Rights Groups Urges UNHRC to Press Sri Lanka for Monitoring Mission

Colombo - The London-Based Amnesty International (AI) and New York-Based Human Rights Watch (HRW) both wrote an open letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to press Sri Lanka to allow the International Monitoring Mission to monitor the human rights in Sri Lanka as rights situations in Sri Lanka deteriorating to alarming level.

Meanwhile, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) cited escalation of large scale of human rights violations against civilians such as enforced abductions, disappearances, killings of civilians, severely damaged criminal investigation capacity of the Sri Lankan policing system and called on the UN human rights council to press Sri Lanka for the International monitoring mission in Sri Lanka early this week.

Sri Lankan government has repeatedly refused to allow any international monitoring mission filed office in the country to monitor its human rights record.

At least 50 civilians have been killed in Sri Lanka within past two weeks while at least 20,000 people have been newly displaced due to the escalating violence between the Sri Lankan Security Forces (SF) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in September alone.

Hundreds of men, women and children from Jaffna continue to seek protections from the Jaffna Human Rights Commission (JHRC) and the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) fearing for their lives and securities from the Sri Lankan SF and paramilitary forces, according to a rights activist in Jaffna.

The escalating violence in Sri Lanka over 5,800 civilians have been killed, thousands have been abducted, hundreds were disappeared while close to 500,000 people were internally displaced (IDP) in the North and East of Sri Lanka within past two years alone, a rights group says.