This recent film is not directly about Human Rights Defenders (although they are certainly victims of it) nor about the treatment of ethnic minorities. Rather is demonstrates. through a large variety of interviews with victims, lawyers – including Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission – and experts, how a lack of investigative skills and high-level condoning have led the Sri Lankan policy to use torture routinely. Most shockingly a former police officers confirms that this is what is expected from the police by the system. It has become a mindset at all levels, including most of the judiciary. It is a long film but worth it. The Danish film maker, Josefina Bergsten, manages to demonstrate the disconnect between international procedures (which are based on functioning institutions that have to address a few bad apples) and the reality on the ground in Sri Lanka where the good apples are the exception. See it and forward it: https://vimeo.com/41898677
Posts Tagged ‘Sri Lanka’
UN High Commissioner Pillay speaks out against harassment of Sri Lankan HRDs during Council in Geneva
March 23, 2012
The man pictured here is Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has tremendous helped the OHCHR during the last years to have a more penetrating presence in the media. On this occasion on 23 March 2012, it was to warn that there must be no reprisals against Sri Lankan human rights defenders in the wake of a resolution calling on its Government to probe alleged abuses during the country’s civil war. The warning from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, follows the adoption of a resolution yesterday by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling on Sri Lanka to take “credible” steps to ensure accountability for alleged serious violations committed in 2009 during the final stages of the conflict between the Government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and to ensure accountability.“During this Human Rights Council session, there has been an unprecedented and totally unacceptable level of threats, harassment and intimidation directed at Sri Lankan activists who had travelled to Geneva to engage in the debate, including by members of the 71-member official Sri Lankan government delegation,” said Rupert Colville, at a press briefing in Geneva. Mr. Colville said that intimidation and harassment of Sri Lankan civil society activists have also been reported in other locations around Geneva. Also, the Sri Lankan ambassador in Geneva received an anonymous threatening letter which is being followed up by the police and UN security.
At the same time, newspapers, news websites and TV and radio stations in Sri Lanka have been running, since January, a “continuous campaign of vilification,” including naming and in many cases showing images of activists, describing them as an ‘NGO gang’ and repeatedly accusing them of treason, mercenary activities and association with terrorism. “Some of these reports have contained barely veiled incitement and threats of retaliation,” Mr. Colville said. “At least two comments posted by readers of articles of this type have called for burning down of the houses of the civil society activists named in the articles, and at least one such comment called openly for them to be killed.”
The spokesperson said the High Commissioner had noted that some of the attacks on human rights defenders were carried in Sri Lankan state media and Government websites or were filed by journalists who had been officially accredited to the Council session by the Sri Lankan permanent mission. “She is calling on the Government to ensure the protection of human rights defenders, to publicly disassociate itself from such statements, and to clearly uphold the right of Sri Lankan citizens to freely engage in international debate of this kind,” Mr. Colville said.
from: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41617&Cr=Sri%20Lanka&Cr1=
Related articles
- A balanced post on how the US should balance its human rights record (thoolen.wordpress.com)
- JOINT STATEMENT of Srilankan Human Rights Defenders (kractivist.wordpress.com)
- Sri Lankan protesters decry UN call for wartime abuses probe (ctv.ca)
A balanced post on how the US should balance its human rights record
March 23, 2012Under the title “A Diminished Force for Good” Tom Parker of USA AI posted on 21 March 2012 a piece that – in a frank way – argues that the US should act with regard to its own human rights problems in order to regain international influence. It takes the lead role of the US in getting a resolution on Sri Lanka (successfully) passed in the Human Rights Council in Geneva this week and contrasts it with how the US has dealt with human rights abuses in its own ambit.
As Amnesty’s recent report Locked Away: Sri Lanka’s security detainees makes clear, human rights abuses still continue to this day in Sri Lanka. Instances of arbitrary and illegal detention have been widely reported, as have acts of torture and extrajudicial execution. Tom Parker says “I know from my own personal experience of working with Sri Lankan human rights defenders that the climate of fear in which opponents of the Rajapaksa regime operate is all-pervasive. The situation in Sri Lanka is grave and the intervention of the United Nations is much needed. .However, welcome though the US-sponsored resolution is, it is greatly undermined by the embarrassing gap that exists between US rhetoric and US behavior. Critics have not been slow in pointing this out.”…”The complete failure of the United States to address the deliberate use of torture as an integral part of the War on Terror hugely diminishes its ability to put pressure on other states to adhere to human rights standards that it itself has ignored. And we are all the poorer for it.”
for the full text see: A Diminished Force for Good.
42 human rights defenders and political activists detained to prevent them from participating in a peaceful protest in Jaffna on Human Rights Day – FIDH – Worldwide Human Rights Movement
December 15, 2011For those who thought that the situation in Sri Lanka is normalizing the attached report from the OMCT/FIDH Observatory for Human Rights Defenders makes disappointing reading: 42 human rights defenders and political activists detained to prevent them from participating in a peaceful protest in Jaffna on Human Rights Day – FIDH – Worldwide Human Rights Movement.
Sri Lanka: one of the worst in respect of disappearances
August 10, 2011On Friday 29 July the United High Commissioner for Human Rights came out forcefully about the situation of human rights in Sri Lanka. The immediate reason was that the decomposed body of Human Rights Defender Pattani Razeek (the managing trustee of the Community Trust Fund, a NGO based in Puttalam) was found 17 months after his abduction.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on the Sri Lankan government to conduct a swift investigation into the abduction and murder. “We hope that investigation and prosecution of this crime will now be expedited, and that there will be similar progress in resolving the many thousands of outstanding cases of disappearance in Sri Lanka,” she said. The UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances currently has 5,653 outstanding cases from Sri Lanka in its records. One of the most notable is the disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda, the journalist of the Lanka-e-News website who was known for his antigovernment news and cartoons went missing without a trace just days before the presidential election last year. “We strongly urge the Government of Sri Lanka to expedite investigations and provide information on Mr. Ekneligoda’s whereabouts and fate,” the UN spokesperson added.
UNJUST, film about women rights defenders, receives award at Movies that Matter film festival
April 13, 2011This blog has a special interest in HRDs and films. Therefore the following is highlighted:
The jury at the Movies that Matter Festival, which was held in The Hague from March 24 to 31, awarded Suciwati Munir, Angkhana Neelaphaijit and Padma Perera, a Special Jury Award for Josefina Bergsten’s film “UNJUST”. The film documents the struggles of the three wives, mothers and activists to challenge impunity and get justice for their husbands, all of who lost their lives in 2004 due to the murderous intentions of state agents. “Through this film, three women who have seen the worst aspects of their countries’ justice systems have helped the world to understand what it means to be living in these sorts of conditions,” said Basil Fernando, of the Asian Human Rights Commission. His Hong Kong-based regional rights group had already in July 2010 given the film its Asian Human Rights Award for Creative Media.
Suciwati’s husband, Indonesian human rights lawyer Munir, was poisoned on a Garuda Airlines flight in 2004 while travelling from Indonesia to study abroad. A former pilot and former head of the airline were implicated in the murder, and the pilot given a 20-year jail sentence. However, the trail of connections to his killing has led back to the Indonesian secret services, and the masterminds have never been identified. A five-minute video profile of Suciwati is available on the website: http://www.moviesthatmatterfestival.nl/english_index/nieuws_en/news/169
Thai police abducted Angkhana’s husband, Somchai, from his car on a street in Bangkok. Although five police went on trial, only one was convicted of a minor offence. He has himself disappeared, and an appeal court recently overturned his conviction. All the police are still serving. Angkhana has since set up an organization to work for the victims of enforced disappearances in Thailand, and is now among the country’s best known human rights defenders. In 2006 she was a joint recipient of the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.
Padma’s husband Gerard was a victim of police torture in Sri Lanka who became an outspoken and fearless advocate of human rights. Gunmen connected to the police shot him as he travelled on a public bus, shortly before he was going to depose in court against the officers who were accused of torturing him. The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has honoured Padma with an award for the struggle that she has undertaken since to get justice for her husband and to promote human rights in her country.
Persons wishing to obtain copies of “UNJUST” may contact the filmmaker, Josefina Bergsten, at josefina.bergsten@gmail.com.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 