Human Rights Council must act on call for a hybrid justice process - UN report on Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka cannot deliver accountability alone, says Freedom from Torture.

Freedom from Torture, the UK-based human rights organisation, welcomes the report of the UN investigation on Sri Lanka to which the charity gave extensive forensic evidence.

Sonya Sceats, Director of Advocacy and Policy at Freedom from Torture, says:

"Today the UN human rights chief has rightly concluded that Sri Lanka's domestic courts are ill-equipped to prosecute the heinous international crimes exposed by the UN investigation.

The ball is now firmly in the court of the Human Rights Council. It would be unthinkable for member states to backtrack on the recommendation of their own inquiry for a justice process with strong international participation through a hybrid court.

Sri Lankan torture survivors in treatment with us are adamant that they cannot trust a purely domestic process and will take comfort from the High Commissioner's warning that there must not be a replay of past broken promises. Any process that fails to win the confidence of survivors, including from the Tamil minority, is doomed to fail and may set back the common cause of reconciliation."

Background

The UN Human Rights Council commissioned the investigation in March 2014, to cover the Sri Lankan civil war (2002-9), including the final bloody weeks in May 2009, and the post-war period up to 15 November 2011.

Freedom from Torture is one of the largest torture rehabilitation centres in the world and has received almost 800 referrals for Sri Lankans in the last three years, more than for any other nationality. The charity submitted extensive forensic evidence to UN investigators of ongoing torture in Sri Lanka since the end of the war.

Over the coming weeks the Human Rights Council will consider the UN's report and agree a new resolution on Sri Lanka. It has already been announced that this resolution will be adopted by consensus, meaning that agreement has to be reached with the government of Sri Lanka.

The overall shape of an accountability process for abuses exposed by the UN investigation has already emerged as one of the most divisive issues. Sri Lanka insists that it will run a domestic process, but survivors of torture in treatment with Freedom from Torture and representatives of victim and survivor communities inside Sri Lanka have made it clear that only a strongly internationalised process can advance the common cause of reconciliation. Today the UN added its weight to this call.