Human Rights Watch has said the Sri Lankan government’s prosecution of past grave abuses has lagged, and called on the UN Human Rights Council to press President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s administration to show greater determination on accountability.
The finding comes in a 49-page report, “Not Genuine with Justice”: Sri Lanka’s Lack of Will to Prosecute Past Abuses, released in Geneva on 1 September and reported in Sri Lanka by Hiru News.
“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.”
What the report examined
The report reviews domestic justice efforts in seven prominent cases of grave abuses in which the organisation says the government has made “a measure of progress” since taking office in 2024.
Many emblematic cases remain stalled, Human Rights Watch found — among them a massacre of aid workers, the targeting of journalists, and the enforced disappearances of academics and others. Families of victims and human rights defenders continue to face threats and intimidation.
Despite repeated transitional justice commitments made to the Human Rights Council over the years, the organisation said prosecutions of those allegedly responsible for grave abuses remain virtually nonexistent.
The findings draw on interviews with 32 victims, family members of the disappeared, lawyers and other human rights defenders, alongside an extensive review of court documents and other sources.
The period covered
Tens of thousands of people were tortured, forcibly disappeared, abducted and killed by government security forces and non-state armed groups during the 1987–1989 insurrection in the south and the civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009.
The report quotes a family member of a disappearance victim in Jaffna on the limits of exhumation work: “Excavations alone will not provide justice. Will those who are responsible for abuses be held accountable?” Investigators have recovered the remains of 582 people from the mass grave at Chemmani near Jaffna, but the organisation says there has been no apparent progress on accountability arising from it.
Context
The report lands as Sri Lanka’s record returns to the Human Rights Council’s agenda. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath set out the government’s position on judicial reforms to the Council on 1 September, arguing that domestic mechanisms are being strengthened.
Not yet reported
Hiru’s account did not carry a government response, and none had been issued at the time of writing. The report’s seven cases are not individually named in the coverage available in Sri Lanka, and no outlet has reported whether the government intends to respond before the Council session.
