Sri Lanka's claim to be "second to none" on human rights debunked
The Sri Lankan President's special envoy told the United Nations this week "Our commitment to human rights is second to none, and with such commitment we seek to transform our society to one of peace, pluralism and equality." - Mahinda Samarasinghe, Geneva, 12 September 2011
- But Sri Lanka is indeed a world leader - in human rights violations.
Sri Lanka is fourth in the world in allowing the murders of journalists to go unpunished, after only Iraq, Somalia and the Philippines, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Journalists are consistently under threat.
Journalists in danger in Sri Lanka | Amnesty International
A number of journalists in Sri Lanka have received death threats in the wake of knife attacks on two journalists in the past eleven days. Lal Hemantha Mawalage, a leading news producer with the state-run Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), was stabbed in the southern city of Athurugiriya on the night of Friday 25 January.One of the world's largest mass detentions without trial took place in Sri Lanka in 2009 at the end of the civil war. Some 11,000 LTTE suspects were detained without charge, and without access to justice. The International Committee of Jurists has documented this detention.
Torture became "routine" during counterinsurgency ops according to the UN, and is also common in civilian policing according to the Asian Human Rights Commission:
"The police officers tortured Sunil by massaging chopped hot chilies on his body including his eyes and genitalia... the police have tortured an innocent man to please an influential private party, which the Sri Lankan police do as a common practice."
- Sri Lanka in the past has led the world in disappearances.
- The country is perhaps genuinely second to none in whitewashing its human rights violations through ineffective Commissions of Inquiry.
Sri Lanka: Twenty years of make-believe. Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry | Amnesty International
In Sri Lanka, Commissions of Inquiry have not performed successfully, and the formal justice system is in tatters. With this report, Amnesty International seeks to re-focus the debate within Sri Lanka and in the international community from one that is centred on the most recent atrocity or the latest Commission of Inquiry, to one that is based on the need to prevent the continuation of violations and ensure real accountability for past abuses.With regard to the end of the civil war in 2009, ""a quick look at [the government's] own statements shows a pattern of misrepresenting the facts," said Amnesty International, which tracked the government's numbers as the truth came out.
Amnesty International found that the government's most recent inquiry into crimes committed during the civil war failed to appropriately investigate credible allegations of systematic violations, including illegal killings and enforced disappearances, and widespread shelling of civilian targets.
