[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military
appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be
civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even
tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at
a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion
of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military
presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for
strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the
vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the
spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of
vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the
island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the
GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
“The LLRC report contains a broad range of excellent recommendations
regarding concrete improvements on human rights, and I was interested to
receive a briefing on the extent of the implementation of some of those
recommendations from the Permanent Secretary to the President. My
Office will closely examine that update and future developments in the
implementation of the LLRC, and I will of course make reference to any
genuine progress in my reports to the Human Rights Council,” Navi Pillay
had said.
But she also recognized that the LLRC “side-stepped
the much-needed full, transparent, impartial investigation into the
conduct of a conflict that saw numerous war crimes and other violations
committed by both sides.”
Navi Pillay’s visit to the island
raised great expectations from the genocide-affected Eezham Tamil nation
and for all those believing in fundamental human rights.
It
also provoked profane reactions from Sinhala nationalists. Sinhala
ministers have not only called her a ‘LTTE stooge’, but have also passed
crass sexist remarks about her. One obvious motivation for such remarks
is her Tamil origin, even though it is Indian.
At this
juncture, Ms Pillay chose to condemn the LTTE as “a murderous
organization that committed numerous crimes and destroyed many lives.”
She further criticized the diaspora for “the glorification of such a
ruthless organization.”
But what the IC, including Ms Pillay
fail time and again to recognize is that had the International Community
intervened positively, whether it be in 1987 or in 2002, recognizing
the sovereign Eezham Tamil nationhood, the genocidal character of the
unitary Sri Lankan state and the impossibility of a just solution for
the Tamils within the same, there would have been no violence of any
considerable magnitude in the island, a Tamil human rights activists in
Jaffna told TamilNet.
Further comments from the human rights activists follow:
To whitewash its own crimes and to accelerate its process of colonizing the North-East, the Sinhala state brought out the LLRC.
To
whitewash their complicity in the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation,
the ICE harped on “positive recommendations” in the LLRC.
It is
disheartening to see the much respected Ms Pillay also refer to the LLRC
for its “excellent recommendations regarding concrete improvements on
human rights”.
The LLRC is part of the problem of unitary Sri
Lanka, just like the 13th amendment. It cannot be part of the solution
for the Tamils. It is unjust to expect the Eezham Tamils, who faced the
murderous ruthlessness of the Sri Lankan state for over six decades, and
who lost over 100000 of their kin in 2009 alone, to have any faith in
the LLRC.
Tamils world over will be watching with bated breath for Navanetham Pillay’s report to the Human Rights Council in September.
Whether she will identify the crimes of the Sri Lankan state for what they are is something that will be seen then.
* * *
Opening remarks by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay at a press conference during her mission to Sri Lanka:Colombo, 31 August 2013
Good morning, and thank you for coming.
As
is customary at the end of official missions such as this, I would like
to make some observations concerning the human rights situation in the
country.
During my seven-day visit, I have held discussions with
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and senior members of the Government. These
included the Ministers of External Affairs, Justice, Economic
Development, National Languages and Social Integration, Youth Affairs
and the Minister of Plantations Industries who is also Special Envoy to
the President on Human Rights, as well as the Secretary of Defence. I
also met the Chief Justice, Attorney-General, Leader of the House of
Parliament and the Permanent Secretary to the President, who is head of
the taskforce appointed to monitor the implementation of the report of
the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
I had
discussions with politicians who are not part of the current Government,
namely the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Tamil
National Alliance; in addition I met with the National Human Rights
Commission, and a total of eight different gatherings of human rights
defenders and civil society organizations in Colombo, Jaffna and
Trincomalee. I also received briefings from the Governors and other
senior officials in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
I thank
the Government for its invitation and its excellent cooperation during
the planning and conduct of this very complex mission. It stated that I
could go anywhere, and see anything I wished to see. And, despite some
disturbing incidents which I will go into later, that commitment was
honoured throughout.
Even though this is the longest official
visit I have ever made to a single country, I am acutely conscious that I
was unable to see everyone who requested a meeting. Nor will I be able
to do justice to all the human rights issues facing the Sri Lankan
people and government. Since I will be providing an oral update to the
Human Rights Council in Geneva in late September, and a full written
report in March next year, I will today confine myself to a few key
issues that crystallized during the course of the mission.
I will
divide these human rights issues into two parts: those related to the
vicious and debilitating 27-year conflict between the Government and the
LTTE, and its aftermath; and those that relate to the whole country.
Some
media, ministers, bloggers and various propagandists in Sri Lanka have,
for several years now, on the basis of my Indian Tamil heritage,
described me as a tool of the LTTE. They have claimed I was in their
pay, the “Tamil Tigress in the UN.” This is not only wildly incorrect,
it is deeply offensive. This type of abuse has reached an extraordinary
crescendo during this past week, with at least three Government
Ministers joining in.
Firstly, let me say, I am a South African and proud of it.
Secondly,
the LTTE was a murderous organization that committed numerous crimes
and destroyed many lives. In fact, my only previous visit to Sri Lanka
was to attend a commemoration of the celebrated legislator, peacemaker
and scholar, Neelan Tiruchelvam, who was killed by an LTTE suicide bomb
in July 1999. Those in the diaspora who continue to revere the memory of
the LTTE must recognize that there should be no place for the
glorification of such a ruthless organization.
I would like to
pay my respects to all Sri Lankans, across the country, who were killed
during those three decades of conflict, and offer my heartfelt sympathy
to their families, all of whom – no matter who they are – share one
thing: they have lost someone they can never replace. I have met many
people during this visit whose relatives or spouses – both civilians and
soldiers – are known to have been killed, or who are missing and may
well be dead.
It is important everyone realizes that, although the fighting is over, the suffering is not.
I
have been extremely moved by the profound trauma I have seen among the
relatives of the missing and the dead, and the war survivors, in all the
places I have visited, as well as by their resilience. This was
particularly evident among those scratching out a living among the
ghosts of burned and shelled trees, ruined houses and other debris of
the final battle of the the war along the lagoon in Mullaitivu.
Wounds
will not heal and reconciliation will not happen, without respect for
those who grieve, and remembrance for the tens of thousands of Tamils,
Sinhalese, Muslims and others who died before their time on the
battlefield, in buses, on the street, or in detention. As one wife of a
missing man put it poignantly: “Even when we eat, we keep a portion for
him.”
Throughout my visit, the authorities, at all levels, have
been keen to demonstrate to me how much has been achieved in terms of
resettlement, reconstruction and rehabilitation in the relatively short
period since the conflict with the LTTE ended in 2009. And the
reconstruction achievements, made with the help of donor countries, UN
agencies and NGOs, are indeed impressive: in both the Eastern and
Northern Provinces, large numbers of new roads, bridges, houses, medical
facilities and schools have been built or rebuilt; electricity and
water supplies have been greatly improved; and most of the landmines
have been removed. As a result, the great majority of the more than
450,000 people who were internally displaced at the end of the conflict
have now gone home.
These are important achievements, and I
understand the Government’s concern that they have perhaps not been
sufficiently recognized. However, physical reconstruction alone will
not bring reconciliation, dignity, or lasting peace. Clearly, a more
holistic approach is needed to provide truth, justice and reparations
for people’s suffering during the war, and I have repeated my previous
offer of OHCHR’s assistance in these areas.
There are a number of
specific factors impeding normalization, which – if not quickly
rectified – may sow the seeds of future discord. These are by and large
to do with the curtailment or denial of personal freedoms and human
rights, or linked to persistent impunity and the failure of rule of law.
From
the very beginning, I have placed great hopes in Sri Lanka achieving
true peace and reconciliation after the war. I welcomed the LLRC report
as an important step in that direction, even though it side-stepped the
much-needed full, transparent, impartial investigation into the conduct
of a conflict that saw numerous war crimes and other violations
committed by both sides. The Human Rights Council has expressed a strong
interest in seeing progress in the implementation of the most important
LLRC recommendations, and proper investigation of the many outstanding
allegations and concerns.
The LLRC report contains a broad range
of excellent recommendations regarding concrete improvements on human
rights, and I was interested to receive a briefing on the extent of the
implementation of some of those recommendations from the Permanent
Secretary to the President. My Office will closely examine that update
and future developments in the implementation of the LLRC, and I will of
course make reference to any genuine progress in my reports to the
Human Rights Council.
I will now briefly outline some of the
other issues that were raised during my visits to the Northern and
Eastern Provinces, and which I have in turn raised with various
ministers.
I welcome the forthcoming elections to the Northern
Provincial Council and hope they will proceed in a peaceful, free and
fair environment, and usher in an important new stage in the devolution
of power.
I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the
military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what
should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and
even tourism. I also heard complaints about the acquisition of private
land to build military camps and installations, including a holiday
resort. This is only going to make the complex land issues with which
the Government has been grappling even more complicated and difficult to
resolve. Clearly, the army needs some camps, but the prevalence and
level of involvement of soldiers in the community seem much greater than
is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes four years
after the end of the war.
I understand the Secretary of Defence’s
point that the demobilization of a significant proportion of such a
large army cannot be done overnight, but urge the government to speed up
its efforts to demilitarize these two war-affected provinces, as the
continued large-scale presence of the military and other security forces
is seen by many as oppressive and intrusive, with the continuing high
level of surveillance of former combatants and returnees at times
verging on harassment.
I was very concerned to hear about the
vulnerability of women and girls, especially in female-headed
households, to sexual harassment and abuse. I have raised this issue
with several ministers, the provincial governors and senior military
commanders who attended my meeting with the Secretary of Defence. I
challenged them to rigorously enforce a zero tolerance policy for sexual
abuse.
I have also been following up on the status of the
remaining detainees and have urged the Government to expedite their
cases, either by bringing charges or releasing them for rehabilitation. I
also suggested it may now be time to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism
Act which has long been cause for concern.
Because of the legacy
of massive trauma, there is a desperate need for counseling and
psychosocial support in the North, and I was surprised and disappointed
to learn that the authorities have restricted NGO activity in this
sector. I hope the Government can relax controls on this type of
assistance.
I met many relatives of missing or disappeared
civilians and soldiers who are still hoping to discover the whereabouts
of their loved ones, and they emphasized the urgent need to resolve this
issue – something that was made abundantly evident at the two very
moving meetings with relatives of the disappeared that I attended
yesterday, to commemorate the International Day of the Victims of Forced
Disappearances.
I asked the Government for more information
about the new Commission of Inquiry on Disappearances, and stressed the
need for it to be more effective than the five previous commissions of
this kind. I was disappointed to learn that it will only cover
disappearances in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, which means that
the many “white van” disappearances reported in Colombo and other parts
of the country in recent years will not fall within its scope.
I
urge the Government to broaden the Commission’s mandate, and seize this
opportunity to make a comprehensive effort to resolve the disappearances
issue once and for all. I therefore welcome the new proposal to
criminalize disappearances in the penal code, and hope this will be done
without delay. The Government could also send a clear signal of its
commitment by ratifying the International Convention on Disappearances,
and by inviting the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary
Disappearances to visit Sri Lanka, ideally before I report back to the
Human Rights Council in March.
The Human Rights Council will also
be looking to see something credible in terms of investigation of what
happened at the end of the war and many other past cases.
I was
pleased to learn that the case of the five students murdered on the
beach in Trincomalee in 2006 has been reinvigorated by the arrest of 12
Police Special Task Force members known to have been in the vicinity at
the time of the killings. I will be watching the progress of that case
with interest, as well as the other infamous unsolved case of 17 ACF aid
workers murdered in the same year, just a few kilometres to the south.
I
also requested more information about the Courts of Inquiry appointed
by the army to further investigate the allegations of civilian
casualties and summary executions, and suggested that appointing the
army to investigate itself does not inspire confidence in a country
where so many past investigations and commissions of inquiry have
foundered one way or another. Unless there is a credible national
process, calls for an international inquiry are likely to continue.
The
recent deployment of the military in support of police to control a
demonstration in Welawariya, which resulted in at least three deaths,
has sent a shockwave through the community. I stressed to the Defence
Secretary the need to urgently complete and publish a proper
investigation into this incident.
Too many other investigation
files remain pending, for instance the custodial deaths of prisoners in
Vavuniya and Welikada Prisons in 2012. The Government has since
announced police powers will now be transferred from the Ministry of
Defence to a new Ministry of Law and Order, but this is at best a
partial separation as both Ministries will remain under the President,
rather than under a separate civilian ministry.
I have also
reminded the Government that Sri Lanka desperately needs strong witness
and victim protection legislation, which has been languishing in draft
form since 2007.
I expressed concern at the recent surge in
incitement of hatred and violence against religious minorities,
including attacks on churches and mosques, and the lack of swift action
against the perpetrators. I was surprised that the Government seemed to
downplay this issue, and I hope it will send the strongest possible
signal of zero tolerance for such acts and ensure that those responsible
(who are easily identifiable on video footage) are punished. The
Minister of National Languages and Social Integration told me that he
has proposed new legislation on hate speech. We have recently concluded
a study of such laws and would be happy to assist in this area. The
same Minister, along with the Minister of Justice, expressed to me his
support for a visit by the Independent Expert on Minorities, and I hope
this can happen as soon as possible. I also applaud the Government’s
policy of introducing tri-lingualism all across the country.
I
would now like to turn to a disturbing aspect of the visit, namely the
harassment and intimidation of a number of human rights defenders, at
least two priests, journalists, and many ordinary citizens who met with
me, or planned to meet with me. I have received reports that people in
villages and settlements in the Mullaitivu area were visited by police
or military officers both before and after I arrived there. In
Trincomalee, several people I met were subsequently questioned about the
content of our conversation.
This type of surveillance and
harassment appears to be getting worse in Sri Lanka, which is a country
where critical voices are quite often attacked or even permanently
silenced. Utterly unacceptable at any time, it is particularly
extraordinary for such treatment to be meted out during a visit by a UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights. I wish to stress that the United
Nations takes the issue of reprisals against people because they have
talked to UN officials as an extremely serious matter, and I will be
reporting those that take place in connection with this visit to the
Human Rights Council.
I urge the Government of Sri Lanka to issue
immediate orders to halt this treatment of human rights defenders and
journalists who face this kind of harassment and intimidation on a
regular basis. More than 30 journalists are believed to have been
killed since 2005, and several more – including the cartoonist Prageeth
Ekneligoda – have disappeared. Many others have fled the country.
Newspaper and TV offices have been vandalized or subjected to arson
attacks – some, such as the Jaffna-based paper Uthayan, on multiple
occasions. With self-censorship fuelled by fear, journalists report that
there are articles that they dare not write, and others their editors
dare not print. Freedom of expression is under a sustained assault in
Sri Lanka. I have called for the right to Information Act to be adopted
like many of its neighbours in SAARC.
The war may have ended, but
in the meantime democracy has been undermined and the rule of law
eroded. The 18th amendment, which abolished the Constitutional Council
which once recommended appointments to the independent bodies, such as
the Elections Commission and Human Rights Commission, has weakened these
important checks and balances on the power of the Executive. The
controversial impeachment of the Chief Justice earlier this year, and
apparent politicization of senior judicial appointments, have shaken
confidence in the independence of the judiciary.
I am deeply
concerned that Sri Lanka, despite the opportunity provided by the end of
the war to construct a new vibrant, all-embracing state, is showing
signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction.
Ending on a more optimistic note, yesterday, at the Government’s suggestion, I
visited
the Youth Parliament. This unusual institution, founded in 2010, is
filled with bright, enthusiastic students from all across the country,
and dedicated to a tolerant and all-inclusive approach. The parliament
draws on elected members of youth groups who meet once a month to
discuss key issues such as the importance of Amendment 13 to the
Constitution and the LLRC (indeed they claim they actually debated the
latter before the National Parliament).
I hope that the current
and future members of the Youth Parliament, three of whom delivered
excellent speeches in my presence, will, when they graduate to the main
political stage, usher in a new era of tolerant coexistence in this
beautiful island, where – despite the problems I have listed above – I
have been greeted with great warmth and hospitality.
Thank you.
