Amnesty International has been calling on the Sri Lankan government to grant freedom of movement to over 250,000 displaced civilians now being held in internment camps in the north. The government has said that it can’t allow civilians to leave the camps until they’ve been screened to determine if any of them are connected to the opposition Tamil Tigers. (For more information on this subject, please see our Sri Lanka page.) The Sri Lankan government has announced releases of some of the civilians. But are they actually being released?
Amnesty has received reports that some of those released have apparently been transferred to other camps where they may be subjected to additional screening by local authorities. The UN has also reported that some of the displaced civilians have been transferred from the camps and are now being held in transit sites in other areas with restricted freedom of movement. The UN refugee agency last week said that they were concerned about approximately 3,300 displaced civilians who’ve been held in transit sites for more than two weeks rather than being returned to their homes. A British minister visiting the camps this week said that the British government funding couldn’t support people simply being transferred from one “closed” camp (meaning, a camp which people aren’t free to leave) to another closed camp.
The displaced civilians should be immediately allowed to leave the camps if they wish. Unlock the camps now!
The Sri Lankan President said last Saturday that no members of the Sri Lankan military would be charged for any crimes during the recent war with the opposition Tamil Tigers. Amnesty International has been calling for an international investigation into violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by both sides during the fighting. (For background on this topic, please see our Sri Lanka page.) The Sri Lankan government promised the U.N. last May that it would address the need for accountability for past abuses during the war. The Sri Lankan government should live up to its promises to the U.N. and should facilitate an independent, international investigation now.
There was some news this week regarding the internally displaced civilians in northern Sri Lanka. Amnesty International has been campaigning for the civilians to be allowed freedom of movement; currently, most of them have been held in overcrowded camps which they are not permitted to leave, until the Sri Lankan government has completed a screening process to determine whether any of the civilians have links to the Tamil Tigers. (For background on this story, see our Sri Lanka page.) This past Monday in Geneva, the Sri Lankan Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights told the Executive Committee of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees this past Monday that:
“The authorities in charge of maintaining the camps have also put in place a system of day-passes whereby IDPs [internally displaced persons] who need to attend to specific wants, ranging from attending a family wedding to visiting their bank in a nearby town, can leave the camps for a limited period of time.”
This was the first I’d heard of a day-pass system. I think it’s a welcome development. However, it doesn’t substitute for the freedom of movement the displaced civilians are entitled to. The Sri Lankan government should immediately allow the displaced civilians to leave the camps if they wish. Unlock the camps now!
Mostly I’ve been blogging about the internally displaced civilians who are being held in internment camps in northern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government says they can’t be released until they’ve been screened to determine if any are former fighters with the opposition Tamil Tigers. Amnesty International is conducting our “Unlock the Camps” campaign to demand that these displaced civilians get the freedom of movement they’re entitled to.
Today, however, I want to talk about the more than 10,000 suspected Tiger members who are being held, separately from the displaced civilians, by the Sri Lankan government. Amnesty International reported today that one of those detainees, Sri Chandramorgan, was seriously injured last Tuesday when he tried to escape from the teachers training college where he is being held. The college is being used as an unofficial detention center to hold suspected former combatants. It was rumored that Sri Chandramorgan had been killed when he tried to escape; the rumor of his killing sparked a clash between the security forces and the detainees at the college.
Unofficial detention centers, which aren’t officially acknowledged by the government, unfortunately have a long history in Sri Lanka and have been used to facilitate torture, disappearances and political killings by the security forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross has had no access to the suspected Tiger members being held by the government. Many of them have not had contact with anyone outside the detention centers, most of which are not officially acknowledged as places of detention by the government.
Although the Tamil Tigers were responsible for thousands of grave human rights abuses during the war with the Sri Lankan government, that does not mean that former Tiger combatants (or those suspected of links with the Tigers) do not have any rights. They should be treated humanely, in officially recognized places of detention, and not be subjected to torture or other ill-treatment. They should be allowed access to their families, lawyers and doctors and have the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in court. They should be promptly charged with a recognizable crime in civilian courts and provided a fair trial in accordance with international standards.
I know some may say that the Tigers didn’t afford any of this to the people they held prisoner during the war, but surely the Sri Lankan government wouldn’t want to use the Tigers as a standard of measurement for adherence to human rights standards?
“In Sri Lanka, internally displaced presons are effectively detained under conditions of internment. Humanitarian agencies’ access to these camps remains restricted, and the mandates of relief agencies are increasingly coming under threat.”
In response to the High Commissioner’s statement, Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Sri Lankan Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, told the Council that the internally displaced civilians would be allowed to leave the camps once they were screened to ensure that they weren’t members of the opposition Tamil Tigers. The Minister gave no timeframe for when this screening might be completed. So far, 6,490 people are reported to have been released from the camps, out of a total population of about 265,000.
Unfortunately for the Sri Lankan government, arbitrary detention of the displaced civilians isn’t allowed under international law – specifically, the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. The Principles do say that if in “exceptional circumstances” it is “absolutely necessary” to confine internally displaced civilians in a camp, such confinement can’t “last longer than required by the circumstances” (see Principle 12(2)). The Sri Lankan government claims that members of the Tigers may be hidden among the civilians and that if these members of the Tigers were released, they could resume attacks. If the Sri Lankan government’s logic were correct, the government would be equally justified in rounding up the entire Tamil population throughout the country, and detaining them all until they could prove they weren’t members of the Tigers. The internally displaced civilians shouldn’t have to prove their innocence to win the freedom of movement they’re entitled to.
I hope the UN Human Rights Council takes up again the situation in Sri Lanka and gets the Sri Lankan government to release the internally displaced civilians from the camps as soon as possible.
It was also reported today that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was sending the UN’s political chief, B. Lynn Pascoe, to Sri Lanka tomorrow for talks with the Sri Lankan government, including on the issue of getting the internally displaced civilians released from the camps. Even if the UN Human Rights Council doesn’t act, I hope the Secretary-General is able to get the displaced civilians released soon.
I was shocked this morning when I heard the news that J.S. Tissainayagam, the detained Sri Lankan journalist, was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment by the Sri Lankan High Court. Tissainayagam has been detained for the last 18 months and was tried under Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act for writing two magazine articles in 2006 critical of the government’s conduct of the war against the opposition Tamil Tigers. Amnesty International considers Tissainayagam to be a prisoner of conscience, detained and prosecuted solely for his legitimate work as a journalist, and has been calling for his immediate, unconditional release.
The Sri Lankan government is facing renewed calls for an investigation into human rights abuses after a graphic video was released showing extra-judicial killings.
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, which obtained the material, said this video was filmed in January – when the international media were prevented by the Sri Lankan government from covering the conflict zone.
The video shows a uniformed soldier shooting a naked man in the head. Eight dead bodies can be seen in the video as well.
Although Amnesty International is not able to verify the footage on this video, it raises important questions about violations committed during the recent conflict.
And the reaction to the video underscores the precarious situation in Sri Lanka, where tensions remain high. In response to the video, the International Secretariat of Amnesty International repeated its call for “an international, independent and credible investigation into what took place during the final days of the conflict.”
The Sri Lankan governmnet has decried the video as “absolutely false”, suggesting that those who put forth the video of supporters of the LTTE.
What remains to be seen is if the video is used–by all parties–to further divisions or to create an important discussion about the violations during the recent conflict.
You may not have been aware of it, but this past Wednesday, Aug. 19, was the first World Humanitarian Day. August 19 was designated by the U.N. General Assembly last December as a day each year to honor aid workers around the world, especially those who have given their lives in the line of duty.
The UN website about the World Humanitarian Day noted that in Sri Lanka, 17 staff of the French aid agency Action contre la Faim (ACF) (Action Against Hunger) were killed in August 2006. While the Sri Lankan government has blamed the opposition Tamil Tigers for the killings, a recent report by the Sri Lankan human rights group, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), provides evidence pointing to the security forces as the killers. And Amnesty International’s report, “Twenty Years of Make-Believe: Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry, details serious deficiencies of subsequent government investigations into the massacre.
It’s been more than 3 years, and still the killers of the 17 ACF staff have not been brought to justice. One more example of the continuing impunity enjoyed by the Sri Lankan security forces. I hope that by next year’s World Humanitarian Day, I won’t be able to make the same statement.
Amnesty International today issued an urgent action appeal on the five Sri Lankan doctors currently being held by the government under emergency regulations. We are concerned that they are at risk of torture or other ill-treatment. The doctors had provided medical services to civilians trapped in the war zone, during the last stages of the war earlier this year between the government and the opposition Tamil Tigers. Before they were detained by the government on May 15, the doctors had provided eyewitness accounts to the media of the suffering experienced by the trapped civilians. On July 8, while still under detention, the doctors appeared at a press conference organized by the government and retracted their earlier reports. AI is concerned about how genuine their later statments were. The doctors remain in detention without charge.
Amnesty is calling on the Sri Lankan government to release the doctors immediately, unless they are to be promptly charged with a recognizable criminal offense. Please join our appeal and write the government on their behalf. Write to: President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Presidential Secretariat, Colombo 1, Sri Lanka; email: prsec@presidentsoffice.lk.
MYANMAR - Tensions rise in anticipition of verdict
The situation in Myanmar (Burma) is getting more tense this week in anticipation of a verdict against Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, August 11. She is currently held in Myanmar’s notorious Insein prison, awaiting her verdict in a trial that has gathered worldwide attention. Given the fact that the “Four Eights” anniversary is to take place only 3 days prior to the release of Aung San Suu Kyi’s verdict, these two highly politically charged events can prove to be a galvanizing force for major protests. Looking at the regime’s track record of violent suppression of any dissent, recent developments justify major concern of what will happen in the country in the next few days. Last week, authorities detained 30 members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), in an apparent attempt to block them from organizing protests on July 31, the day the verdict was originally expected. All those arrested are at risk of torture. While some of the opposition members were released, further arrests can be expected in the run up to the announcement of the verdict. If there are outbreaks of demonstrations in spite of government attempts to forestall them, there is the added concern that we will see violent tactics by the police and armed forces to suppress them like the ones we saw in the uprisings of August and September of 2007. Reports are indicating that the regime has heightened its alert and has deployed security forces in strategic areas of the country, something that is very characteristic of the government preparations to prevent suspected dissent.
“(…) we have consistently had a very consistent public message that we believe that she should be immediately and unconditionally released, along with the 2,100 other political prisoners in Burma. I know Secretary Clinton has been very engaged with her colleagues, with some of her foreign minister colleagues. It was a topic at the ASEAN meeting, and she took every opportunity to urge her colleagues to make a similar message on the need for Aung San Suu Kyi to be released conditionally.” – Ian Kelly, Department of State, July 30, 2009.
“Suu Kyi’s continued detention, isolation, and show trial based on spurious charges cast serious doubt on the Burmese regime’s willingness to be a responsible member of the international community.” President Obama, May 26, 2009.
SRI LANKA - Local elections without independent monitors
There are growing concerns over the upcoming August 8 local elections due to the prohibition of media and independent monitors of the first elections since the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers. This Saturday’s elections in the cities of Vavuniya and Jaffna are being hyped up by the government as the first democratic elections in this war-torn region.
The two cities fall just on the other side of the former de facto state of the Tamil Tigers in the north. Tamils remain the majority in the area. The cities in which the elections are held are surrounded by checkpoints, only accessible with permission from the Defense Ministry. Lakshman Hulugalle, the head of the government’s security information center, stated that reporters will not be allowed into the cities to report on the elections, relying solely on handouts from the government. The Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa originally stated to let civilians who lived in the Tamil Tigers’ self-declared state to vote in an election. However, close to 300,000 civilians are currently held in military run de-facto internment camps.
August 11: Verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi expected
Jacki Mowery, Anil Raj and Jim Roberts contributed to this post.
Human Rights Flashpoints is a weekly column about countries at risk of escalating human rights violations and is brought to you by AIUSA’s Crisis Prevention and Response team.
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Scott Edwards is Project Manager for the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and researches issues at the intersect of political violence and conflict, human rights, and aid provision. See all »
