News
|
||||
De-link
SLMM roles, says UN special envoy In his report released recently following a fact finding mission to Sri Lanka late last year, Prof. Alston says the struggle for peace should be firmly grounded in human rights. The Special Rapporteur visited Sri Lanka in December when the Ceasefire Agreement was under severe strain. The report said it was making recommendations in the wake of many Tamil and Muslim civilians being killed when seeking to exercise their freedom of expression, movement, association and participation in ways which were incidentally not in agreement by one or other of the factions fighting the Government. The report said none of these extrajudicial executions had been effectively investigated and such executions were significant in their contribution to the escalation of conflict. This together with the complex situation that had resulted from the ‘Karuna Group’ having split from the LTTE in March 2004 and the role of the LTTE under the CFA gave rise to the need for a report to spell out the international legal framework governing and regulating the conduct of the different parties, it said. The report also examines the problems of deaths while in police custody as a result of inadequate training of police officers in criminal investigations and the use of torture to extract confessions from suspects. However Prof. Alston says the commitment of both the Government and the LTTE should not be overlooked. “What has been achieved since the JVP insurgencies of 1971 and 1989 and in the earlier phases of conflict with the LTTE where tens of thousands of persons disappeared or were killed in military operations should not be ignored”, the report said. However, he says, that sadly during his fact-finding mission, there were 16 complaints of disappearances from the north of the country. He
warned of a reverse to such tragic actualities and urged the Government
to respond both promptly and accordingly. Among the principal recommendations
made in Prof. Alston’s report are that a complementary wide-ranging
human rights agreement should complement the CFA. He says the LTTE
must take concrete steps to demonstrate that it is serious about
human rights, in compliance with its professed commitment to human
rights. All parties to the conflict are requested to comply with their legal obligations under the common article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. This includes that killing any person not taking an active part in hostilities is prohibited. He has also urged that the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission de-link its monitoring role from its role as facilitator of the peace process. |
||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
