Unarmed, unheard and unsung

The toothless Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission is yet to find its voice

The Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission (SLHRC) was chartered in 1996 by the Sri Lankan government with a mandate to ‘promote respect for fundamental rights.’ After five years of operation, the inherent weaknesses of the SLHRC are becoming increasingly evident. The Sri Lankan government’s unwillingness to grant the SLHRC the independence that the Paris Principles deem imperative has raised serious questions about the body’s efficacy and credibility…

Sri Lanka has the dubious distinction of having not one but several national institutions purporting to address human rights issues, with conflicting and overlapping mandates.

The SLHRC is the last in a string of national institutions set up in the past two decades - these include the Human Rights Task Force that was replaced by the SLHRC, the Human Rights Centre of the Sri Lankan Foundation Institute, the Commission for the Elimination of Discrimination and Monitoring of Fundamental Rights, the Commissions of Inquiry into Disappearances, and the Supreme Court.

The multiplicity of institutions is the result of the government's unwillingness to vest its human rights institutions with adequate authority and resources. Rather than work to strengthen existing mechanisms, the government has tended to respond to the failure or inadequacies of a particular mechanism by setting up yet another institution.

The SLHRC, as a result, suffers from the same or similar weaknesses as its predecessors. Foremost among these is an insufficient mandate. Though it is empowered to inquire into alleged cases of human rights violations and to undertake visits to prisons and detention centres; the Commission has met with strong resistance. Security personnel frequently fail to cooperate with the SLHRC and have often denied Commission staff access to the detention facilities.

Throughout the country, the government has initiated a number of anti-terrorism programmes, ostensibly as part of the war effort, that have, in practice, served to discriminate against Tamils. Civil rights of Tamils have been violated with the help of the draconian Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which essentially annuls all other rights in national and international legislation. An examination of the Emergency Regulations under the Public Security Ordinance and the Prevention of Terrorism Act shows that extra-constitutional measures have been an integral part of the Sri Lankan political system and are used to suppress political dissent and ethnic populations.

In May 2000, the President of Sri Lanka promulgated new emergency regulations, which confer the power to make arrests on “any authorised person” in addition to the police and armed forces and considerably extend the authority to detain individuals.

As the only safeguard against abuse of the emergency regulations, Section 28 of the Human Rights Commission Act No. 21 of 1996 stipulates that every officer who makes an arrest or order of detention must inform the SLHRC or any person specially authorised by it of the arrest or detention, as well as the place at which the person arrested or detained is being held. Unfortunately, in practice, Section 28 is often deliberately bypassed.

Recent years in Sri Lankan are replete with instances where several hundred persons have either been killed extrajudicially by the security forces or have disappeared after being taken into security force custody and are presumed dead. With the exception of the six security officers who were convicted in the 1996 killings of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy and the four convictions for abduction involving 88 security personnel, no member of the security forces has been convicted for any crime.

In the majority of cases where military personnel have committed human rights violations, the government has failed to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.

For example, under pressure from outside sources, the Sri Lankan government declared that it would close all secret detention centres. However, there are credible reports that the military holds people briefly in smaller detention centres for interrogation before transferring them to declared places of detention, where they are often abused. Though this procedure - which allegedly occurs on the Jaffna peninsula, in Vavuniya, and in the east - does not comply with Section 28 requirements of the Human Rights Commission Act, the military maintains that the detainees are “in transit”; therefore, they are not in a detention centre and their right of notification is not being violated.

Several pro-government militia groups have emerged essentially as cohorts of the security forces. Such groups are also responsible for many undocumented disappearances. There is mounting evidence that pro-government Tamil militias such as the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Elam (PLOTE) detain people at various locations, which serve as undeclared detention centres.

However, the SLHRC has no mandate or authority to enforce respect for human rights among such militia groups. In one instance, when the Director of the SLHRC office in Vavuniya complained about PLOTE activity, he received death threats and eventually had to leave the country.

The SLHRC has failed to comply with the minimum standards of independence as set out in the Paris Principles and the UN Handbook. The UN Handbook specifically notes that the “founding law of a national institution will be critical in ensuring its legal independence, particularly its independence from the government.”

Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that the SLHRC covers up human rights violations carried out by the government or its agents and is not free from government interference. The most glaring example of this is the Commission's reticence on the Bindunuwewa massacre.(see box below)

According to international guidelines, NHRIs must ensure that they are accessible to people throughout the region in which they operate. While the SLHRC has 11 regional offices, none of the offices have been able to comply with the SLHRC mandate or the UN Handbook's minimum standards. The regional offices lack resources and equipment. For example, three of the regional offices have had no method of transportation for 7-8 months at a time. Furthermore, field officers are not given proper protection when their inquiries place them in danger.

After almost four years of operation, the Commission is yet to hire permanent staff. In addition, the Commission has been unwilling to give long-term contracts to many of its workers. This impairs the Commission's ability to deal with the large number of complaints that it receives.

The Commission has also failed to prioritise the task of increasing accountability and transparency in its handling of complaints. The SLHRC's annual reports serve as the only source of information on the Commission available to the general public, though they tend to be delayed and deficient. The reports do not provide a review of the complaints received or a summary of the work done on complaints received.

Although the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission Act envisages an annual report to Parliament (clause 29), it does not require that the report be made available to the public at the same time.

The SLHRC's first annual report, covering the period March 1997-March 1998 was not made available to the public until the year 2000.

In addition to the meagre annual report, government censorship of the media further contributes to the SLHRC's lack of transparency. Observers are unable to determine the state of affairs or the activities of groups such as the SLHRC, especially in the northern and eastern portions of Sri Lanka, where most of the country's conflict is concentrated. Although the President of Sri Lanka recently lifted some censorship restrictions on the media, access to information is still difficult.

Sri Lanka is currently in the midst of a civil war, and, as a result, the potential for human rights abuses is extremely high. To ensure the protection of its citizens from unjust and inhumane treatment, the Sri Lankan government must act to equip the SLHRC.

To this end, the government must grant the Commission more powers, greater resources and increased independence.

Cover-up at Bindunuwewa

The Bindunuwewa massacre occurred on 25 October 2000, when 26 Tamil youth – 29 by some estimates – between the ages of 14-23, were chopped to death while approximately 14 other Tamil youth were seriously injured in the Bindunuwewa Rehabilitation Centre, in Bindunuwewa town, Badulla district. The Centre is jointly run by the Presidential Secretariat, the Child Protection Authority, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, the National Youth Services Council, and the Don Bosco Technical Centre.

The perpetrators were a group of Sinhalese men who had entered the maximum-security section of the rehabilitation centre where the Tamil youth were held under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act. Two hundred ninety prisoners testified that prison officials including home guards and policemen had let the gangs in, though prison officials deny this.

There is also evidence that prison authorities participated in the killing orgy by providing axes and knives to other prisoners. Police officers reportedly shouted: “We have cleared the area of Tigers and protected our homeland,” and intimidated journalists and NGOs trying to report the incident. “Go away,” they said, “and don’t report anything that would discredit our Sinhala-Buddhist country”. Despite the evidence of the policemen’s role in the Bindunuwewa massacre, the SLHRC essentially exonerated them, only charging them with dereliction of duty. When questioned, the police denied the charges, and while there is no hard evidence that the police actually killed the Tamil youth, those engaged in complicity and accessory to murder are just as guilty as the actual killers under Sri Lankan law.

Further illustrating the cover-up, the SLHRC report on the massacre also dispensed with some crucial details. For instance, it did not highlight the fact that at least two persons, including acting Jaffna mayor S Raviraj, had alleged that some of those injured at Bindunuwewa and warded at the Bandarawela hospital had been chained. The report also failed to emphasise the curious fact that the bloodstained poles and iron rods found by a team of investigators at the site of the massacre were not produced as circumstantial evidence in court.