Sri Lankan security forces and intelligence agencies have intensified surveillance and threats against families of victims of enforced disappearance and activists supporting them since Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president in November 2019, Human Rights Watch said today.<\/p>\n
The rights group said that the Sri Lankan government should fulfill its commitments to the United Nations Human Rights Council to strengthen efforts to locate the \u201cdisappeared\u201d and bring those responsible to justice.<\/p>\n
Activists working in six locations in the northern and eastern parts of the country on behalf of relatives of the forcibly disappeared told Human Rights Watch that there has been a significant increase in government surveillance and intimidation.<\/p>\n
One activist said that prior to a recent victims\u2019 meeting, \u201cevery one of the mothers got at least six telephone calls from different intelligence agencies asking, \u2018Where is the meeting?\u2019 \u2018Who is organizing the meeting?\u2019 \u2018What is being said?\u2019\u201d Another activist said, \u201cWe can\u2019t do any visible programs.\u2026 We\u2019ve stopped everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe families of Sri Lanka\u2019s \u2018disappeared\u2019 have spent years waiting for answers, but with the Rajapaksas back in power, security forces are threatening them to drop their demands for truth and accountability,\u201d said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe government needs to stop the harassment immediately and abide by Sri Lanka\u2019s pledges to the UN to uncover the fate of the \u2018disappeared\u2019 and provide justice to victims\u2019 families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thousands of people, primarily ethnic Tamils, are believed to have been forcibly disappeared in state custody between 2005 and 2015, when the current president was defense secretary and his brother, current Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, was president. President Rajapaksa has resisted demands for justice, including past Sri Lankan commitments to the UN Human Rights Council, and said at a recent meeting with the UN that the \u201cmissing persons are actually dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the bloody civil war, from 1983 to 2009, between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), both sides committed numerous abuses, including enforced disappearances. UN reports found credible allegations of enforced disappearances by government forces of captured LTTE fighters and Tamil civilians during the final months of the war in 2009.<\/p>\n
Among the army units the UN implicated in the worst atrocities at the war\u2019s end were those commanded by the current army chief, Gen. Shavendra Silva, and the defense secretary, Gen. Kamal Gunaratne. On February 14, 2020, the United States State Department designated Silva and his immediate family members ineligible for entry into the US \u201cdue to credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new Rajapaksa administration has halted legal proceedings initiated by the previous Government against navy officers accused of the enforced disappearance and alleged killing of 11 young men in Colombo and its suburbs in 2008 and 2009. In November 2019, following the presidential election, a Government investigator looking into this and other cases of alleged serious rights violations implicating government officials fled the country following threats. Other criminal investigators have since been put under travel restrictions.<\/p>\n
A member of the advocacy group Mothers of the Disappeared whose son was forcibly disappeared in 2009 told Human Rights Watch that since the presidential election she has been repeatedly visited by members of the police Criminal Investigation Department (CID).<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have come and asked who is going to meetings,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd who is going to Geneva [to attend the UN Human Rights Council]. These are children who were taken by white vans from our houses or who surrendered [to the army]. These are the children we are talking about. I want to know what happened to my son, whether he is dead or alive, and if he is not alive, what happened to him and who did it, whether he was beaten, whether they broke a limb.\u201d<\/p>\n
A person who works closely with the families of the disappeared said that under the relatively open environment of the previous government, many relatives of the disappeared had chosen to speak out about their cases. \u201cNow they [the security forces] know who talked about their crimes, so the victims have fears about their safety,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The previous Rajapaksa administration had repeatedly denied government involvement in serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearances. However, under international pressure, Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2010 established the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which acknowledged an \u201calarming\u201d number of allegations of disappearances in state custody, and said the government was \u201cduty bound\u201d to take \u201cimmediate\u201d steps to bring those responsible to justice.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the Sri Lankan Government under President Maithripala Sirisena joined a consensus resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. A core commitment was to set up four transitional justice mechanisms to promote \u201creconciliation, accountability and human rights,\u201d including an accountability mechanism involving international judges, prosecutors, and investigators; a truth and reconciliation mechanism; an office on missing persons; and an office for reparations.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka has made limited progress in meeting these commitments, but an Office on Missing Persons and an Office for Reparations have been established. During the election campaign and since taking office, the Rajapaksa government has said it does not intend to abide by the internationally recognized process to address alleged grave international crimes by both sides. The government has also cast doubt on the future of the Office on Missing Persons.<\/p>\n
Given Sri Lanka\u2019s long history of enforced disappearance, it is vitally important not to allow the government to simply dismiss these cases, Human Rights Watch said. UN member states at the Human Rights Council in late February should call upon Sri Lanka to comply with its international legal obligations, protect victims and witnesses, and keep its UN pledges in a time-bound manner.<\/p>\n
Should the government fail to do so, the council should take the initiative and adopt accountability measures leading toward international investigation and prosecutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamily members of Sri Lanka\u2019s many \u2018disappeared\u2019 have a right to know what happened to their loved ones,\u201d Ganguly said. \u201cThe UN Human Rights Council is the one flicker of hope many families have that the fate of those disappeared will one day be known, and that justice will be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Colombo Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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