sri Lankan government can unilaterally address the problem – which it has thus far failed to do – or it can genuinely work with the United Nations to do so.”
“The Sri Lankan government understandably does not want to see itself lumped together with international pariah states such as Sudan and Burma, both of which were subjects of UN resolutions. So it is all the more disconcerting to see Colombo respond in the same obstructionist manner as these countries instead of adopting a constructive approach.”
“More than a year ago, Sri Lanka talked the major donor states into believing that the Presidential Commission of Inquiry would bring about tough-minded investigations and prosecutions of the worst cases of the past two years. … Now, not only are the international “eminent persons” on the verge of giving up on this commission, but initial supporters like the United States and the European Union are expressing serious doubts.”
Last month, HRW said its current focus is on the "shocking" disappearances and killing in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lanka Government has done "shamefully little" to investigate the cases.
HRW officials said the democratic institutions that would otherwise be capable of highlighting human right abuses, infringements to freedom of speech, and erosion in independence of judiciary in Sri Lanka, have collapsed under an ineffective Parliament.
Fred Abrahams, HRW’s Senior Researcher for Emergencies, was amongst rights activists who toured the US last month to raise support for action against Sri Lanka.
Mainly Tamil men between ages 18-35, are being abducted or killed at a rate of four persons a day, he told a radio program.
Men are often taken in for questioning, interrogated, tortured; some of them may be held in detention facilities but the government does not release their names; under Emergency Regulations the abductees are not charged and can be held for long periods of time, Mr Abrahams said.
Democratic institutions have either collapsed or not functioning, Mr Abrahams said. Police, prosecution, and the courts are not effective and Colombo has taken very concrete steps to undermine the function of the Human Rights Commission.
Therefore, a U.N. Monitoring mission is necessary to contain the increasingly hostile engagements between the parties by reigning in on human rights violations, Mr Abrahams said.
