Local actions have international reactions

Among several concerns, she also raises the continuing series of deaths in police custody, and recent appointments to the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) and the Office for Reparations. It is abundantly clear that actions that seem overtly to be in the domestic realm, are under extreme scrutiny by the United Nations and could have grave international repercussions for Sri Lanka.

In March this year, the UNHRC adopted resolution 46/1 on Sri Lanka which noted the lack of accountability for past violations of international human rights, and humanitarian law, and called on the office of the High Commissioner to ‘collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence and to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes’.

Unlike previous actions at the UNHRC, resolution 46/1 does not require the consent nor cooperation of the Government of Sri Lanka to move forward. The mandate provided to the High Commissioner has not been limited to any time- frame or conflict either. The Resolution calls for a ‘comprehensive report that includes further options for advancing accountability’ in Sri Lanka suggesting an open-ended mandate that could in theory investigate any serious human rights violation, past or present.

For a country that has the burden of addressing 50 years of grave human rights violations, the current Government does itself no favours by permitting custodial deaths and arbitrary arrests to continue with impunity. A spate of custodial deaths recently recorded from several parts of the country highlight- ed once again the issue of Police brutality, embedded into Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system.

The killing of underworld characters has been normalised; there is even tacit acceptance from the public at large when hardened criminals are meted out justice outside the legal realm. Victims are dehumanised as drug addicts, narcotic traffickers and criminal elements to make their deaths more palatable to the masses.

Custodial deaths in Sri Lanka are not anomalies, but the result of a culture of impunity prevailing for years within the Sri Lankan law enforcement sys- tem including the Police, Department of Prisons and other detaining authori- ties including the military.

The Government has further eroded its credibility by compromising the very institutions that were specifically established to address crimes such as custo- dial and extra-judicial killings. The OMP and the Office for Reparations are two key institutions intended to offer redress to victims of political violence. They represent the sole successes of Sri Lanka’s transitional justice process.

Yet, recent appointments to these key institutions have severely compro- mised their independence and effectiveness. For example, the appointment of former war-time Police chief Jayantha Wickramaratne as a member of the Office of Missing Persons is deeply problematic. A 2015 UN report cited Wickramaratne as overseeing three Police units that were involved in mass enforced disappearances at the end of the war.

The daughter of slain editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, Ahimsa, has also accused Wickramaratne – then IGP – of derailing investigations into her father’s 2009 murder. Preceding Wickramaratne’s OMP appointment, was the nomination of retired Supreme Court Justice Upali Abeyratne as Chairman of the Office of Missing Persons.

This appointment also set off alarm bells, because just months before, Abeyratne had served as Chair of the Presidential Commission on Political Victimisation that recommended the exoneration and acquittal of military offi- cials accused of abduction and murder in several emblematic disappearance cases.

As recent actions have proven, international scrutiny into Sri Lanka’s human rights record, both past and present, will be relentless. The UNHRC is due to receive a verbal update from High Commissioner Bachelet on the pro- gress of resolution 46/1 in a few months. This will be followed by a written update in March 2022 and a comprehensive report in September of the same year.

There are currently several actions underway at the European Parliament and the US Congress regarding Sri Lanka’s human rights situation. Addressing these international developments as merely foreign policy problems will fur- ther compound the issue. They require significant policy and structural chang- es domestically.

It is advisable for the Government to address the concerns raised by High Commissioner Bachelet with the urgency and seriousness they deserve, in order to mitigate some of the devastating international ramifications, that will be inevitable if urgent remedial action is not taken.