Sri Lanka's Human Rights Crisis

SRI LANKA’S HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS Asia Report N°135 – 14 June 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................ i I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 II. HOW NOT TO FIGHT AN INSURGENCY ............................................................... 2 III. A SHORT HISTORY OF IMPUNITY......................................................................... 4 A. THE FAILURE OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM...................................................................................4 B. COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY......................................................................................................5 C. THE CEASEFIRE AND HUMAN RIGHTS......................................................................................6 IV. HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE NEW WAR............................................................... 7 A. CIVILIANS AND WARFARE ......................................................................................................7 B. MASSACRES...........................................................................................................................8 C. EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS ......................................................................................................9 D. THE DISAPPEARED ...............................................................................................................10 E. ABDUCTIONS FOR RANSOM...................................................................................................11 F. FORCED RECRUITMENT BY TAMIL MILITANTS .......................................................................12 G. ARRESTS AND DETENTIONS UNDER THE EMERGENCY REGULATIONS ......................................13 H. ATTACKS ON THE MEDIA......................................................................................................14 I. POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ARRESTS/HARASSMENT................................................................14 J. FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT .....................................................................................................15 V. THE STATE RESPONSE............................................................................................ 16 A. POLICE INVESTIGATIONS AND THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM..........................................................16 B. THE POLITICAL RESPONSE ..................................................................................................18 C. THE CONSTITUTIONAL COUNCIL AND THE INDEPENDENT COMMISSIONS.............................19 D. AD HOC COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY ....................................................................................20 VI. THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ........................................... 22 A. PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES.............................................................................................22 1. Conflicts of interest..................................................................................................22 2. Witness protection ...................................................................................................23 3. The political context ................................................................................................23 4. Indictments and prosecutions...................................................................................24 B. INTERNATIONAL INDEPENDENT GROUP OF EMINENT PERSONS (IIGEP)..............................24 C. PROSPECTS .........................................................................................................................25 VII. HALTING THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL.................................................................. 26 A. THE GOVERNMENT’S CHALLENGE ......................................................................................26 1. The seventeenth amendment....................................................................................27 2. The emergency regulations......................................................................................27 3. Paramilitaries ...........................................................................................................27 4. Extrajudicial killings and abductions.......................................................................27 5. Longer-term legal and institutional reforms ............................................................28 B. THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ..............................................................................................29 C. INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES...............................................................................................29 1. UN mechanisms.......................................................................................................31 2. Pressure on child soldiers ........................................................................................31 3. Pressuring the LTTE................................................................................................31 VIII. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 32 APPENDICES A. MAP OF SRI LANKA ............................................................................................................33 B. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP .......................................................................34 C. INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFINGS ON ASIA ....................................35 D. INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP BOARD OF TRUSTEES.........................................................37 Asia Report N°135 14 June 2007 SRI LANKA’S HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS The resumption of war between the Sri Lankan Tamils are increasingly fearful and alienated from a government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam government that claims to be liberating them from the (LTTE) has been accompanied by widespread human LTTE but has failed to promote any viable political rights abuses by both sides. While the LTTE has continued solution to the conflict. The violence and abuse suffered its deliberately provocative attacks on the military and by many Tamils has ensured increased support and Sinhalese civilians as well as its violent repression of funding for the insurgents. Tamil dissenters and forced recruitment of both adults and children, the government is using extra-judicial The counter-insurgency campaign is leading to more killings and enforced disappearances as part of a brutal authoritarianism in the country as a whole. Officials now counter-insurgency campaign. The likely results will be routinely brand their political critics and human rights the further embitterment of the Tamil population and a advocates as LTTE sympathisers, while political opponents further cycle of war, terrorism and repression. Without and journalists have been arrested under the Emergency ignoring or minimising the serious violations of the Regulations. What began as an effort to target LTTE LTTE, the international community needs to bring supporters shows disturbing signs of becoming generalised more pressure to bear on the government, through UN repression of dissent. While routinely attacking moderate, mechanisms, a reappraisal of aid policies and intensified democratic forces, the government has given free rein to political engagement. The alternative is a further decline Sinhalese nationalist groups. into authoritarianism, violence, terrorism and repression. For the most part the government has responded to Civilians are repeatedly caught up in the fighting. More criticism with denial, obfuscation and virulent, verbal than 1,500 have been killed and more than 250,000 attacks on its critics. In an attempt to deflect international displaced since early 2006. There have been hundreds of criticism, it has also established new institutions to extrajudicial killings, and more than 1,000 people are still investigate allegations of human rights abuses. A unaccounted for, presumed to be the victims of enforced Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI), backed by a disappearances. Hundreds more have been detained under panel of international observers, is investigating a series newly strengthened Emergency Regulations that give the of atrocities. However, the history of such institutions in government broad powers of arrest and detention without Sri Lanka is grounds for scepticism: previous commissions charge. The security forces have also expelled hundreds have been ineffective in stopping abuses or prosecuting of Tamils from Colombo. Forces commanded by the ex- perpetrators. LTTE commander Karuna, leader of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) now aligned with the In any case, the CoI is no substitute for proper action by government, engage in child recruitment, extortion, the law enforcement agencies and judiciary to investigate abductions for ransom and political assassinations. and prosecute abuses. The national Human Rights Commission is deeply flawed and has lost all credibility While many deaths result from military clashes, the army after being stocked by political appointees. Other domestic – assisted by pro-government Tamil paramilitaries – is institutions are increasingly politicised or dysfunctional, also engaged in a deliberate policy of extrajudicial killings leading to calls for an international human rights and abductions of Tamils considered part of LTTE’s monitoring mission, which

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