Basil Fernando, the Sri Lankan jurist, author and poet who led the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission for much of three decades, has died at 81, Newswire reported.

Born in Sri Lanka on 14 October 1944, Fernando worked as a lawyer before a career that moved between refugee law, United Nations field postings and institutional reform advocacy across Asia.

A career built in the field

Fernando served as Appeals Counsel for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1992, on a project sponsored by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

He then moved to Cambodia, where from 1992 to 1993 he was a Senior United Nations Human Rights Officer in charge of the Investigation Unit under the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) — the mission that administered the country between the Paris peace accords and its first post-conflict elections. From 1993 to 1994 he was Officer in Charge and Chief of Legal Assistance at the Cambodia office of the UN Centre for Human Rights.

He joined the Asian Human Rights Commission in 1994 and became its executive director. His work there centred on documenting rights violations case by case — particularly torture, custodial deaths and police impunity — and connecting that grassroots record to campaigns for reform of courts, prosecution services and policing.

Recognition

Fernando received the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights in 2001, was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2005, and in 2014 was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, often described as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for what the jury called his work supporting and documenting the implementation of human rights in Asia.

He also wrote poetry and published extensively on the failure of criminal justice institutions in Sri Lanka and the wider region.

Not reported

The report does not give the date, place or cause of death, name surviving family, or carry tributes from the Asian Human Rights Commission or any other organisation. No verified Sri Lankan or international newsroom had published its own account at the time of writing, and this article rests on a single report.