ARTICLE OF BAHU (NSSP) ON POST ELECTIONS

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dr Vickramabahu <vamabahu@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 9:05 AM
Subject: ARTICLE OF BAHU
To: <srinissanka@gmail.com>

HR campaigners  claim Sri Lanka has the 2^nd highest number of unresolved cases of enforced disappearance held by the UN’s Working Group on Enforced Disappearance, with 65,000 cases officially recorded by the government itself and many  unrecorded. The organizations of families of the disappeared are demanding a special independent investigation of the circumstances of the disappearances and the fate of those who went missing because the Sri Lankan government has made no progress in the ten years since the end of the war. They have already place this demand before the new Rajapaksa government.  After co-sponsoring UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 in 2re 015 which committed the state to a transitional justice process, Sri Lanka’s government finally set up an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in September 2017.  This Office has made little progress since incorporation and, significantly, has produced fewer results so far than the previous Paranagama Commission set up under President Rajapaksa under international pressure to investigate the same tragedies.  The OMP has no mandate to refer its findings to judicial proceedings and little authority to call on international funds or expertise.

Since co-sponsoring the HRC resolution, both the president and prime minister, along with numerous other high officials have publicly stated that no war heroes will be prosecuted for the war crimes and crimes against humanity detailed in 2015 report of the Office of the High Commissioner’s Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL).  It is credibly believed that the vast majority of the enforced disappearances were committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces and their associated paramilitaries. Lankan government take the stand that armed forces were fighting most cruel terrorist organization in an unusual background hence wide margin should be given for mistakes.

The appointment in August of Shavendra Silva, who is named in the OISL report as being in command of forces which are credibly suspected of serious international crimes, as Commander of the Armed Forces is an indication of the government’s reluctance to take concrete action toward its commitments on post-war transitional justice.  The vast majorities of other suspects named in the OISL report continues in their careers, receive medals and are promoted to high posts with complete impunity.  A candidate for presidential election, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was Defense Secretary during and after the war, has committed to withdrawing from the HRC resolution if elected, already the President of Lanka. This means the argument of dealing with most unethical ferocious terrorism has been accepted unconditionally by the Lankan regime.

The Australian Tamil Congress (ATC), The British Tamils Forum (BTF), the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) and the United States Tamil Action Group (USTAG) express their solidarity with the relatives of the missing and forcibly disappeared, both Tamil and Sinhala in Lanka, in their long campaign for truth, justice and reparation. In the face of total inaction by Sri Lanka’s authorities, they call on the international community to honor the urgent demands by the families of disappeared for justice in the form of a special court, the exercise of universal jurisdiction.

www.nssp.info
tp 0777875758