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Sri Lanka govt ‘aggressively attacking efforts’ to address rights abuses
Sri Lanka’s government is aggressively attacking efforts to hold officials to account for past grave abuses, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a new report.The 93-page report, “Open Wounds and Mounting Dangers: Blocking Accountability for Grave Abuses in Sri Lanka,” examines efforts by the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to thwart justice in seven prominent human rights cases.The report released Feb. 1 describes the current context of government repression of activists, journalists, lawyers, and the families of victims, as well as threats against vulnerable minorities.
“The Sri Lankan government’s assault on justice increases the risk of human rights abuses today and, in the future,” said John Fisher, HRW Geneva director in a media statement.The United Nations Human Rights Council, at its session beginning Feb. 22, should adopt a resolution upholding justice for serious internat
Geneva, Rajapaksa Regime & Myanmar Shadows The darkness of night is the close companion of dictators. ~ (Hafez,
Divan) (Quoted in Kim Ghattas,
Black Wave, London, 2020, p.31)
Within a period of just over one year the Rajapaksa regime, headed by two septuagenarian siblings with different professional traits – one, a military man, and the other, a crass politician, but both beholden to a Sinhala Buddhist supremacist ideology that is shredding Sri Lankan society into pieces, has driven the country into a cauldron of crises, from public health and economy to ecology and human rights and to cultural confrontations and social tensions. Of the two, it was the elder and patriarch of the clan, Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) who, with understandable reluctance nominated the junior, Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa (NGR) as candidate for the presidency in 2019 and made him win the contest, without realizing the danger that sooner or later NGR would sideline Prime Minister MR and take control of
UN Human Rights Council Should Pursue Accountability
(Lanka-e-News -02.Feb.2021, 1.45PM) Sri Lanka’s government is aggressively attacking efforts to hold officials to account for past grave abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday(01).
The 93-page report, “Open Wounds and Mounting Dangers: Blocking Accountability for Grave Abuses in Sri Lanka,” examines efforts by the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to thwart justice in seven prominent human rights cases. It describes the current context of government repression of activists, journalists, lawyers, and the families of victims, as well as threats against vulnerable minorities. The United Nations Human Rights Council, at its session beginning February 22, 2021, should adopt a resolution upholding justice for serious international crimes in Sri Lanka and condemning ongoing abuses.
Shreen Saroor
NEW DELHI, India, Feb 1 2021 (IPS) - A decade has passed since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war between the government and the LTTE, where at least 100,000 people were killed in the over three-decade long conflict. Families of victims of enforced disappearances continue to seek justice, the government is yet to end impunity and put accountability for crimes under international law and human rights violation and abuses in its transitional justice process.
In a recent United Nations Human Rights Office of The High Commissioner report, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stressed that the failure to deal with the past continues to have devastating effects on tens of thousands of families in Sri Lanka, who are still waiting for justice, reparations – and the truth about the fate of their loved ones. The report warns that the failure of Sri Lanka to address past violations has significantly “ heightened the risk of human rights violations being