US Report shows no progress on accountability in Sri Lanka - HRW
August 12, 2010 07:34 am
A US State Department report released on August 11, 2010, shows that
“The US State Department report shows that nearly 15 months after the war, the Sri Lankan government has accomplished nothing for the victims of war crimes,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “Real progress on justice demands an international investigation.”
The 18-page State Department report, mandated by the 2010 Appropriations Act and prepared by the Office of War Crimes Issues, examines two ad hoc bodies that the Sri Lankan government established after the 26-year armed conflict ended in 2009.
The State Department report concludes that the “Group of Eminent Persons,” a committee created to examine more than 300 alleged laws-of-war violations detailed in an October 2009 US State Department report, was “ineffective” and “did not produce any discernible results.”
The report states: “The Department of State is not aware of any findings or reports of the Group. The Group did not appear to investigate allegations or to make any recommendations pursuant to its mandate.” The Group of Eminent Persons missed several deadlines for its report, the last in July, and now has been subsumed into the new commission.
The State Department report expresses concerns about the mandate and composition of the second panel, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which has just started its work. The report notes that “the terms of reference are ambiguous as to what types of harms they cover and whether the investigation is linked to violations of international law.”
The report also says that there are “questions concerning the independence and impartiality of some members of the commission,” including the chairman, C.R. De Silva. It noted that De Silva’s “relationship to the government” and “his involvement in the failure” of a previous commission “could compromise the independence and impartiality” of the commission.
The report also concludes that several experts commissioned by the government to examine a video of alleged extrajudicial executions by army soldiers were government and army experts and that such an inquiry “should have been undertaken by individuals without an interest in the outcome of the forensic analysis.”
The report notes “the history of failings of a series of
past [Commissions of Inquiry] established in
On June 22, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
appointed a three-person Panel of Experts to advise him on next steps on
accountability in
“The State Department report shows that countries should be looking toward
the UN to see justice done in