Sri Lanka's request is delaying tactic - HR Groups

BBC Sinhala
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Human rights groups have expressed their surprise at the Sri Lanka government's request for more time to investigate human rights abuses which it earlier rejected as anti government propaganda.

Addressing the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva on Monday, Sri Lanka's special human rights envoy Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said internal processes are already in place, and appealed for more time to deal with human rights issues in the country.

Amnesty International (AI) researcher on Sri Lanka, Yolanda Foster says that there is nothing new in the government's argument for more time and space.

"Successive governments in Sri Lanka had asked for time but only delivered broken promises," she told BBC Sandeshaya.

Ms Foster said that abductions, killings and torture continued across the island within a persistent climate of impunity.

She recalled that The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) a year before had requested in its interim report to release a list of detainees to the families searching for the missing.

"Government has simply failed to produce this list," she said.

Time 'not a barrier'

Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams says that time is not a barrier if there is a need for the Sri Lanka government to investigate human rights abuses.

He said that Sri Lanka government had given promises to inquire into alleged human rights abuses committed even before the war.

"Even a commission appointed by the president failed spectacularly, All international members of the commission resigned", he said.

It has been two and half years since the end of the war, and he said, it is unimaginable to think that the Sri Lanka government would now initiate a credible process to investigate human right abuses.

He said that Minister Samarasinghe had said that those who have eyes do not see, and those who have ears do not listen.

"This is exactly what I could say about Sri Lanka government which for many years refused to hear the evidence when people tell them, and refused to see when people show them evidence," Brad Adams said.

© BBC Sinhala