Foreign experts step up human rights criticism of Sri Lanka

by Mel Gunasekera


COLOMBO (AFP) - A team of international legal experts Tuesday stepped up their criticism of Sri Lanka, noting that repeated calls to improve its record on the issue had fallen on deaf ears.
he International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) said Colombo lacked the political will to investigate grave rights abuses.

The panel members spoke to reporters Tuesday for the first time after attacking Colombo in a statement last month for blocking efforts to ensure minimum standards were maintained in probing serious abuses.

As their work progressed, the government's tone "was becoming increasingly disrespectful (of the experts)," British panel member Nigel Rodley said at the briefing.

"They were accusing us of all kinds of nefarious stuff, including making way for an international panel to monitor the rights situation on the ground here. It's not true, the allegations are baseless," Rodley said.

The IIGEP, which includes experts from the European Union, United Nations, Australia, Canada, India, France and the United States, was formed in 2007 to oversee a presidential commission of inquiry into 16 cases of major human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

Among the cases was the August 2006 massacre of 17 local aid workers attached to a French charity in the island's northeast. The evidence had pointed to the involvement of security forces and a state cover-up.

"The commission of inquiry has been slow to respond to our recommendations. We don't see a point of carrying on our role further," said the panel's head, P.N. Bhagwati, a retired chief justice of India.

Bhagwati accused Colombo of making little effort to enable the commission to maintain its independence in terms of funds to carry out field visits and hire its own legal counsel, without taking on the state attorney general (AG).

"Hiring the state attorney general to provide counsel is a clear conflict of interest. The AG is an organ of the state, so is the army. Justice must not only be done, but must appear to be done," Bhagwati said.

The panel also recommended the government set up a witness protection programme to encourage people to testify.

"We conclude that the government as a whole does not have the necessary political will to implement our recommendations. We keep repeating the same recommendations over and over again," said professor Yozo Yokota of Japan.

The Sri Lankan government has accused the IIGEP of working to an "international agenda" to force a UN human rights monitoring mission on Sri Lanka, a charge denied by the experts.

Sri Lanka is under increasing pressure to clean up its record with rights groups saying that more than 1,500 people have disappeared in the past two years.

Colombo pulled out of a tattered 2002 truce with Tamil rebels in January in the belief that it could defeat the guerrillas. The guerrillas are fighting a decades-long separatist war against Colombo in which tens of thousands have been killed.