The Sri Lanka Campaign was founded nearly five years ago with four key objectives. The first was the establishment of an independent international investigation. Today that objective was achieved.
The Human Rights Council has voted for the High Commissioner for Human Rights:
To undertake a comprehensive investigation into alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka during the period covered by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, and to establish the facts and circumstances of such alleged violations and of the crimes perpetrated with a view to avoiding impunity and ensuring accountability, with assistance from relevant experts and special procedures mandate holders.
No resolution is going to do 100% of the things we want, but the High Commissioner for Human Rights now has a clear mandate for a robust and thorough investigation into what took place, and is taking place, in Sri Lanka.
It is important that she, and her successor, use it and use it well, and that is why our work here isn’t done, and won’t be done until there is justice in Sri Lanka, and the peace that that will bring.
Our work also isn’t done because we are very worried about what the next few weeks will bring, as the Sri Lankan Government no longer feels any need to hold back in its attempt to crush dissent. Campaigner for the Disappeared Balendran Jeyakumari, and at least 10 others, remain in detention without access to their lawyers, and without any evidence having been produced. Meanwhile freed activists Ruki Fernando and Fr Praveen Mahesan remain subjected to a gagging order and continued judicial harassment.
Here are three things you can do:
  1. Support our campaign. Unfortunately our work is not free, and we rely on the donations of people like you to keep going.
  2. Join our effort to free Balendran Jeyakumari and others held without evidence.
  3. Support the Human Rights Observatory‘s attempt to have the gag order on Ruki Fernando and Father Praveen Mahesan lifted.
The next few weeks could be tough, but at least tonight we are one step closer to ending Sri Lanka’s culture of impunity, and stopping the suffering that brings.
Kind regards,
The Sri Lanka Campaign.
P.S. Do you want to know the full wording of the resolution, who supported it, and how every country voted? All that information will be on our blog shortly.

 

 

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