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A new Commission of Inquiry to study human rights allegations
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is poised to name a new three-member Commission of Inquiry (CoI) mandated with looking into reports of previous panels and “finding closure to burning issues”, just days before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) takes up Sri Lanka’s case in Geneva,
These will include the findings of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, the report of the UN Secretary- General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka (Darusman report), the findings of the Presidential Commission to Investigate Complaints Regarding Missing Persons (Parangama Commission report) and all the reports of the UNHRC.
The Government will also tell the UNHRC when Sri Lanka’s case is taken up from late February to early March that it will revisit certain clauses of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and that the Attorney General (AG) is studying the cases of PTA detainees in prison for extended periods of time, said Admiral (Prof) Jayanath Colombage, Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“There is a small group of LTTE detainees, these are not ordinary people, they were hardcore terrorists, but they are kept in detention for a very long period, some as long as 15 years,” Admiral Colombage said, in an interview with the Sunday Times this week. “The President has accepted that it may not be the most right, correct thing. The Attorney General is personally paying attention to that.”
Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena first promised the UNHRC in March last year that Sri Lanka would set up a new CoI to review the reports of bodies that previously investigated allegations of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law; assess the status of implementation of their recommendations; and “to propose deliverable measures to implement them keeping in line with the new Government’s policy”.
The Cabinet has now approved the new CoI, Secretary Colombage said, adding that its terms of reference were being streamlined and that an announcement is expected within a week. As expected, it will be headed by a retired or serving Supreme Court judge. He attributed the nearly year-long delay in setting up the body to COVID-19 priorities, dissolution of Parliament, elections and the formation of a new Cabinet.
Admiral Colombage insisted that the Government was not time-buying with yet another commission. “The world has changed,” he said. “The evidence has changed. We are not reinventing the wheel. We’re trying to find out where things are. Through this high-powered Commissionon, our objective is to find closure to the burning issues that we have.”
These issues, according to the international community, are “accountability, large-scale human rights violations and independent mechanisms to address these two”, he said.
Admiral Colombage cautioned against impugning the CoI’s efficacy based on the appointing authority being President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who, as then Secretary of Defence, played a direct role in executing the war that some international actors allege saw the execution of war crimes on a large scale.
“He is not going to appoint the Commission as the Secretary of Defence,” he insisted. “He is appointing it as the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. And this is a pledge we made in Geneva to the UN Human Rights Council.”
The CoI will identify “good things” from previous bodies of inquiry that were appointed and determine why their recommendations were not implemented over 11 years, he said. It will look at the UN reports and “see what they’re saying about the figures, about the evidence they supposedly have”. It will also study the various resolutions before the UNHRC and identify the commitments made, those kept and those that are yet to be implemented.
There is also interest in finding a solution to the nagging issue of missing persons–how many there are, the circumstances of their disappearance, the payment of compensation or reparation, whether to issue death or certificates of absence, etc.
Admiral Colombage pointed out that attempts to replace the PTA with a Counter-Terrorism Act were discarded after four years by the previous Government which held the draft unsuitable. The AG’s Department has again been assigned to scrutinise the law which was first introduced in 1979 as a temporary measure and made permanent in 1982.
“I think the Government is now determined to revisit the PTA and see whether any clauses are not consistent, or some clauses are inconsistent, with international best practices, and to make corrections,” the Secretary said.