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One week after the official end of Sri Lanka's quarter-century civil war opposing the independentist armed movement of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to the Sri Lankan army, the UN Human Rights Council is holding a special session in Geneva this afternoon to discuss the distressing human rights situation in the island nation.
Humanitarian emergency
In a context where journalists are under control and NGO as well as UN staff are not allowed to travel freely inside the country, it is difficult to have clear and reliable estimates of the displaced, the disappeared, the wounded and the dead. It is however clear that the numbers are high and no stakeholder denies that the north of the island finds itself in a situation of humanitarian emergency. According to the Sri Lankan branch of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, 280,000 people have fled the fighting zones in the past months6. On a visit to the island on 23 May 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon deplored the "wide gap between what is needed and what is available"8 and called upon Sri Lankan authorities to immediately grant the UN and other international humanitarian agencies "unimpeded access to the [IDP] camps". "I have travelled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scenes I have seen"5, commented Mr. Ki-Moon in a CNN interview. Full access to the Menik Farm camp housing over 130,000 displaced people is still to be granted to the UN or the Red Cross7. This reluctance of Sri Lanka authorities to cooperate with humanitarian organisations is particularly worrying.
Transparency, cooperation and human rights
Sri Lanka's ambassador to the UN called today's special session of the Council a "punitive measure", adding that instead of being criticised his country should be thanked for crushing "one of the biggest brand names in the international terror market"18. In response to a resolution proposed by Switzerland calling on Colombo to "investigate all allegations"
The present humanitarian crisis, the lack of transparency of the government and the widespread human rights abuses22 all result from the civil war. A civil war whose origins are to be found in the state's rejection of the Tamils' claims for self-determination. The LTTE were not the first to call for a separate Tamil homeland and will likely not be the last. We fear that if the issue of Tamil nationalism is not addressed, the frustration of Sri Lankan Tamils might lead to the resurgence of violence. While the authorities should do everything in their power to resolve the current humanitarian crisis, they should also set up a national reconciliatory dialogue on ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples.
With this in mind, we have formulated the following recommendations to president Mahinda Rajapaksa:
• Grant the United Nations and international humanitarian NGOs full access to all IDP camps and allow them to travel freely on the island;
• Organise the return of displaced populations in a transparent and participatory manner (consult organisations representing minorities and community leaders) and set up a compensation system for lost lands (ensuring that people return to their land, an equivalent land or receive adequate compensation);
• Create special courts to hear crimes perpetrated during the civil war by LTTE supporters as well as Sri Lankan soldiers, civil servants or members of other organisations (such as TMVP, armed Muslim groups...). The sanctions should be symbolic and given in a spirit of restorative justice and national reconciliation (neither amnesty, nor imprisonment of thousands of people but collective rememberance);
• Provide an answer to the aspirations of Tamil people by giving areas with a majority Tamil population a form of meaningful autonomy;
• Demilitarise the Jaffna penninsula and organise free elections;
• Do not encourage the creation of "colonies" aimed at changing the ethnic makeup of certain regions;
• Stop registering Tamil people;
• Demine the zones formerly occupied by the LTTE and ratify the Landmine Convention;
• Ensure the physical and psychological rehabilitation of the populations which were caught in conflict zones.
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