By Lucy McKernan 

Seventeen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, updates the current human rights situation in the country.

The government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office in September 2024, promising justice for past rights violations. Yet, as the high commissioner’s September 3 report concludes, beyond progress in a few important cases, “there has been no recognition or accountability for crimes under international law, gross human rights violations, and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties” during the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009.

Human Rights Watch raised similar concerns in its September 1 report, which documented limited progress in some emblematic cases, but no movement in cases dealing with enforced disappearances, the killing of aid workers, or the targeting of journalists. The government has failed to follow through on its promise to establish an independent public prosecutor’s office, or undertake legal or structural reforms needed for accountability. The Dissanayake government has also not accepted the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, established by the UN Human Rights Council to collect evidence of serious rights abuses.

The Sri Lankan government still uses the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act to harass and arrest human rights defenders, journalists, and families of victims. They face surveillance and questioning by state intelligence agencies, particularly in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The high commissioner’s report calls on the government to impose a moratorium on using the law pending its repeal, and to release people long detained under it.

The Sri Lankan government needs to urgently institute long-pending legal and structural reforms, repeal repressive laws, undertake comprehensive security sector reform, and take steps toward genuine reconciliation, or it risks further entrenching impunity and the trust deficit among victims.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should continue to monitor the Sri Lankan government’s progress on accountability for international crimes. UN member states at the Human Rights Council and other countries should press the Dissanayake government to follow through on its commitments to ensure truth and justice. Two decades on, the families of victims are still waiting. (HRW)

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The Sri Lankan government’s prosecution of past grave abuses has lagged, raising concerns for future progress, Human Rights Watch said in its latest report released on Tuesday (01). 

It further stated that United Nations officials and UN member countries at the Human Rights Council should call on the government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to show greater determination to address emblematic rights cases and cooperate with international accountability efforts.

The 49-page report, “‘Not Genuine with Justice’: Sri Lanka’s Lack of Will to Prosecute Past Abuses,” provides an overview of domestic justice efforts in seven prominent cases of grave abuses in which the Dissanayake government has made a measure of progress since taking office in 2024. 

Human Rights Watch found that many emblematic cases, including a massacre of aid workers, the targeting of journalists, and enforced disappearances of academics and others, remain stalled, while families of victims and human rights defenders face threats and intimidation. 

“The Dissanayake administration needs to break from past government practice of delaying and denying justice for grave abuses,” said Lucy McKernan, UN Human Rights Council director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Human Rights Council should urge the Sri Lankan government to take credible steps toward accountability for past crimes and end reprisals against victims, their families, and human rights defenders.” 

Human Rights Watch interviewed 32 victims of abuses, family members of the disappeared, and lawyers and other human rights defenders, and extensively reviewed court documents and other sources.

Tens of thousands of people were tortured, forcibly disappeared, abducted, and killed by government security forces and nonstate armed groups during Sri Lanka’s 1987-1989 Marxist insurgency in the south and the civil war between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in 2009.  

Sri Lanka has a legacy of failed attempts at obtaining justice for past abuses. Successive governments have appointed more than 10 commissions since the 1990s to inquire into human rights violations, but none led to prosecutions or revealed what happened to thousands of people who disappeared. Various administrations either made minimal progress on cases or actively intervened to block the few criminal investigations underway.

“Excavations [of mass graves] alone will not provide justice,” said a family member of a disappearance victim in Jaffna. “Will those who are responsible for abuses be held accountable?” Investigators have recovered the remains of 582 people from a mass grave at Chemmani, near Jaffna, but there has been no apparent progress in identifying the victims or finding what happened to them.

The Dissanayake government has made some progress in important investigations that were previously derailed. These include the inquiry into the 2009 murder of a newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge; the 2010 enforced disappearance of a journalist, Prageeth Ekneligoda; and the enforced disappearance by naval intelligence officers of 11 young men who were held for ransom in 2008 and 2009. 

An investigation into an alleged high-level government conspiracy behind the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 269 people, was only able to proceed after President Dissanayake took office. In February 2026, police arrested Suresh Sallay, a former military intelligence officer, for colluding with an Islamist group accused of carrying out the attacks. In June, a Sri Lankan court banned former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and two other military intelligence officers from foreign travel in connection with the ongoing investigations into the attacks. 

Despite the limited progress, the Dissanayake government has not responded with the needed urgency to end impunity for grave abuses, Human Rights Watch found. There has been no progress in other important cases in which senior officials have been implicated, including the 2006 killing of five Tamil students and the massacre of 17 mostly Tamil members of the French aid group Action Contre la Faim. Twenty years on, no one has been arrested, let alone prosecuted, for these killings. 

The Dissanayake government has not accepted the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, established by the UN Human Rights Council to collect evidence of serious rights abuses. It has failed to establish the promised Directorate of Public Prosecution to independently prosecute past abuses.

Instead, it has backed initiatives of previous governments, such as the Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations, which many victims’ families have rejected because they consider them efforts intended to delay justice. 

Since the end of the civil war in 2009, the UN has played an important role in promoting justice and accountability while seeking to end ongoing violations. The UN Secretary-General’s 2011 Panel of Experts report and the 2015 investigation on Sri Lanka by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented extensive war crimes and other abuses by both sides during the civil war. And the UN Human Rights Council has adopted a series of resolutions seeking accountability. 

The UN Human Rights Council and the OHCHR should continue to review the Dissanayake government’s progress on justice and press for action to address decades of impunity, Human Rights Watch said. 

“The Dissanayake government should jumpstart its efforts to obtain genuine accountability for the killings and disappearances in the past conflicts,” McKernan said. “The UN high commissioner and UN member states at the Human Rights Council should urge the Dissanayake government to demonstrate its expressed commitment to justice in Sri Lanka.” (Newswire/ HRW)

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the Israeli military of unlawfully deploying artillery‑fired white phosphorus munitions over residential areas in southern Lebanon, raising grave concerns about civilian safety. 

In a statement, the rights group said it verified and geolocated images showing airburst white phosphorus over homes in the town of Yohmor on March 3, with civil defence teams battling fires in houses and vehicles.

Calling the use of such incendiary weapons “extremely alarming,” HRW warned that the practice violates international humanitarian law and risks causing severe, lifelong injuries to civilians.

Full statement: 

Human Rights Watch says the Israeli military unlawfully used artillery-fired white phosphorus munitions over homes on Tuesday (03), in the southern Lebanese town of Yohmor. 

Human Rights Watch verified and geolocated seven images showing airburst white phosphorus munitions being deployed over a residential part of the town and civil defence workers responding to fires in at least two homes and one car in that area. 

“The Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus over residential areas is extremely alarming and will have dire consequences for civilians,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The incendiary effects of white phosphorous can cause death or cruel injuries that result in lifelong suffering.” 

White phosphorus is a chemical substance dispersed in artillery shells, bombs, and rockets that ignites when exposed to oxygen. It can set homes, agricultural areas, and other civilian objects on fire. Under international humanitarian law, the use of airburst white phosphorus is unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas and does not meet the legal requirement to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm.

Human Rights Watch verified and geolocated an image posted on social media the morning of March 3, showing at least two artillery-delivered white phosphorus munitions being airburst over a residential neighbourhood in the town of Yohmor in southern Lebanon. Human Rights Watch identified the shape of the smoke cloud caused by the airbursts in the picture as entirely consistent with the “knuckle” made by the expelling and bursting charges of the M825-series 155mm artillery projectile that contains white phosphorous. 

Earlier that day, at 5:27 a.m, Avichay Adraee, Israel’s Arabic military spokesperson, issued an order stating that residents of Yohmor and 50 other villages and towns “should immediately evacuate [their homes] and move away from the villages to a distance of at least 1,000 meters outside the village to open land.” Adraee repeated the statement at 12:12 p.m. that day. Human Rights Watch has not verified whether people were in the area or injured as a result of white phosphorus use.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented the Israeli military’s widespread use of white phosphorus between October 2023 and May 2024 across border villages in southern Lebanon, which put civilians at grave risk and contributed to civilian displacement.

White phosphorus can be used for multiple purposes, including to obscure, mark, signal, or directly attack military personnel and materiel. Concerns over its use in populated areas are amplified by the technique shown in videos of air-bursting white phosphorus projectiles, which spread 116 burning felt wedges impregnated with the substance over an area between 125 and 250 meters in diameter, depending on the altitude and angle of the burst, indiscriminately exposing more civilians and civilian structures to potential harm than a localized ground burst.

Human Rights Watch also verified and geolocated photographs posted to Facebook at 11:34 a.m. and 1:36 p.m. by the Civil Defence Team of the Islamic Health Committee in Yohmor, which is affiliated with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. The photographs show workers extinguishing fires on residential rooftops and in a car, and smoke emerging from the balconies of a home, which the Civil Defence Team attributed to white phosphorous. The geolocated sites were inside a radius of less than 160 meters.

Human Rights Watch analysis indicates the fire was likely caused by felt wedges impregnated with white phosphorus, given the proximity of the house and the car to the area where airburst munitions were observed, indicating that the munitions were used unlawfully over concentrations of civilians. 

Since the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on March 2, at least 217 people have been killed in Lebanon as of March 6, according to the health ministry, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. 

The Israeli military has issued displacement orders for the entire population of Lebanon south of the Litani River and all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, which include hundreds of thousands of people. The sweeping nature of the Israeli military’s displacement orders raises concerns that their primary purpose is not to protect civilians but to instead spread terror and panic, especially in the context of recent large-scale displacement of civilians in Lebanon, raising serious risks of the war crime of forced displacement, Human Rights Watch said. 

Israel should prohibit all use of airburst artillery-delivered white phosphorus munitions in populated areas because it puts civilians at risk of indiscriminate attacks. There are available alternatives to white phosphorus in smoke shells, including some produced by Israeli companies such as the M150 smoke projectile, which the Israeli army has used in the past as an obscurant, a means of hindering the visibility of its forces. These alternatives can have the same effect and dramatically reduce the harm to civilians.

Human Rights Watch has urged Israel’s key allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in grave crimes. Lebanon’s judicial authorities should initiate domestic investigations of serious international crimes, and the government should accede to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute and submit a declaration accepting the court’s jurisdiction prior to the date of accession, including since at least October 7, 2023.

Israel’s widespread use of white phosphorus in southern Lebanon highlights the need for stronger international law on incendiary weapons, Human Rights Watch said. Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons is the only legally binding instrument dedicated specifically to incendiary weapons. Lebanon is party to Protocol III, while Israel is not.

Protocol III applies to weapons that are “primarily designed” to set fires or cause burns, and thus excludes certain multipurpose munitions with incendiary effects, notably those containing white phosphorus. In addition, it has weaker regulations for the use in “concentrations of civilians” of ground-launched incendiary weapons—like the ones used in Lebanon—than airdropped incendiary weapons, even though they produce the same horrific injuries.

“Concentrations of civilians” is defined broadly to encompass populated areas ranging from villages to refugee camps to cities. Human Rights Watch and many countries have long called for closing these loopholes in Protocol III and creating international norms that better protect civilians from the harm caused by incendiary weapons.

“Israel should immediately halt this practice and states providing Israel with weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, should immediately suspend military assistance and arms sales and push Israel to stop firing such munitions in residential areas,” Kaiss said. (Newswire)

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A new United Nations report about sexual violence related to Sri Lanka’s civil war is another step forward in the struggle for accountability for crimes under international law that were committed in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

Issuing a statement, HRW said that the UN report, issued on January 13, 2025, finds that sexual violence was “part of a deliberate, widespread, and systemic pattern of violations” by state security forces, and “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The findings, based on survivors’ accounts of crimes committed against both women and men, underline the urgent need for the Sri Lankan government to provide relief and justice to survivors and to hold those responsible to account. Foreign governments should assist efforts to promote accountability, including through targeted sanctions, criminal investigations, and prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

“While the appalling rape and murder of Tamil women by Sri Lankan soldiers at the war’s end has long been known, the UN report shows that systematic sexual abuse was ignored, concealed, and even justified by Sri Lankan governments unwilling to punish those responsible,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Sri Lanka’s international partners need to step up their efforts to promote accountability for war crimes in Sri Lanka.”

The UN Human Rights Council set up the Sri Lanka Accountability Project in 2021 to collect evidence of crimes under international law committed in Sri Lanka. Successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to credibly investigate and prosecute international crimes related to the 26-year civil war between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The current government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to office in 2024, promising to “deliver justice”, but has made no apparent progress, while victims and survivors continue to suffer long-term harm. Under international women’s rights standards, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda, Sri Lanka’s failure to address conflict-related sexual violence heightens concerns about accountability and survivors’ rights.

During the armed conflict, which ended on May 18, 2009, both sides committed numerous war crimes, particularly in the final months of the fighting. Photographs and mobile phone videos, seemingly made as keepsakes by government soldiers, show summary executions of prisoners and corpses of naked women fighters who were apparently raped and then murdered. Human Rights Watch has found that successive Sri Lankan governments had stalled investigations and denied justice.

The UN researchers found that sexual violence was “institutionally enabled” by the state and “employed as a strategic tool to extract information, assert dominance, intimidate individuals and communities, and instill a pervasive climate of fear and humiliation” throughout the war. The victims and survivors were mostly from conflict-affected Tamil communities, and these violations occurred primarily in state-run detention facilities.

Survivors recounted lasting medical problems and social stigma. However, the researchers said that there is “no currently visible path to justice or restoration” for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka.

The UN researchers found that “men were as likely as women to have been victims” of sexual violence, but that the particular stigma affecting male survivors made engaging them during the research “especially challenging.”

Another legacy of these crimes is the prevalence of sexual violence in post-conflict Sri Lanka, the researchers found. Survivors described an enduring climate of intimidation and “ongoing surveillance, often by the very officers responsible for past abuse.”

There are significant legal and institutional obstacles to justice, including a 20-year statute of limitations in sexual violence cases and the fact that Sri Lankan law does not recognize the rape of men. Some survivors who attempted to register complaints described humiliating or intimidating experiences with the police and court authorities. “Survivors cannot be expected to seek protection from the very entity they fear,” one respondent told the UN.

In 2018, the Sri Lankan government established the Office for Reparations Act to compensate victims and survivors of the conflict, but according to the UN, the government “has not taken any concrete steps to provide them with interim or full reparations, and has not disaggregated statistics of its caseload by gender.” Under international law, survivors have a right to reparations, and the failure to provide them has left many without care, dignity, or justice.

The Sri Lankan government and its international partners should urgently develop a program to deliver support, including medical treatment, and interim relief to survivors, Human Rights Watch said. Many survivors have placed their hope in foreign governments or international organizations to promote justice. Yet, the report says: “While international actors have expressed concern, meaningful steps toward facilitating credible accountability and access to justice for survivors have remained limited.”

“Sri Lanka is obligated under international law to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and until it does, foreign governments need to do more to press for accountability,” Ganguly said. “That means providing support for legal processes, better vetting of military personnel for peacekeeping missions, and concerted efforts to bring criminal cases abroad under universal jurisdiction.” (Newswire)

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Sri Lanka’s tax policies played a driving role in the country’s devastating 2022 economic crisis and have contributed to the chronic underfunding of education and other public services, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. 

The Human Rights Organisation states the government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake should urgently adopt measures to uphold its human rights obligations and enact reforms to a system that presently favours companies and wealthy people while failing to deliver adequate revenues.

The 101-page report, “Tax Giveaways, Struggling Schools: How Low Taxes Drove Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis and Squandered its Education Lead,” describes how Sri Lanka’s successive governments have adopted policies that resulted in inadequate revenues, contributing not only to Sri Lanka defaulting on its debt but also to a decades-long decline in public education spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to among the lowest in the world. It also documents the impacts of inadequate funding on children’s right to education. Moreover, low corporate and personal tax revenues have led to an average of 80 percent of taxes coming from goods and services, which generally are regressive because they claim a higher share of poorer people’s income.

“For decades, Sri Lanka has been hostage to economic policies that starve its government of revenue and reflect a myopic focus on GDP growth,” said Sarah Saadoun, senior economic justice researcher at Human Rights Watch. “In practice, that means education spending has fallen well behind the pace of growth, turning the country from a global leader in public education to a laggard.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed over 70 people, including those affected by the economic situation and familiar with the public education system, as well as a wide spectrum of prominent Sri Lankan economic experts. Human Rights Watch also conducted a comprehensive analysis of relevant data and research relevant to Sri Lanka’s tax policies and education spending.

These policy failures have infringed upon children’s right to education, Human Rights Watch found. Sri Lanka’s education spending dropped from between 3 to 5 percent of GDP in the two decades following independence, a time when the country was an education champion among postcolonial countries, to 1.5 percent of GDP in 2022, among the lowest in the world.

Low tax revenues also contributed to Sri Lanka defaulting on its debt in April 2022, which precipitated an economic crisis, including widespread job and income loss, alongside a sharp rise in the cost of living that remains devastating for human rights.

While former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa introduced sweeping tax cuts in 2019 that dealt a devastating blow to revenues, Human Rights Watch found that the problem began in the late 1970s, when Sri Lanka began an economic shift common at that time that deprioritized social spending and liberalized trade. The resulting sharp decline in tax revenue from trade and other sources was not replaced by a progressive tax system that appropriately benefited from the ensuing growth.

In particular, the government began regularly granting companies broad tax exemptions through an opaque body highly vulnerable to abuse. In 2022, the cost of tax exemptions reached a staggering amount equivalent to 56 percent of revenues, or nearly three times the education budget. The government also collects only a small amount of taxes from personal income and assets and has not ensured that tax agencies have the capacity and accountability needed for tax enforcement.

The report’s focus on education illustrates a broader deprioritization of social spending, but the squandered potential is particularly salient in education, an area in which Sri Lanka was once widely regarded as a global leader. Sri Lanka was among the first countries to establish free primary and secondary education for most people.

Human Rights Watch found that low spending has led to schools charging fees to cover the cost of basic resources, posing significant hardship to many families. Inadequate public funds have also led to a vast disparity in resources based on students’ socioeconomic status. Low corporate and personal income tax revenues have led the government to heavily rely on taxes and goods and services—called “indirect taxes”—such as value-added tax (VAT) that weigh more heavily on poorer people.

Susikala, a domestic worker living on a tea plantation in Hatton, said she earns around 14,000 Sri Lankan rupees (LKR, about US$46) monthly working 7 days per week and struggles to pay various fees the school charges that amount to around LKR 500 (about $1.65) per month, along with the LKR 5,000 (about $16.50) per month for both of her children to attend for-profit “tuition” classes outside of school. “When teachers ask for books and papers I can’t get those things,” she said. “I struggle to give nutritious food to my children.”

In March 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $3 billion bailout to Sri Lanka and creditors restructured the country’s debt, although its debt servicing obligations remain very high. In 2024, the government paid 57 percent of its revenue to creditors. In January 2025, President Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) party took office following a campaign that promised sweeping economic reforms, including reducing regressive taxes and improving education.

The government should consider eliminating corporate tax exemptions given their high cost, questionable effectiveness, and vulnerability to abuse, Human Rights Watch said. The government should also adopt other progressive tax measures, such as a wealth tax.

The case of Sri Lanka reflects the challenges many governments face under the current international tax system. For example, tax competition pressures governments into offering tax incentives that fuel a race to the bottom, depriving many governments of the necessary revenue to fulfill human rights. These challenges highlight the importance of ongoing negotiations for a United Nations tax treaty to build international rules informed by human rights imperatives and increased cooperation that would enable governments to end this negative spiral.

Under international human rights law, states are obligated to take steps to the “maximum of their available resources” to progressively realize the rights to health, education, social security, and an adequate standard of living, among other economic, social, and cultural rights. States are obliged not only to act individually, but also through international assistance and cooperation. This necessarily implicates states’ fiscal practices and tax policies domestically and in international fora.

Sri Lanka’s new government has taken some positive steps, such as providing an LKR 6,000 (about $20) bursary to some families to help with education-related costs, but it has only marginally raised the education budget. It should continue to increase the education budget, with a goal of reaching the internationally agreed benchmark of 4 to 6 percent of GDP allocated to education, Human Rights Watch said. The government of President Dissanayake should also urgently adopt measures to uphold its human rights obligations and enact reforms to a system that currently favours companies and wealthy people while failing to deliver adequate revenues.

“Sri Lanka’s economic quagmire makes clear that growth alone is not enough to fulfill human rights,” Saadoun said. “The government should finally establish a progressive tax system and use its income so that it adequately funds education and other public services that benefit all Sri Lankans.” (Newswire)

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Opportunity for New Government to Commit to Accountability

By Meenakshi Ganguly

Last weekend, Tamils in Sri Lanka gathered to commemorate those who died or went missing in the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009. As they have for the last 16 years, they also called for justice. Despite overwhelming evidence gathered by the United Nations and human rights groups of war crimes and human rights abuses by state security forces, successive governments have failed to launch any credible accountability process. Meanwhile, Tamil activists and victim communities continue to face repression and other violations.

The war between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government was marked by widespread violations by both sides. As the Sri Lankan military closed in on the LTTE, eventually defeating them on May 18, 2009, soldiers committed summary executions, rape, and forcible disappearances of hundreds of surrendered combatants. The military indiscriminately shelled civilians who were trapped in the combat zone by the LTTE, which used them as human shields.

In last year’s elections, many Tamils voted for Anura Kumara Dissanayake for president, hoping he would break from previous administrations and address the legacy of repression and discrimination. They have been disappointed.

The Dissanayake government has backed failed initiatives of previous governments, including the Office on Missing Persons, the Office for Reparations, and the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, which have made little, if any, progress. These institutions have been rejected by many victims’ families, who see them as part of a pattern of failed promises.

Meanwhile, the government has kept in place the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act, long used to target Tamils. The government had pledged to repeal this draconian law, including to the European Union as a condition to keep tariff-free access to the EU market under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+).

The UN Human Rights Council mandated that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report and monitor progress on accountability, and establish the Sri Lanka Accountability Project to gather evidence of international crimes for use in future prosecutions. Those mandates are due for renewal in September. Given the lack of progress in Sri Lanka, renewal is vital to hold perpetrators of international crimes accountable. The Dissanayake government has opposed the council’s intervention as “divisive and intrusive.”

Instead of pretending that discredited domestic initiatives are working, the government should demonstrate its commitment to accountability by backing the resolution to renew the Accountability Project and work towards delivering justice at last. (HRW)

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The government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, which took office on September 23, 2024, has promised to address longstanding human rights issues that have plunged Sri Lanka into repeated crises, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its World Report 2025. 

Issuing a statement, HRW said President Dissanayake has pledged to introduce more equitable economic policies and to repeal the notoriously abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act, but he has not backed accountability for widespread rights violations during Sri Lanka’s 1983-2009 civil war between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, that governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies.

“Sri Lanka’s multiple crises are connected by entrenched impunity for rights violations, discrimination against minority communities, and laws and institutions that seek to silence critics,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “President Dissanayake has an opportunity to make real progress on rights if he carries out his campaign pledges, but he also needs to address the legacy of past conflicts and continuing abuses against Tamils, Muslims, and others on which he has been troublingly silent.”

• While an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout helped stem the immediate crisis after the Sri Lankan government defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022, the United Nations estimated that a quarter of households were suffering food insecurity in 2024. 
• Policies pursued by the outgoing administration of President Ramil Wickremesinghe under the IMF program shifted the burden of recovery largely onto people with low incomes. The Dissanayake government has pledged to combat corruption and create more equitable economic policies.
• Police and other security agencies harassed and threatened activists and human rights defenders with impunity during 2024, particularly in predominantly Tamil areas in the north and east, including undue restrictions and interference in the financing of civil society organizations.
• In May, the UN human rights office issued a report calling for the international community to undertake prosecutions and other accountability measures to address thousands of unresolved cases of enforced disappearance that occurred over decades during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) uprisings, and the LTTE armed conflict. The UN Human Rights Council has extended a mandate to monitor human rights violations and collect evidence of crimes during the civil war. 

HRW said President Dissanayake should begin to address Sri Lanka’s many human rights problems by fulfilling and building upon the pledges he made during his party’s election campaigns. (Newswire)

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Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, should address the country’s many human rights problems by fulfilling and building upon pledges he made in recent election campaigns, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a recent letter to the president. 

Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected president on September 21, and on November 14 his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition won a majority of parliamentary seats.

In his election manifesto, Dissanayake pledged to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, remove abusive provisions of the Online Safety Act, establish an independent Directorate of Public Prosecutions separate from the attorney general’s office, aggressively combat corruption, and revise economic policies to promote equity. However, while his government has announced renewed investigations into the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and other emblematic crimes, it should also reverse the failures of previous administrations to address severe human rights violations committed during the 1983-2009 civil war between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

“President Dissanayake faces a daunting list of human rights problems, including enduring discrimination against minority communities, which has long divided the country,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “To live up to its commitments for reform, the new administration should prioritize addressing the entrenched impunity surrounding decades of grave violations, corruption and financial mismanagement, and abusive security force practices severely restricting the rights of Tamils and Muslims.”

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has had a disastrous impact on millions of people, eroding public services essential to their rights and placing the burden of efforts to quickly raise revenues on those least able to cope. In March 2023, then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe negotiated a US$3 billion bailout with the International Monetary Fund focused on raising government revenues while tackling corruption and improving social protection. However, it shifted the burden of recovery principally onto people with low incomes, while social protection provision is inadequate and new anticorruption legislation has not yet been widely applied.

The Dissanayake government has pledged to implement more progressive tax policies; increase government provision to uphold Sri Lankans’ economic and social rights, such as to health care, education, and social security; and clamp down on corruption.

Previous governments have pledged to end human rights violations and address past crimes, but they have failed to act, instead pursuing repressive policies while shielding those responsible for past violations and denying justice to victims. Successive administrations have harassed and intimidated thousands of families of victims of enforced disappearance, while human rights defenders and journalists have been subject to intrusive government surveillance, threats, and restrictions.

President Dissanayake should act on the evidence on enforced disappearances collected by previous commissions of inquiry, reform or replace the Office of Missing Persons, and ensure instead a body that has the trust of victims’ families and the technical capacity to identify remains discovered in mass graves, Human Rights Watch said.

The new government should also immediately impose a full moratorium on the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and release remaining prisoners who were convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture. It should ensure fair and thorough investigations of grave crimes, including the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, as well as emblematic cases that were partially investigated between 2015-19 before those investigations were dropped under then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

To put an end to the repression of civil society groups, the Dissanayake administration should place the National Secretariat for Non-Governmental Organizations under a ministry responsible for supporting social welfare activities, instead of treating independent groups as security risks. It should also direct the police, military, and intelligence agencies to end the intimidation and arbitrary surveillance of human rights defenders and civil society activists.

To protect minority rights, the new government should direct state agencies to end the practice of encroaching upon or denying access to minority religious sites, such as Hindu temples, Human Rights Watch said. It should also adopt reforms to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act approved by a previous cabinet in 2021. It should repeal laws that are used to criminalize same-sex relationships and to target transgender people, and back a longstanding demand by the women’s rights movement to legalize abortion in the country.

“President Dissanayake and his new government have an opportunity to deliver long-sought-after reforms to governance,” Ganguly said. “Dissanayake should follow through and build upon his rights commitments to set a new course for human rights in Sri Lanka.” (Newswire)

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The Human Rights Council’s resolution on Sri Lanka is important for efforts to uphold fundamental rights in the country and to seek justice for past atrocities, Deputy Director for United Nations at Human Rights Watch’s office in Geneva, Lucy McKernan said.  

Issuing a statement, Lucy McKernan said international action is needed in Sri Lanka so long as victims and their families are denied justice. 

“The new government of President Dissanayake should reveal what happened to thousands of victims of enforced disappearance, end security agencies’ harassment of victims and human rights defenders seeking justice, and open credible investigations into alleged crimes that were blocked by previous governments” Lucy McKernan added.

The UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday (Oct 09), adopted by consensus a resolution on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, which on September 21 elected a new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

The resolution renews for another year the mandate of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to report on ongoing violations and to collect evidence of past and current rights violations and crimes under international law committed in Sri Lanka for use in future prosecutions, including those committed in the 1983-2009 civil war. 

The resolution was presented by a core group consisting of Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, North Macedonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Newswire)

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The United Nations Human Rights Council should adopt a resolution on Sri Lanka to enable continued UN monitoring, reporting, and evidence collection of rights violations for future prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said. 

Issuing a statement, the rights group said President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected on September 21, 2024, should reverse the policies of his predecessors by cooperating with the UN’s investigation mechanism, ending the use of repressive laws to stifle dissent, and preventing security forces from targeting activists, survivors of abuses, and victims’ families with threats and reprisals.

In his latest report the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, found that “ill-treatment by police and security forces remain prevalent.” He stated that “long overdue reforms … have not occurred,” and “there are renewed threats to fundamental freedoms.” He described “entrenched impunity” for past crimes and found that “impunity has also manifested itself in the corruption, abuse of power, and governance failures that were among the root causes of the country’s recent economic crisis.”

“Successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to hold accountable officials implicated in horrific abuses, particularly against Tamils and Muslims, and President Dissanayake, who has pledged to end rights violations, can alter that history by ensuring justice and protecting victims and activists,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Human Rights Council resolutions are a crucial means of maintaining scrutiny on rights violations in Sri Lanka, offering some hope for justice, and a lifeline for victims who are otherwise at the mercy of abusive authorities.”

Numerous domestic and international investigation commissions, as well as United Nations human rights experts, have made recommendations for reform, which successive Sri Lankan administrations have disregarded. This includes addressing grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes committed by both government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the 1983-2009 civil war, as well as during a security forces crackdown on an insurrection in 1987-1989 by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the party Dissanayake now leads.

The UN high commissioner noted in his report that the government has “rarely even acknowledged the serious violations that occurred.” Several mass graves have been accidentally discovered, but not properly investigated. Victims face “insurmountable” barriers to justice, “even in the most emblematic of cases,” and government authorities frequently disrupt events at which families attempt to commemorate victims.

The UN found that earlier government commissions of inquiry “failed credibly to establish truth and advance accountability.” When the previous government brought a new proposal for a similar commission, victims’ groups broadly rejected it. The then foreign minister, Ali Sabry, told members of parliament on September 3 that the purpose of the commission was to “prevent foreign interference.”

Sri Lanka asserted in a statement to the Human Rights Council on September 9 that it has a “constructive engagement” with UN human rights mechanisms, despite rejecting the UN human rights office’s accountability project and having 10 outstanding visit requests from UN special procedures. Despite evidence to the contrary, the previous government claimed, among other things, that it was investigating cases of enforced disappearance and providing compensation to victims’ families.

Repressive Laws

“The Dissanayake government should review the Online Safety Act, adopted in January, which contains broad powers to restrict freedom of expression and reject proposed legislation curtailing nongovernment organizations that would severely affect groups already suffering “surveillance, intimidation, and harassment,” according to the UN report.

At the Human Rights Council in 2022, Sri Lanka’s then-foreign minister announced a moratorium on the use of the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). But since then, the previous government used the law dozens of times against perceived critics, especially Tamils. The chilling effect of the law is such that in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” in Sri Lanka restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption. Dissanayake has pledged to repeal the PTA.

Numerous human rights defenders in the Northern and Eastern Provinces have told Human Rights Watch that members of police and intelligence agencies routinely threaten them that they will be accused of terrorism because of their work. “If we talk of Tamil rights, they use the PTA to silence us, saying we are working to reorganize the LTTE,” said an activist in the Northern Province.

Religious Minorities

Sri Lankan authorities are conducting a campaign to deny Hindus and other religious minorities access to places of worship and other property in the north and east, and to redesignate locations as Buddhist sites, for the country’s majority religion. A pattern has emerged in which agencies including the Department of Archaeology, the Forest Department, the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the military, and the police, along with nationalist Buddhist clergy, have damaged or removed Hindu idols, threatened, attacked, or arrested worshipers, and sought to deny them access to temples and other property. 

At the Veddukkunaari temple in Vavuniya district on March 8, police and soldiers obstructed and assaulted Hindu worshippers despite a court order allowing them to celebrate the festival of Shivaratri. Eight were arrested and allegedly beaten in custody before a magistrate released them without charge on March 19. “These types of incidents are causing conflict between the communities,” said a Hindu man who was among those arrested.

Families of the Disappeared

Sri Lanka has one of the world’s highest rates of enforced disappearances, including those who disappeared during the JVP insurgency and the civil war between the government and LTTE. The authorities have for decades refused to reveal the fate of the disappeared or to prosecute those responsible.

In his report to the Human Rights Council, the UN high commissioner described “reprisals against family members of the disappeared engaging with the UN or international actors, including members of the diplomatic community.”

Several relatives of the disappeared recently told Human Rights Watch that the most frightening threats were directed at their other children, including false drug cases. “We can’t raise our voices, we have no freedom to move,” said a woman in the Northern Province, whose husband has not been seen since his arrest in 2008. “They [security agencies] threaten us, and even take action against our family members. We have no freedom to do anything.”

The Human Rights Council should renew for two years the UN mandate for monitoring and reporting, and work on accountability for human rights violations and related crimes in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said.

“Successive Sri Lankan governments have repeatedly broken their human rights commitments while targeting victims, their families, and human rights defenders with threats and further violations,” Ganguly said. “The UN Human Rights Council resolution is a vital means to maintain international attention on this dire situation and uphold the principle that those responsible for grave international crimes may one day face justice.” (Newswire)

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the UN Human Rights Council to renew monitoring and evidence collection as a new UN Report details Sri Lanka’s human rights situation. 

A new report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warns that Sri Lanka is facing renewed threats to fundamental freedoms.

According to Human Rights Watch, this comes despite the government trying to persuade international partners of its achievements in economic reforms and protecting human rights. 

The rights group states the UN report finds that authorities have sought new repressive laws and engaged in intimidation and violence against victims of past abuses, civil society activists, journalists, and government critics.

The government denies responsibility for grave abuses during Sri Lanka’s 1983-2006 civil war. “This entrenched impunity has also manifested itself in the corruption, abuse of power and governance failures that were among the root causes of the country’s recent economic crisis,” the report says.

The economic crisis, which escalated in 2022, has doubled the poverty rate. The UN estimates that a quarter of households are suffering food insecurity, yet “democratic reforms and accountability for corruption and economic mismanagement remain largely unfulfilled.”

The report finds that “ill-treatment by police and security forces remain prevalent.” Between January 2023 and March 2024, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka recorded 21 alleged extrajudicial killings, 26 deaths in custody, and 1,342 arbitrary arrests and detentions. The UN examined recent allegations of “abduction, arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence perpetrated against individuals of Tamil ethnicity by Sri Lankan security forces.”

Since ending a moratorium on the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2022, the government has used the law dozens of times against perceived critics, especially Tamils. The families of victims of enforced disappearance face reprisals for engaging with the UN or foreign diplomats. Authorities have detained 121,957 people in a brutal anti-drugs campaign, sending thousands to military-run “rehabilitation” centers.

Meanwhile, new laws “have profound implications for … fundamental freedoms and the rule of law,” the report says. The Online Safety Act contains powers to restrict freedom of expression, and proposed legislation curtailing nongovernment organizations would severely affect groups already suffering from “surveillance, intimidation and harassment.” 

The high commissioner calls upon members of the UN Human Rights Council to renew UN mandates for monitoring and evidence collection and for “the international community … to help break the cycle of systematic impunity… [by] using all potential forms of jurisdiction.” 

Human Rights Watch said it echoes this call and urges UN member states to ensure the Human Rights Council, at its upcoming September session, adopts a resolution renewing those mandates. (Newswire)

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Sri Lankan authorities continue to use the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to target perceived opponents and minority communities without credible evidence to support the allegations despite repeated pledges to end the practice, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. 

The human rights group said while some victims have suffered years of arbitrary detention and torture, others are persecuted even after the case against them is dropped.

The law, widely known as the PTA, has provisions allowing for extended administrative detention, limited judicial oversight, and inadequate protections against torture. In a 2022 speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the then-foreign minister pledged a moratorium on its use, but under President Ranil Wickremesinghe, detentions under the PTA have continued. Such is the chilling effect of the law that in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption.

“Sri Lanka’s extensive domestic security apparatus routinely uses baseless accusations of terrorism to target innocent people, silencing critics and stigmatizing minority communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Previous international pressure has led to modest improvements, and Sri Lanka’s foreign partners should renew their call to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”

Following government promises to repeal the PTA since 2015, draft legislation to replace it, known as the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), was published in March 2023. While the new bill contains some improvements, it includes provisions that could facilitate abuse.

Since it first came into force in 1979, the PTA has primarily been used to target members of the Tamil minority during a separatist war led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was defeated in 2009. While many long-term PTA prisoners have been released in recent years, in part due to international pressure by the European Union and others, at least eight who were first detained between 1996 and 2011 remain in prison.

In November 2023, police in the eastern town of Batticaloa arrested nine people under the law for commemorating the war dead. They were released on bail a month later, but one of those detained told Human Rights Watch that he remains under intense surveillance and his family has lost its income because of the case.

A former LTTE child soldier said that she was arrested under the PTA in 2019 and held for three years. Because she was a minor at the end of the war, she had been placed in the care of the Red Cross instead of being sent to government “rehabilitation” with adult combatants. She believes that the ongoing surveillance and harassment is because security agencies regard her as “unrehabilitated.” She said: “I am afraid. I don’t know who is watching me.”

Human Rights Watch also interviewed a man who was among several arrested under the PTA in 2019 after receiving financial support from the Tamil diaspora, which the Sri Lankan authorities sometimes construe as “terrorist financing.” “We don’t know why we were arrested,” he said. “The PTA allows them to keep us without any reason.” He faced abuse in prison, including threats at gunpoint by a government minister. Following his release three years later, he still faces intense police harassment. “My freedom of movement is restricted. People are afraid to give me a job.”

Following the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, when Islamist suicide bombers targeted churches and hotels, killing over 260 people, the authorities detained at least 125 Muslims in the eastern town of Kattankudy under the PTA. Little or no evidence was produced against most of them, a lawyer familiar with the situation told Human Rights Watch. Most spent between one and three years in detention and were then either discharged altogether or released on bail. Twenty-four are facing trial in a proceeding that is expected to continue for years.

Former detainees from this group told Human Rights Watch that they had experienced torture and ill-treatment in custody and that the police had made extortion demands on their families for their release.

Following their release due to lack of evidence, they said they had received frequent threatening home visits or phone calls and were under surveillance by security agencies. They have been unable to access banking services, obtain passports, or operate their businesses. “They can’t go abroad for work,” said an activist who works with the community. “They can’t live freely in peace with their families.” In many cases, children have been forced by hardship to drop out of school.

A man who had been held under the PTA for about a year, then discharged, said that while there is a tradition of charitable giving in the Muslim community, security officials warn others not to help affected families, and people are afraid to do so for fear that they may be accused of supporting terrorism.

Numerous human rights defenders in the Northern and Eastern provinces said that members of police and intelligence agencies routinely warn that they will be accused of terrorism because of their work. “If we talk of Tamil rights, they use the PTA to silence us, saying we are working to reorganize the LTTE,” said an activist in the Northern Province.

Another rights activist, who works on several PTA cases, said in May 2024, “Just yesterday a [police] CID person called me and said, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’ They oppress us because they want to stop the information we can provide from reaching the international community.”

Like the PTA, the draft law to replace it appears designed to give the president, police, and military broad powers to detain people without evidence, to make vaguely defined forms of speech a criminal offence, and to arbitrarily ban gatherings and organizations without meaningful judicial oversight.

It would expand the definition of terrorism to include crimes such as property damage and restrict rights to freedom of assembly and speech. It would give the police and military sweeping powers to stop, question, search, and arrest anyone without a warrant, and allow the attorney general to “impose” “voluntary” custodial “rehabilitation” on a person who has not been convicted of any crime.

Recommendations

• The government should impose a full moratorium on the PTA and work to repeal it.
• The authorities should draft rights-respecting counterterrorism legislation in consultation with experts and civil society.
• Foreign partners including the United States, EU, and UK should insist that Sri Lanka abides by commitments to repeal the law.
• The UN Human Rights Council should renew the mandates of resolution 46/1 for reporting and investigating human rights violations in Sri Lanka.

“For many Sri Lankans, baseless allegations of terrorism and sweeping powers provided by the PTA remain the most frightening and unaccountable method of repression,” Ganguly said. “Foreign governments seeking to support improved governance and respect for human rights should prioritize action to end the Sri Lankan government’s misuse of counterterrorism powers.” (Newswire)

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IMF should oppose restrictions on freedom of expression, Civil Society Groups

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should urge Sri Lanka’s government to abandon draft legislation that would severely curtail civil society and jeopardize the IMF’s program in the country, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the IMF that was released today. 

The proposed Non-Governmental Organizations (Registration and Supervision) Act is among several recent and planned measures that would curtail fundamental freedoms, despite the critical role of public scrutiny in promoting good governance and combatting corruption.

The IMF’s US$3 billion bailout of Sri Lanka – which is linked to government commitments to reform – helped stem the immediate economic crisis after the country defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022, but further progress is threatened by the adoption of laws by President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration that would severely restrict basic rights. The Online Safety Act, enacted in January, creates vague and broad speech-related offenses punishable with lengthy prison terms. The Anti-Terrorism Bill, currently before parliament, contains sweeping new speech-related offenses and arbitrary powers of arrest. And the draft law to regulate nongovernmental organizations could make independent civil society activity all but impossible in Sri Lanka.

“As the economy collapsed in 2022, Sri Lankans demanded good governance and an end to corruption, but instead now face draconian laws and policies that threaten human rights and undermine reforms,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The protests helped bring President Wickremesinghe to power, but instead of listening to calls for change, he’s clamping down on peaceful dissent.”

A 2023 IMF study of Sri Lanka known as the Governance Diagnostic Assessment stated that “[a]nticorruption efforts are unlikely to achieve their objectives unless they also encompass initiatives designed and led by groups outside of government who are committed to rule-based inclusive economic and social progress.” However, the study found that civil society’s participation in oversight and monitoring of government actions has been “restricted by limited transparency, the lack of platforms for inclusive and participatory governance, and by broad application of counter-terrorism rules.” As a result, “opportunities for public participation and oversight of official behaviour, including by civil society, are increasingly restricted.”

The government on January 30, 2024, provided the draft NGO law to selected members of civil society, who were given three weeks to respond. The bill does not address any evident need, but instead seeks to subject civil society organizations to invasive government scrutiny and interference, and threatens civil society members with prison if they don’t comply with cumbersome administrative procedures.

The National Collective of CSOs and NGOs, a coalition of Sri Lankan civil society organizations, wrote to the government on February 28 that the proposed law would “violate the fundamental rights to freedom of association and expression,” while damaging the delivery of services by civil society organizations, including to “the many families who are struggling to make ends meet in the midst of severe economic hardship.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in his March 1 update to the UN Human Rights Council on the crisis in Sri Lanka, said he was “concerned by the introduction of new or proposed laws with potentially far-reaching impact on fundamental rights and freedoms … which variously strengthen the executive, grant broad powers to the security forces, and severely restrict rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression, impacting not only on civic space but the business environment.”

The IMF should protect the credibility and efficacy of its program in Sri Lanka by publicly calling upon the government to abandon the proposed NGO law, impose a moratorium on use of the Online Safety Act, and amend the Anti-Terrorism Bill to ensure that it respects human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said.

“The IMF and other international partners supporting Sri Lanka’s economic recovery recognize that this crisis has its roots in misgovernance and corruption,” Ganguly said. “If their efforts are to be successful, they need to stand firm against the government’s attempts to curtail fundamental civil and political rights.” (HRW)

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A repressive new internet law that Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe is trying to rush through parliament this week would create broad and vague new speech-related offences punishable by lengthy prison terms, Internationa Rights Organization, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

In a statement, the Deputy Director of HRWs Asia Division, Meenakshi Ganguly said the law would seriously threaten the right to freedom of expression as Sri Lanka prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections later this year.

The proposed law, the Online Safety Bill, purportedly provides protections against online harassment, abuse, and fraud. Instead, it is mostly concerned with creating a new “Online Safety Commission,” appointed by the president, that can decide what online speech is “false” or “harmful,” remove content, restrict and prohibit internet access, and prosecute individuals and organizations.

Commission-appointed “experts” would be empowered to enter and search suspects’ premises. Offences under the law carry hefty fines and prison sentences of up to five years. The United Nations Human Rights Office said the law “could potentially criminalize nearly all forms of legitimate expression, creating an environment that has a chilling effect on freedom of expression.”

The Asia Internet Coalition, an industry body including tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Meta, has called the bill a “draconian system to stifle dissent” and warned it “could undermine the potential growth of Sri Lanka’s digital economy.”

Ganguly further said Sri Lanka is still reeling from an economic crisis partly caused by misgovernment and failures of accountability. In 2022, months-long protests demanding reform toppled the prime minister and president. Since coming to power that year, President Wickremesinghe has moved to stifle dissent.

Other repressive legislation before parliament includes a new broadcasting law, which the UN experts say could be used to “suppress dissenting voices,” and a counterterrorism law that “grants wide powers to the police – and to the military – to stop, question and search, and to arrest and detain people, with inadequate judicial oversight.”

According to the International Monetary Fund, which supports Sri Lanka’s economy, restrictions on civil society, including the “broad application of counter-terrorism rules,” already limited “oversight and monitoring of government actions,” contributing to “severe governance weaknesses and corruption vulnerabilities.”

Ganguly pointed out that Sri Lanka’s repressive laws have facilitated widespread human rights violations for decades and contributed to economic and political crises, adding that passing the Online Safety Bill would be a disastrous setback. (NewsWire)

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Regressive government policies and inadequate social protection left many Sri Lankans at risk from the worst effects of the country’s economic crisis, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its World Report 2024. 

HRW said that the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe continued to repress freedoms of expression and association and pursued policies that discriminate against minority communities.

“Millions of Sri Lankans are struggling to survive an economic crisis that partly originated in corrupt, unaccountable governance,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The current administration is responding with policies that weigh heaviest on those who have least while suppressing voices that are essential for accountable, democratic decision-making.”

In the 740-page World Report 2024, its 34th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In her introductory essay, Executive Director Tirana Hassan says that 2023 was a consequential year not only for human rights suppression and wartime atrocities but also for selective government outrage and transactional diplomacy that carried profound costs for the rights of those not in on the deal. But she says there were also signs of hope, showing the possibility of a different path, and calls on governments to consistently uphold their human rights obligations. 

The Sri Lankan government and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) response to the economic situation undermined human rights in the country. More than 17 per cent of the population is moderately or acutely food insecure and in need of humanitarian assistance, and 31 per cent of children aged under 5 are malnourished, according to the United Nations. The IMF program focused on raising government revenues and emphasized tackling corruption and improving social protection, but as structured it shifted the burden of recovery principally onto people with low incomes.

The government raised electricity tariffs, doubled value-added taxes, and phased out fuel subsidies. The reform program included a “social spending floor” set at 0.6 per cent of GDP, less than half of the developing countries’ average. The government’s plan of targeted social protection benefits led to the exclusion of many who do not have an adequate standard of living. In an attempt to manage its domestic debts, the government reduced the value of state-run pension funds in which ordinary people hold their savings.

The families of victims of enforced disappearance and human rights defenders in the north and east, faced government surveillance and intimidation. Government agencies pursued a policy of “land grabbing” that targeted the property of Tamil and Muslim communities, including religious sites.

President Wickremesinghe sought to suppress dissent, ending a moratorium on the use of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. A proposed new counterterrorism law, which was withdrawn for further revision, would grant authorities sweeping powers and create new speech-related offences. The proposed Online Safety Bill would further restrict speech by creating a commission, appointed by the president, that could decide whether online statements were false or prohibited, order their removal, and participate in police investigations and prosecutions. (NewsWire)

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The government of Sri Lanka’s proposed Anti-Terrorism Act would empower the authorities to systematically violate fundamental human rights, Human Rights Watch alleged. 

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the government should withdraw the bill and ensure through consultations that any counterterrorism legislation upholds international human rights standards.

The government pledged to adopt an improved law following domestic and international criticism of abuses under existing counterterrorism legislation. But instead of addressing the problems, the bill would expand the definition of terrorism to include crimes such as property damage, theft, or robbery, and restrict the rights to freedom of assembly and speech.

“The proposed counterterrorism law would permit the Sri Lankan government to continue to use draconian measures to silence peaceful critics and target minorities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s crackdown on dissent and misuse of existing counterterrorism laws to arbitrarily detain protesters highlights the obvious risk of abuse.”

The Anti-Terrorism Bill, which was published on March 22, 2023, is intended to replace the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which led to widespread torture and arbitrary detentions since its introduction in 1979. While the new bill contains some improvements, it includes provisions that will facilitate abuse. The bill appears designed to give the president, police, and military broad powers to detain people without evidence, to make vaguely defined forms of speech a criminal offense, and to arbitrarily ban gatherings and organizations without meaningful judicial oversight.

In response to criticism from Sri Lankan activists and lawyers, the United Nations Human Rights Council, foreign governments, and the European Union, successive Sri Lankan governments have repeatedly promised to repeal and replace the PTA with rights-respecting legislation.

The Anti-Terrorism Bill is largely based on proposals presented in 2018, when Sri Lanka’s current president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was prime minister. The 2018 bill was criticized over human rights concerns and was not enacted. Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe recently expressed satisfaction with the new draft and told journalists that “we won’t make any major change to the current version.”

In 2021, the UN independent expert on human rights and counterterrorism set out five “necessary perquisites” to ensure that Sri Lanka’s counterterrorism law complies with international rights standards. They include providing an appropriate definition of terrorism, ensuring precision and legal certainty, provisions to prevent arbitrary detention, measures that adhere to the absolute prohibition on torture, and due process and fair trial guarantees including judicial oversight. The Anti-Terrorism Bill does not fully meet any of these standards, Human Rights Watch said.

Its definition of terrorism is vague and overbroad and can include peaceful protests or acts that, while criminal, do not rise to the level of any reasonable definition of terrorism. Offences include participation in certain “unlawful” assemblies if the aim is to “intimidate” the public or “wrongfully” compel the government to act in a certain way, as well as “theft” or “robbery” of government or private property, even if these acts are not intended to cause death or serious harm. The government is currently facing strikes, including by public sector workers. In 2022, the authorities used counterterrorism powers to arbitrarily detain three student leaders after widespread protests over corruption and misgovernance forced both the president and prime minister to resign.

While under the PTA, the authorities can detain a suspect for up to a year on orders signed by the defence minister, the proposed bill gives the authority to issue detention orders to deputy inspector generals of police, increasing the risk of abuse. The police could take a detainee from pretrial detention back into police custody, and the defence secretary could transfer a detainee to the custody of “any authority.” This puts suspects at greater risk of torture and other ill-treatment, as abuses under the current law demonstrate.

The proposed bill grants the police and military sweeping powers to stop, question, search, and arrest anyone, or seize any document or object without a warrant, if they believe they have “reasonable grounds.” The military, which is not trained in law enforcement, would have 24 hours to transfer a detainee to police custody, placing detainees at greater risk of abuse, it said.

Human Rights Watch pointed out that it also provides the president power to issue regulations for “rehabilitation” programs if the attorney general has decided to defer or suspend prosecution. The attorney general could then “impose” “voluntary” rehabilitation on a person who has not been convicted of any crime. In 2021, the Supreme Court stayed similar regulations. The authorities have long committed human rights violations against people accused of terrorism or of drug use, who are incarcerated without trial in government “rehabilitation” programs.

The president, on the advice of the police or military, would be authorized to declare any location a “prohibited place,” with up to three years in prison for violations. This appears to be an attempt to prevent a repetition of the largely peaceful 2022 protests in the capital, Colombo. The government had declared “high-security zones” under the Official Secrets Act, which were withdrawn following widespread condemnation.

The bill expands broad powers to criminalize speech that is “likely to be understood” as encouragement or inducement to commit or prepare for terrorism, with the burden of proof on the defendant to show that was not their intention. These offences also apply to those who publish, distribute, sell, or transmit “terrorist publications,” which could have a further chilling effect. In the past, the government has used the PTA to detain people who commemorated Tamil victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war on social media on the grounds that they were “glorifying” terrorism, which is also an offence under these proposals.

The president would be authorized to ban an organization if authorities have “reasonable grounds” to believe it is acting in a manner “prejudicial to the national security of Sri Lanka, or any other country.” In the past, the government has proscribed Tamil diaspora organizations advocating for human rights and accountability as “terrorist organizations,” and human rights organizations have faced government interference in their banking and finances on the pretext of countering “terrorist financing.”

Human Rights Watch further said the bill provides for the death penalty for the terrorism offence of murder, although Sri Lanka has observed a moratorium on executions since 1976. Sri Lanka should abolish the death penalty, which the Human Rights Watch opposes in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty and finality.

The bill includes some new due process protections, including that confession to the police will not be admitted as evidence, and that female suspects should be searched by women officers. There are new procedures for reporting and notifying the reason for an arrest, providing access to translations of documents in a language a detainee understands, and presenting a detained person before a magistrate every 14 days. It also clarifies the procedures that a magistrate should follow if a detainee appears to have been tortured.

However, the two ostensibly independent entities proposed under the bill, the Board of Review to hear appeals against detention orders, and the Independent Review Panel to advise on the rights-respecting implementation of the law, would not be independent by law.

Human Rights Watch said until new counterterrorism legislation that upholds human rights is drafted, the government should impose a full moratorium on the use of the PTA and take steps to repeal it.

Successive Sri Lankan governments have offered repeated assurances to the EU that they would uphold rights commitments, including by repealing the PTA, in exchange for tariff-free trade access under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+). The trade access is conditioned to the ratification and effective implementation of key human rights treaties. In its latest monitoring report, the European Commission said that Sri Lanka “still has to deliver on a number of important reforms.”

Sri Lanka’s international partners, including the United States, EU, Japan, India, and others should press for genuine reforms to ensure this bill meets Sri Lanka’s international human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said. The EU should make it clear that replacing the present counterterrorism law with similarly abusive legislation does not address its concerns and could affect Sri Lanka’s GSP+ status.

“The Anti-Terrorism Bill needs to be seen both in light of Sri Lanka’s abusive history of counterterrorism powers and the current government’s repression of peaceful dissent,” Ganguly said. “Sri Lanka’s international partners should make it absolutely clear that they will not reward this abuse with trade preferences and other support.” (NewsWire)

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The government of Sri Lanka should ensure that policies to enhance revenues do not further erode economic and social rights and that anti-corruption reforms provide accountability, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday (29).

HRW said in a statement that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a US$3 billion loan to Sri Lanka on 20th March to help resolve the spiralling economic crisis that began after Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt in April 2022.

The loan was approved seven months after IMF staff and government officials reached an initial agreement and following financing assurances from the country’s major bilateral creditors. Although it focuses on growing revenues and emphasizes tackling corruption and improving social protection, the program as structured risks further undermining people’s economic and social rights. The government has announced policies that effectively reduce salaries in public service agencies, eliminate subsidies, and increase regressive taxes – steps that could degrade public services and further raise prices at a time when a large segment of the population is already struggling due to high inflation.

“Official corruption and tax rules that benefitted the wealthiest were key drivers of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, for which Sri Lankans struggling to make ends meet should not have to carry the burden,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should recognize that the public deserves real accountability, whether it’s for past war crimes or ongoing misgovernance and repression of critics.”

IMF approval of the loan paves the way for multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to offer Sri Lanka new financing, which the government has said it expects to reach $7 billion over the next four years. Financial institutions and donors should insist on transparent, rights-respecting governance.

The IMF loan is intended to provide the country with a lifeline while addressing deep-seated problems that contributed to the crisis. Under international law, governments and financial institutions have an obligation to respond to economic crises in a way that advances rather than further jeopardizes human rights, and should avoid pursuing policies that reduce low-income people’s access to essential goods and services.

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis triggered soaring inflation, as well as shortages of essential goods such as fuel and medicine, causing severe and ongoing economic hardship. In January, the World Food Programme reported that one in three families in Sri Lanka was experiencing food insecurity and half were purchasing food on credit.

Waves of protests have made ending corruption a central demand and led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022. Currently, the IMF program’s anti-corruption measures are centred on the government passing legislation in line with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and the IMF carrying out a governance diagnostic that assesses Sri Lanka’s strengths and weaknesses in six areas, including the rule of law and fiscal governance. The conclusions could be used to set conditions later in the loan program.

Human Rights Watch stated that for the analysis to be effective, civil society should play a prominent role. Subsequent anti-corruption reforms should ensure that the government enforces its rules and holds corrupt officials and private businesspeople to account, including for past malfeasance. These efforts should include recovering stolen assets, imposing back pay and penalties for tax evasion, and stemming illicit financial flows out of the country.

The program’s focus on increasing government revenues, rather than reducing public spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), will better protect rights, Human Rights Watch said. When the crisis began, Sri Lanka had among the world’s lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world at 7.3 percent. That ratio is expected to nearly double to 14 percent of GDP. However, while some of the new measures are designed to increase taxes on the wealthy and eliminate tax exemptions that benefit them, the heavy reliance on value-added taxes can worsen the cost-of-living crisis.

The government has already increased corporate tax rates and removed all sector-specific tax exemptions, according to the IMF staff report. But most new tax revenue will come from value-added taxes (VAT), which were raised from 8 to 12 per cent in May 2022 and again to 15 per cent in September. Basic food items remain exempt from VAT, but the government committed to VAT reform by 2024 that would remove “almost all” product-specific exemptions.

While the wealthy pay more VAT in absolute terms because they spend more, the expense makes up a much greater share of income for low-income people. In 2019, the amount of revenue that came from VAT and income taxes was on par, but by the end of the program, VAT is expected to make up 32 per cent of all taxes, whereas income taxes would make up 21 per cent.

The program reduces the threshold for taxing annual income to 1.2 million rupees ($3,694), a change that some have protested as burdening families who are already struggling to realize their rights. The government should publish data on the percentage of the population that is subject to income taxes under this change, Human Rights Watch said. It should also consider advancing the introduction of taxes on property, gifts, and inheritance, which the program mandates by 2025.

The program includes other measures that could harm low-income people. Public services are central to delivering rights and are an important source of employment. The program calls for keeping any increase in public wages to less than inflation, effectively reducing real salaries, and reducing total spending on wages from 5 to 3.6 per cent of GDP. It also eliminates subsidies for both fuel and electricity and imposes an excise tax on fuel, but does not ensure that these critical measures are carried out in a way that fulfils rather than erodes rights. To protect rights when removing subsidies and introducing taxes for fossil fuels, the government should adequately invest in social protection, the use of renewable energy sources, and other measures to move toward a rights-aligned economy, Human Rights Watch said.

The program includes a so-called “social spending floor” that would “gradually raise” spending on four cash transfer programs “to help cushion the potential impact of macroeconomic adjustment on the poor and vulnerable groups.” Recognizing the pervasive flaws in the country’s targeted cash transfer programs, it also mandates overhauling eligibility criteria in partnership with the World Bank to make them “based on objective and verifiable characteristics of households,” and notes the government is working with the World Bank on a new electronic registry for selecting beneficiaries.

While the floor brings up total spending on these programs to 0.6 per cent of GDP, it is set at far less than developing countries’ average spending on safety nets, which is 1.6 per cent. Furthermore, the insistence on targeting benefits based on eligibility criteria also risks continuing to exclude people who are unable to access goods and services essential for an adequate standard of living. The details of the new eligibility criteria and electronic registry have not been made public, but research has shown pervasive problems with targeting benefits, including high error and exclusion rates.

For example, a proposal to use electricity consumption as a proxy measure – to overcome the lack of data on household income as well as the risk of corruption in selecting beneficiaries – would leave out about 35 per cent of the bottom half of the population. Because current beneficiaries who are ineligible under the new criteria would be removed by January 2024, this could mean people losing the benefits they are currently receiving.

Contrary to this approach, the IMF’s technical note on social safety nets advises that in countries with “low administrative capacity,” efforts should focus on enhancing tax capacity to “claw back” benefits from high-income households, rather than lowering benefits or excluding low-income beneficiaries.

“When half of Sri Lankan families are buying food on credit, it’s not the time to experiment with fixing chronic and pervasive problems with targeted cash transfer programs,” Ganguly said. “Instead of investing precious funds in new registries, the government’s focus should be on building a tax system that makes sure the wealthy pay their fair share.” (NewsWire)

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