RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: UN Team to Review Rights Record in October

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 9 1999 (IPS) - A special UN team to probe ‘disappearances’ is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka in October to review the Chandrika Kumaratunga government’s human rights record and its policies.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will be visiting Sri Lanka after a gap of seven years, rights activ
ts here said.

During their visit from Oct. 18 to 25, the team led by Prof Ivan Tosevski, chairman of the UN Group is scheduled to meet with the p government’s Human Rights Commission and independent rightsgroups.

iernment has been slow in taking action against people accused of killings and torture between 1988-1990.

Moreover, the military’s rights record in the island’s north where it has been in pitched battles to evict Tamil separatist rebels has been under a cloud with the recent discovery of a possible mass grave on the outskirts of northern Jaffna town.

Also after three commissions of inquiry to probe rights violations in southern Sri Lanka – an election promise of Kumaratunga’s – named up to 2,000 military, police and UNP politicians as guilty, the survivors are still waiting for justice.

The government has paid out a small compensation only to half the families of identified victims, saying it does not have adequate funds.

Sri Lankan rights groups and Amnesty International say up to 60,000 may have died or disappeared during a brutal government crackdown on a Sinhalese leftwing rebel group, People’s Liberation Front or JVP between 1988 and 1989.

“The situation regarding disappearances is very disappointing,” says Chandra Peiris, president of the Organisation of Parents & Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD), set up to help the victims of the missing people.

OPFMD was founded as an underground movement in 1988 – at the height of the JVP revolt and the government’s counter-campaign – by four men who were all active trade unionists at a local 
a