RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Impunity To Figure During U.N Team’s Visit

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Oct 9 1999 (IPS) - Human rights activists are gearing up to brief a U.N team on the continuing impunity of police and armed forces personnel responsible for the disappearance of thousands of young left wing rebels in a crackdown ten years ago.

The U.N Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) will basically ascertain whether Colombo has implemented recommendations it made during two previous visits to study the disappearances, 10 years ago.

Scheduled to be in Colombo from Oct 25 to 29, the working group will focus on review of recommendations it made after visits in 1991 and 1992, according to the international rights campaigner Amnesty International (AI).

Thousands of young people disappeared in the south and central areas of Sri Lanka during a brutal military crackdown between 1988 and 1990 against left wing rebels.

Estimates of missing persons have ranged from 10,000 to 60,000 over the three-year period in which the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), whose members are from the country’s majority Sinhalese community, made an aborted putsch on the government.

The crackdown and resultant fear psychosis that spread across the country led to the downfall of the then United National Party (UNP) government, which lost both parliamentary and presidential polls in 1994.

Shantha Premaratne, a local human rights official, told IPS that his group hoped to brief the UN mission on the failure of the ruling People’s Alliance (PA) to punish the alleged killers and provide adequate compensation.

“The relatives of the missing persons are still being hounded by the perpetrators. They have been threatened with death and harassment if they provide information to the authorities,” Premaratne, secretary of the Organisation of Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD) said.

Premaratne’s father is among the missing. He is believed to have been killed by the police while working as a human rights activist.

The U.N group, in a report prepared after its 1991 and 1992 visits, recommended that the government establish a mechanism to clarify the fate of missing persons and vigorously prosecute and punish those responsible.

It urged that perpetrators not be protected by prevailing indemnity laws, that witnesses and relatives of the disappeared be protected and that the human rights record of police and military personnel get taken into account for promotions.

While the People’s Alliance government appointed three commissions of inquiry to probe disappearances, action against people identified by the commissioners as perpetrators has been slow as also have compensation payment.

“The three inquiry commissions, appointed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga, identified some 3,000 persons from the police, armed forces and others as responsible for these crimes but little has been done to take action against them,” said Pathirana.

The commissions, in reports handed to Kumaratunga in August 1997, said there was sufficient evidence against some officers and members of the public and that they should be dealt with according to the law and punished.

Pathirana said these commissions had no judicial power other than making recommendations. “This was one of the biggest flaws of the commission. There was nothing they could do other than make recommendations to the government,” he said.

The Attorney General’s department said recently that it had filed 200 cases against security personnel pursuant to the reports of the commissions but noted that there was insufficient evidence to pursue others named in the report.

Local human rights groups say the government is reluctant to take action against officers named in the report as many of them are serving in war zones fighting Tamil separatist guerrillas.

“There is a general perception that any action against these serving officers may hamper the war against the rebels,” one human rights activist said.

One of the senior officers named in the report as responsible for several killings and running a torture chamber holds the rank of Major-General and is among the army’s top 10 officers, he said.

While the commissions of inquiry received complaints of 26, 877 missing persons, OPFMD says they have sufficient evidence in

31,000 cases of disappearances.

Pathirana said his organisation would furnish details of the 31,000 cases to the UN group during this month’s visit. “The UN group has based its previous reports on 12,000 disappearances in Sri Lanka,” he said.

Pathirana claimed it was due to the OPFMD’s efforts that the UN group is paying a visit to Sri Lanka after a lapse of seven years. “For the past two years, at U.N meetings in Geneva we pleaded with the working group to come to Sri Lanka and study the situation which is not at all satisfactory.” The U.N mission is likely to be led by working group chairperson Ivan Tosevski and would include working group member I. Hillali of Pakistan and group secretary Miguel de la Lama.

It’s visit would be confined to Colombo and aimed at meeting government officials, local human rights groups and parents and relatives of the disappeared.

“The investigation of recent disappearances reported from the north and the east of Sri Lanka, including the widespread disappearances reported from Jaffna (in Sri Lanka’s north) in mid- 1996, will apparently not be the focus of the visit,” the AI note said.

Human rights groups here say at least a 1,000 people have disappeared since 1995 when fresh fighting broke out between government troops and Tamil rebels after a ceasefire and peace talks broke down.

Most of the disappearances in the northern city of Jaffna have been blamed on the military. A government-led exhumation of a mass gravesite in Jaffna which was said to contain some 300 victims of the army, ended late last month with the discovery of some 15 sets of human skeletons.

International forensic experts who were invited as observers during the investigation, told reporters that there was no evidence of a mass graveyard at Chemmani where the digging took place.

The investigation followed a statement by a Sri Lankan soldier that his unit had been responsible for killing and secretly burying at least 300 Tamil detainees.

Somaratne Rajapakse made the confession last year, after he was sentenced by a court to death along with four other soldiers for the rape and murder of a Tamil schoolgirl.