| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
advertisement | |||
Tuesday September 18, 3:42 PMPanel urges UN to act on Sri Lanka killings
It accused the Sri Lankan government of failing to prevent a wave of killings allegedly carried out by state security forces and intelligence units, and called for a rights-monitoring committee to be established in Sri Lanka. The AHRC said the UN Human Rights Council should urgently and directly take action, "given the unwillingness and inability by the Sri Lankan government to guarantee the right to life and justice." The statement came four days after Sri Lanka said it was ready to accept foreign scrutiny of its human rights record to head off formal UN criticism over a spate of killings and disappearances. The war-torn island's government, locked in a decades-old war with Tamil Tiger separatists, has previously argued that criticism of authorities in Colombo would play into the hands of rebel "terrorists." The Human Rights Council is currently discussing Sri Lanka's rights record in Geneva, and diplomatic sources say that European Union member states have been considering a resolution condemning Colombo. Rights groups have recorded what they say is an increase in disappearances and extra-judicial killings. The island's security forces have in particular been accused of targeting aid workers and minority Tamils. Last month Amnesty International said hundreds of people had disappeared in Sri Lanka in the past year and more than 5,700 such cases from the past three decades were under UN review. More than 5,400 people have been killed in fighting in the past 21 months following the breakdown of a Norwegian-brokered truce between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. |
||||
|
Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|