The pull-out of an international expert group supervising a key human rights investigation has dented the credibility of the inquiry, said activists, but the government is confident the perpetrators will be brought to justice.
The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), headed by former Indian chief justice P. N. Bhagwati, withdrew from its watchdog role on 31 March.
It charged that the Commission of Inquiry (COI) appointed by President Mahinda Rajapakse to investigate 16 high-profile incidents of rights violations in 2006 and 2007, failed to conform to international norms and standards. The IIGEP had experts from 11 countries: India, France, Indonesia, the US, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Canada, Cyprus, the UK, Australia and Japan.
One case heard
The move coincided with the termination of the one-year mandate given by Sri Lankan President Rajapakse to the 11-member IIGEP during which the COI took up only a single case, involving the murders of 17 employees of the international NGO, Action contre la Faim (ACF). The 16 Tamils and one Muslim were killed in the eastern town Muttur in August 2006.
They were trapped in their office during fierce fighting between the security forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which is fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils in the island’s north and east. Over 60,000 people have died since the early 1980s in Asia’s longest running separatist conflict.
“We didn’t ask the IIGEP to leave. They had their reasons for going to which the COI and the attorney general’s department have put forward their own positions,” said Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management Mahinda Samarasinghe. “We still have confidence the COI will produce results. I’m as desperate as anyone else to show results, especially when I have to go before international forums.”
Alleged killers identified
The inquiry took a new turn when a rights organisation, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR), released on 1 April the names of the alleged killers of the ACF workers, the result of its own investigations.
They included two Sinhalese police constables, special force officers of the navy and a Muslim home guard. It also accused senior police officials of covering up the murders.
The UTHR said if action had been taken against a particular senior police officer who was allegedly responsible for the January 2006 killings of five Tamil students in eastern Trincomalee, the ACF murders may never have taken place. The murders of the five Tamil students, allegedly by the security forces, will also be taken up by the COI. "Both killings flowed from the same compulsion to kill young Tamils," the UTHR report said.
ACF, which has criticised the COI's slow pace, reiterated its position that an international inquiry proceed and that those responsible be prosecuted. However, the minister said the report had been referred to the Defence Ministry to ascertain if there was any culpability on the part of those named.
Witness protection
Although Samarasinghe said the COI had replaced closed-door sessions with public hearings, human rights campaigners pointed out that one of the factors crippling the inquiry was the lack of an adequate witness protection system.
“For the government the COI is a showpiece for the international community, although there is no substantive progress being made,” said an activist who represents a civil society organisation that is closely following the COI proceedings and did not want to be named. “The IIGEP has been consistent in saying from last year that the process has not been moving forward, that witness protection is very weak, among other matters. Their assessment was that nothing was going to change.”
Scores of people killed by hit-and-run gunmen, unidentified bodies dumped in isolated places and people abducted in vans all over the island have been reported by various organisations and the media since the government renewed its military offensive against Tamil Tiger separatists in April 2006.
Figures vary
However, accurate figures are difficult to obtain and vary from source to source. International NGO Human Rights Watch has said at least 1,500 people, mostly Tamils living in the north and east where hostilities have been worst, have disappeared between 2006 and 2007.
Legislator Mano Ganeshan, who is also the convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee which documents disappearances and killings in and around the capital, Colombo, said there has been “a suspension” in the abductions and killings of minority Tamils in the area in recent months.
“We can’t say the killings and disappearances have stopped, only that they have been suspended. People are disappearing, but their bodies are not being found,” he said, adding that his organisation lobbies diplomatic missions and international bodies to bring pressure on the government.
“We regret that the IIGEP left but if they had stayed, they would only have given credibility to the government,” he said.
Besides the withdrawal of the international experts, the ongoing ACF inquiry has been plagued with conflict of interest issues which have sometimes overshadowed the main proceedings.
The delays have some in the humanitarian aid community, like Jeevan Thiagarajah of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella organisation of aid organisations, preferring that the allegations are examined in court. “Otherwise presumptions of innocence and guilt are being debated and pre-judged even before anyone is formally charged, proceedings begun, judgements delivered,” he pointed out.
“Ultimately justice is delayed and maybe denied. The bottom line is due process must work with the administration of justice swiftly,” Thiagarajah said.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
