Sri Lanka security forces and former Indian army officials under sanction radar
An international rights advocacy group has submitted requests to many countries calling for sanctions against Sri Lankan public and security officials who are accused of gross Human Rights violations including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Johannesburg based The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) ITJP has submitted a list of over 60 persons to the Governments of the US, UK, Austraila, Canada and the EU as well as the UN to take action against the persons named in their dossier under ‘universal jurisdiction’
Apart from rights violations charges of corruption against the Sri Lankan Army, Navy, Air Force and the police have also been documented and sent to the various nations the EU and the UN.
Intelligence officials, Tamil paramilitaries, as well as civil servants including judges and former ministers have also been named in the dossier by the ITJP.
“The gross human rights violations and atrocity crimes include extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and various forms of sexual violence, perpetrated both during and after the civil war”.
In their latest submission the ITJP has also focussed on significant corruption which is structurally embedded in Sri Lankan governance and public institutions, which they call “encompasses undue interference with judicial processes that further sets back accountability efforts for underlying human rights violations as well as abuses of power’’.
ITJP says those mentioned in their documents have been responsible for attacks against civilians that may amount to serious international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The alleged corruptions at the state-owned enterprises and missappriation of public funds resulted in huge financial loses for the entire country and contributed to the economic crisis in the country ITJP says.
Not only Sri Lankan security forces, civil servants and certain public have been accused of serious violations, a number of former Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) officers have also been named, against whom ITJP has sought visa ban.
The named IPKF officers are alleged to have been complict in gross human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes, in the period when deployed in Sri Lanka in the late eighties.
The IPKF operation in Sri Lanka between 1987-89 is dubbed as Indian biggest foreign policy failure since its independence in 1947. IPKF was sent to Sri Lanka against the wishes of the Tamil people and the LTTE who were forced to sign what the Indian government led by Rajiv Gandhi dubbed as a peace agreement called the Indo-Lanka peace accord.
“In the absence of any criminal accountability to date, it is vital to continue to document past and current crimes, analyse the evidence and use every channel to keep on asserting the truth. We hope the new government in the UK will sanction Sri Lankans on Human Rights Day this year (10 December) for their alleged role in war crimes during the end of the country’s conflict”, said Yasmin Sooka, executive director of the ITJP.
The ITJP has submitted lengthy sanctions dossiers on the former Chief of the Sri Lankan Army and the present Chief of Defence Staff General Shavendra Silva in 2021 and another former Army chief General Jagath Jayasuriya in 2022 to the UK Government, as well as sending dossiers to the Governments of Canada, Australia and the EU.
Similarly in 2020, Shavendra Silva was publicly designated in the US under 7031c of the Appropriations Act for his role in gross human rights violations and it is believed Gen.Jagath Jayasuriya has also been denied US visas though not publicly named.
ITJP has utilised the legal option of ‘universal jurisdiction for war crimes’.
In 2017 the ITJP filed universal jurisdiction cases for war crimes against Gen. Jayasuriya in Brazil and Chile based on his role in one of the country’s most notorious army garrisons known as ‘Joseph Camp’. This was followed up with a criminal complaint in Australia that the federal police ‘failed to investigate’.
A Torture Victim Protection Act case was filed in the US against former President and war time Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa-who ruled supreme during the final phase of the war- in 2019 and a criminal complaint submitted in Singapore in 2022.
A further universal jurisdiction case is under investigation in an undisclosed jurisdiction against a retired senior member of the Sri Lankan Army.
Additionally, two linked war crimes cases involving suspects from a Sri Lankan Tamil paramilitary group aligned to the military were referred to the UK’s Metropolitan Police made two arrests and recently put out a public appeal for information.
One of the cases is believed to be in connection with the murder of former BBC journalist Mylvaganam Nimalarajan in a Sri Lanka Army controlled high security zone during a curfew on 19 October 2000.
