UN Human Rights Chief’s Lanka visit

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk was on an official visit to Sri Lanka last week. Unlike previous visits by high commissioners however, Turk faced a unique challenge – the victims of human rights violations did not believe his visit was necessary in this moment. 

When High Commissioners Navinethan Pillay and Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein visited Sri Lanka, protests against those visits were often associated with Sinhala Buddhist nationalists and Government goons. By contrast, Turk faced pushback from victims and their families in the formerly embattled north and east. Prior to his visit loved ones of disappeared Tamils in Mullaitivu staged protests questioning Turk’s bona fides in visiting Sri Lanka. It is also understood that over 100 civil society organisations had written to Turk urging him to at least postpone his visit until after September when there is greater clarity on the Sri Lanka accountability mechanism which the new NPP Government has outright rejected.

Concerns raised by civil society organisations were justified when Turk conducted what seemed more like a bilateral visit by a head of state rather than an official visit of the UN top envoy for Human Rights. Turk left Sri Lanka feeling hopeful, in stark contrast with Sri Lankan victims whose unending quest for justice and dignified peace has endured for decades. His final statement at the conclusion of the visit focused solely on reconciliation and truth-seeking, without making any strong calls for justice or accountability. 

Despite Turk’s hope and change message the facts on the ground tell a very different tale. The current Government has championed anti-corruption in a way that it has failed to do with accountability for human rights violations, presumably the bread and butter of the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Despite having an overwhelming two thirds majority in parliament, the Government has done little to repeal the draconian Online Safety Act, a legislation it vehemently opposed when in Opposition. Despite repeated promises, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) remains in force and the Police continue to arrest people under this legislation. Reform of the PTA was the subject of extensive consultations during the Yahapalana regime and draft legislation that adheres to the international standards in addressing counter terrorism already exists. 

If there is political will, the Online Safety Act can be repealed immediately and the PTA can be replaced with a law that respects the individual rights of the citizens. Neither has been done and these are just examples of ‘low hanging fruits’ that could have been delivered within a month of the general election. 

On accountability, this Government has shown a shocking lack of political interest. Over 60,000 of its own cadre were extrajudicially killed or subjected to enforced disappearance in the 1987-89 period, but the JVP-led Government shows no signs of wanting to deliver justice to these victims or to the many tens of thousands of others who have suffered similar fate due to State violence both in the South and the North. The statements issued by the Government at the UN Human Rights Council in recent months on accountability are regurgitations of the same ethno-nationalist positions articulated by the previous Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe administrations. 

By handing the Government a huge propaganda victory with his ‘hope and change’ takeaway from Sri Lanka, Turk may have inadvertently created an uphill struggle for victims to seek continuation of the international mechanism his office is running in the hope of delivering justice to victims where the Sri Lankan judiciary has repeatedly failed. His rose-tinted messaging will reverberate in Geneva and other capitals across the world, where the co-sponsors of a resolution at the Human Rights Council must soon begin deliberations on the Sri Lankan resolution that is coming up for renewal in September 2025. Civil society voices, carrying messages from Sri Lanka’s tens of thousands of victims of atrocity crimes and emblematic violations to policymakers and bureaucrats who must engage in these deliberations might be met with scepticism, in light of the High Commissioner’s glowing reports about the intentions and motivations of the NPP Government. 

From Louise Arbour to Navi Pillay, Mary Robinson to Michelle Bachelet, Turk’s predecessors were street fighters and champions for human rights, or prosecutors and judges who took on dictators and apartheid states before assuming office as UN HR Chiefs. They stood with victims of human rights violations in Sri Lanka, at the cost of being acrimoniously alienated by the Government of Sri Lanka. Turk is a western European bureaucrat, with little previous background in human rights, and his visit to Sri Lanka showed he was choosing a different, more conciliatory approach towards State parties. 

Today in the global arena consensus has emerged that the world is witnessing a genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and called for the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank and an end to apartheid rule in the occupied territories. Yet, to date Turk has not called Israel’s atrocities in Gaza out as genocide and crimes against humanity. Even as Israel corals the Gazan population inside iron fencing reminiscent of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, forcing people to queue up for a bag of flour and slaughtering them in cold blood, Turk cannot seem to call out the Israeli regime for the crime of extermination. In such a backdrop Turk roaming the world, lecturing Africans and Asians on human rights harks back to an era of colonialism when Europeans sought to ‘civilise’ us while committing some of the worst atrocities in human history. 

If a glossy propaganda coup for the Government was all that was ultimately achieved during the three-day visit, human rights globally may have been better served if Turk actually stayed in Geneva and took a stand against the genocide and the crime of aggression happening now in front of our eyes. Long suffering victims of human rights violations in Sri Lanka need not be made into ‘props’ or a ‘tactical diversion’ to whitewash the European settler colonisers, and their Western backers from carrying out a genocide and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population in a colonised land. 

In the quest for justice for past human rights atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan State there are many international friends who have championed the rights of the victims. It is yet to be seen if Volker Turk will be among them.