UN human rights office points to ‘worrying trends’ in Sri Lanka over the last year
GENEVA: The UN human rights office has published a report raising new concerns about Sri Lanka, urging “international action” against alleged perpetrators of rights violations and floating the prospect of a referral to the International Criminal Court, according to The Associated Press.
The report — news of which had already leaked in Sri Lanka — pointed to “worrying trends” over the last year, more than a decade after the end of a civil war that lasted 26 years and left tens of thousands of people dead.
“Sri Lanka’s current trajectory sets the scene for the recurrence of the policies and practices that gave rise to grave human rights violations,” the report cited by The Associated Press said.
The rights office said the appointment to key administrative posts of senior military officials implicated in previous UN reports about war crimes in Sri Lanka was “particularly troubling.”
It warned of the encroachment of military leaders into roles that have traditionally been held by civilians and cited “a pattern of intensified surveillance and harassment of civil society organizations, human rights defenders and victims.”
The UN rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, faulted the government’s “demonstrated inability and unwillingness” to improve accountability, saying: “It is time for international action to ensure justice for international crimes.”
The report said countries can take steps “toward the referral of the situation in Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court,” and could investigate and persecute violations of international law under “accepted principles of extraterritorial or universal jurisdiction.”
Bachelet said Sri Lanka’s contributions to UN peacekeeping operations — which totaled 655 people as of December, according to the peacekeeping office — must be kept under review.
In the wake of news reports in Sri Lanka about the UN report, a government spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella, said on Tuesday that it reserves the right to accept or reject the report. It is expected to come up on Feb. 24 in the next session of the UN-backed Human Rights Council, according to The Associated Press.
John Fisher, Geneva director for Human Rights Watch, said the report “lays bare Sri Lanka’s record of complete impunity for appalling crimes under international law, and the very alarming developments under the current government.”