Sri Lanka: State Abuses Intensifies at Alarming Rates, Says NGOs

New York - While the General Assembly of the United Nations opens its 62nd regular session Today, September 18 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the UNHRC members and delegates are in session on 6th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva to discuss the human rights violations and states involvements in all forms of rights abuses, Sri Lanka’s state abuses against the civilians have intensified to alarming proportions, according to the Non Governmental Organizations (NGO).

Sunila Abeysekera, executive director of the Sri Lankan rights group INFORM statement to the UNHRC, the number of disappearances and targeted killings in Nepal had dropped dramatically after the U.N. field office was set up there, argued more transparency in Sri Lanka would help much more than short visits from overseas officials and called for UN monitors to Sri Lanka.

According to another rights group, in the North and East of Sri Lanka, it is like a revisiting ghost, numerous state enforced abductions, disappearances and unlawful killings are taking place with impunity. Men women and children are being snatched from their homes, sometimes at night, sometime in broad daylight in front of their family members. Political, military and paramilitary intimidation seems to be the point. The corpses of snatched civilians have also turned up in wells, road sides, and rivers. Most times these horrendous crimes against civilians remained unsolved and perpetrators are still at large and investigations are not carried out or largely ignored by the Sri Lankan authority.

A local human rights organization in the north and east of Sri lanka has compiled detail  documents listing which states that Since Rajapaksa’s regime elected to the power back in November 2005, Total of close to 2000 civilians were killed, close to 900 were abducted or disappeared and close to half a million people were internally displaced in the north and east of Sri Lanka including at least 69 children in the violence.

The UN Human Rights Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sir John Holmes early last month had a short stay in Sri Lanka on fact finding mission stated that Sri Lanka is among the most dangerous places on earth for humanitarian workers, and called on the government to probe civil war abuses and consider an international rights monitoring mission.  

The United States-Based the Human Rights Watch (HRW) last month cited, the rights abuses such as enforced mass abductions, mass disappearances, unlawful execution style summery killings, mass murders, tortures, rapes, destruction of personal, public and cultural properties, forceful displacements and unwillingness and inability of

the Sri Lankan states to take control the worsening rights situation for the citizens of Sri Lanka are the reasons for their call for UN monitoring mission.

HRW also said, in Sri Lanka, there were more than 550 extrajudicial executions in the north and east of Sri Lanka, and more than 350 disappearances, between January and June this year.

London-Based Amnesty International (AI) said this week, within past 21 months, hundreds of people have reportedly been abducted by the Sri Lankan Security Forces (SF) or armed groups in areas in the north and east of Sri Lanka, as well as elsewhere in the country including the capital Colombo and urged the United Nation to address the right abuses in Sri Lanka.

Hong Kong-based-Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) urged the Government of Sri Lanka favorably considers the assistance being offered by the international community, particularly in the form of a field based UN Human Rights Monitoring presence in Sri Lanka citing widespread rights abuses.

Hundreds of civilians of all ages have surrendered to the Jaffna Human Rights Commission (JHRC) within past twenty one months fearing for their safety and their lives.

In the ever worsening violence and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, over 5,400 people killed including 44 aid workers and 10 journalists, close to 500,000 people internally displaced (IDP) with limited or no access to food, medicines and basic essentials in the north and east of Sri Lanka while thousands of people were abducted and hundreds are missing within past twenty one months.

Civilians caught up in the vicious cycles of rights abuses in many cases state assisted, more and more are turning to the highest body of the world, the General Assembly of the United Nations to save them from the dire human rights violations against them as they have lost all faiths in guarantors of the law of the Sri Lanka, says another rights groups spokesman in New York.