Human rights investigators pull out of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's reputation on human rights took a double blow on Mar. 6 as an international panel monitoring abuse investigations resigned and a leading watchdog said the country's government had illegally abducted hundreds of people. The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), comprising experts from the UK, US and six other countries as well as the EU and UN, announced it is pulling out. The panel was invited to the South Asian island state two years ago by Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to oversee a government commission looking at alleged human rights abuses connected to its bloody battle against armed separatists, the Tamil Tigers. The presence of the panel–which was monitoring investigations into 16 cases, among them the murder in 2006 of 17 aid workers, an air strike that reportedly killed 51 schoolgirls, and a number of reported atrocities by the Tamil Tigers - had allowed Sri Lanka's government to partially placate international concern over the human rights situation. However, panel members repeatedly accused the government commission of working slowly, failing to protect witnesses and operating without transparency. "The IIGEP has decided that it will terminate its operation in Sri Lanka," it said in a statement. "There has been, and continues to be, a lack of political and institutional will to investigate and inquire into the cases before the [government] commission." Concern over abuse has escalated since the resumption of large-scale fighting between the government and Tamil Tigers following the recent collapse of a truce. Around 70,000 people have been killed since the group began fighting in 1983 for an independent homeland for the country's minority ethnic Tamil population. Also on Mar. 6, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the scale of apparent government-inspired abductions constituted "a national crisis." In a 241-page report on the situation in Sri Lanka, the New York-based rights group said security forces and pro-government armed groups had "disappeared" several hundred people, many of whom were feared to be dead. According to UN data, HRW said, more people had vanished in Sri Lanka during 2006 and 2007 than in any other country in the world. The report documents 99 cases and examines the Sri Lankan government's response, which the group calls "grossly inadequate." "President Mahinda Rajapaksa, once a rights advocate, has now led his government to become one of the world's worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances," said Elaine Pearson from the group. "The end of the ceasefire means this crisis will continue until the government starts taking serious measures." Many of the cases highlighted in the report involve allegations of people being taken away by uniformed security officers, with specific units identified in some instances. The majority of the victims -- thought to have been taken because of alleged links to the Tigers -- were ethnic Tamils, although Muslims and Sinhalese were also targeted. The Tamil Tigers have themselves been blamed for serious abuses including forced child recruitment and the repression of local people in areas under their control, HRW said.