Investigate Lanka’s human rights abuses, says Amnesty

Ahead of a crucial vote in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva seeking to censure Sri Lanka on alleged war-time human rights violations, Amnesty International raised the pitch, saying the world body must support an independent international investigation.

In a 63-page report titled, “Locked away: Sri Lanka’s security detainees”, the international rights group alleged that arbitrary, illegal detention and enforced disappearance were routine in the island nation. The rights groups have claimed that upto 40,000 civilians were killed in the final stages of the fighting with Tamil Tigers.

“The war crimes alleged in Sri Lanka in the final stages of the war are of such magnitude that if unchallenged risk fundamentally undermining international justice mechanisms — the United Nations must support an independent international investigation into these alleged crimes,” Amnesty said in a release.

“Hundreds of people languish in arbitrary, illegal and often incommunicado detention in Sri Lanka, vulnerable to torture and extrajudicial execution, despite the end of the country’s long conflict,” it said in the report.

Counter-terrorism legislation allows authorities to arrest people without evidence and to hold them without charge or trial for extended periods. For years, the Lankan government justified this legislation as necessary for combating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was seeking a separate state for the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

“The LTTE had a horrific record of abuse, including killing and imprisoning its critics, but that did not, and does not, excuse the widespread and systematic mistreatment of detainees by the Sri Lankan government,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific Director.

The report comes amid Lanka's effort to blunt a US move to censure Colombo for alleged rights abuses.