The U.S. Department of State’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Sri Lanka says the government made only minimal efforts to identify and hold accountable officials responsible for human rights violations.
Referring to extrajudicial killings in 2024, the report says there were several reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings during the year.
In September, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) reported a total of seven cases of custodial deaths during the period between January and August. Police reported 103 targeted shootings throughout the year, it said.
On Freedom of the Press, the report says even though the constitution provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, the government sometimes restricted this right.
In its report on the human rights situation in the country, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) observed a persistent trend of surveillance, intimidation, and harassment of journalists and civil society actors, especially those working on enforced disappearances, land seizures, environmental issues, and with former combatants in the north and east, it said.
The report further said that there were no reports of enforced disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities, during this period.
The Office on Missing Persons (OMP) reported it had not received any new complaints of missing persons or enforced disappearances during the year. There was little progress investigating allegations of abuses from the 1983-2009 civil war or the 1988-89 Marxist insurrection. Impunity and lack of accountability for war-era abuses remained a problem, it said.
In its observations on prolonged detention without charges, the report says the government generally did not observe the requirements of the law, which prohibited arbitrary arrest and detention and provided for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of their arrest or detention in court.
The report says the HRCSL received 838 complaints of arbitrary arrest or detention between January and August, including the arrests of journalists and politicians. According to the HRCSL, authorities notified 46 cases of arrests and detentions under the PTA between January 2023 and March 2024.
On torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, the report observes that even though the constitution and law prohibited such practices, there were credible reports that government officials employed them.
The International Truth and Justice Project Sri Lanka, an international NGO documenting ongoing human rights violations in the country, confirmed that it had documented six cases in which individuals were abducted, detained without formal arrest or charges, held incommunicado for several days, subjected to torture, coerced into signing confessions, and later released, it said.
On the Online Safety Act (OSA), the report said that even though in November 2023, the Supreme Court ruled more than half of the provisions in the OSA were unconstitutional and required revisions to the law, the government had committed to making revisions but had not done so by the end of the year.
The report acknowledges acts of antisemitism and antisemitic incitement, stating that there was a small Jewish population living in different parts of the country, but there were no known reports of antisemitic incidents.
The overall findings of the U.S. Department of State’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Sri Lanka revealed that the government took minimal steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.
Full report : https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/sri-lanka (Newswire)
