President Anura Kumara Dissanayake
Presidential Secretariat of Sri Lanka
Galle Face
Colombo 00100
Sri Lanka
November 19, 2024
Re: Human Rights Recommendations for the new Sri Lankan Government
Dear President Dissanayake,
Congratulations on your election to the presidency of Sri Lanka, and your party’s recent success in the parliamentary elections. We recognize that you have assumed office at a time of great challenges. Your actions will have a profound impact on the human rights of Sri Lankans for years to come.
Human Rights Watch is an independent non-governmental organization that works in over 90 countries around the world. We have worked on human rights in Sri Lanka since the 1980s, on issues ranging from enforced disappearances throughout the island, and abuses by all sides during the 1983-2009 civil war, to the impact of the current economic crisis on economic and social rights.
We welcome the pledges you made during your campaigns to address several long-standing human rights issues, including by repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, removing abusive provisions of the Online Safety Act, establishing an independent Directorate of Public Prosecutions separate from the attorney general’s office, and revisiting policies that have unfairly distributed the burden of the response to the economic crisis while addressing its root causes. We hope that Human Rights Watch can have a constructive engagement with you and your government on these and other priorities in the coming months and years.
Sri Lanka’s many pressing human rights concerns have largely gone unaddressed by previous administrations. As a priority, your government should take steps towards assisting those most harmed by the economic crisis; end policies and practices by the security forces that target minority communities, victims of rights violations and members of civil society, especially in the north and east; and work to bring those responsible for rights violations and corruption to justice. We welcome that your government has already pledged to address some of these issues.
While preceding governments made many pledges on human rights, established numerous commissions of inquiry, and sometimes invited United Nations experts, they all failed to act on recommendations to ensure truth, reparations and accountability, or to engage in systemic law enforcement reforms that would help prevent future violations. Your government should act on the evidence 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 technical capacity to identify remains discovered in mass graves. We also urge you to cooperate with the United Nations Accountability Project to help ensure future prosecutions for serious violations.
We have set out some of our concerns in detail below. This is by no means a comprehensive list. The large number of human rights issues facing your administration means that there are numerous opportunities for progress.
We would welcome the opportunity to engage with you and your administration on these matters.
Yours sincerely,
Elaine Pearson
Asia Director
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Concerns in Sri Lanka
Building on your pledges, we are writing to draw your attention to some of the urgent human rights concerns facing Sri Lanka, and urge you to use your time in office to create a legacy of positive change.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
The economic crisis was in part triggered by low government revenues, a result of tax exemptions and cuts that benefitted the most wealthy, as well misgovernance and corruption that is part of a larger crisis of misgovernance and impunity. It has had a disastrous impact on the rights of millions of Sri Lankans, eroding public services essential to rights and placing the burden of efforts to quickly raise revenues disproportionately on those least able to cope.
We are encouraged by numerous pledges in your election manifesto, including to make tax policies more progressive and revenue collection more efficient, improve government provision of health care and education, strengthen social security and workers’ rights, recover stolen assets and crack down on corruption.
The previous government did not reverse corporate tax exemptions and other tax policies that principally benefit the most well off, while it doubled value-added taxes, removed VAT exemptions on essential goods, and phased out fuel subsidies without adequate compensatory measures, contributing to a spike in prices that most affected people on modest incomes, even as state provision of essential services such as health and education declined.
Research has shown that social security programs such as Aswesuma that target people based on economic status are prone to errors, arbitrary cutoffs, corruption, and social mistrust. Instead, governments should establish universal systems not tied to economic status, which provide income support to everyone at critical moments throughout their lives.
We urge your government to:
- Implement a progressive tax system, including by reversing corporate tax exemptions and focusing tax policy and enforcement on the wealthiest; vigorously pursue the recovery of stolen assets;
- Ensure the effective implementation of laws designed to combat corruption, and that allegations of corruption are thoroughly investigated and appropriately prosecuted;
- Increase spending on health and education with clear benchmarks to achieve internationally recommended targets;
- Move toward a universal social security system in place of Aswesuma.
Enforced Disappearances
You will be keenly aware that Sri Lanka has one of the world’s highest rates of enforced disappearances, including those who disappeared during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) insurgency and the civil war between the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Previous governments have for decades refused to reveal the fate of the disappeared, or to prosecute those responsible. The Office of Missing Persons (OMP) has made almost no progress investigating cases and is widely distrusted by victims. The scope of the Commission for Truth Unity and Reconciliation proposed by the Wickremesinghe administration does not include enforced disappearances during the JVP uprising. Several mass graves have been accidentally discovered, but not properly investigated.
We urge your government to:
- End the security forces’ harassment and intimidation of relatives of the disappeared who are campaigning for truth and justice;
- Accept international technical assistance to investigate mass graves throughout the island, and identify remains including by DNA testing;
- Reform or replace the OMP, to ensure a body that is credible in the eyes of victims’ families, and upholds their rights;
- Use evidence gathered by the OMP and numerous commissions of inquiry to reveal the fate of the disappeared;
- Allow robust and independent criminal investigations and prosecutions of people accused of responsibility for enforced disappearances.
Prevention of Terrorism Act
We welcome your manifesto commitment to the “[a]bolition of all oppressive acts including the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and ensuring civil rights of people in all parts of the country.”
Previous governments have made similar commitments, yet the authorities continue to use the PTA to target perceived opponents, particularly from minority communities, without credible evidence to support terrorism allegations. According to information shared by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the authorities notified HRCSL of 46 cases of arrests and detentions under the PTA between January 2023 and April 2024.
Such is the chilling effect of the PTA, in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption. Numerous human rights defenders in the Northern and Eastern provinces have told Human Rights Watch 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,” said an activist in the Northern Province. In Kattankudy, many Muslims who were arrested and detained under the PTA without evidence of wrongdoing in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings continue to face harassment from the security forces.
While many long-term PTA prisoners have been released in recent years, at least eight who were first detained between 1996 and 2011 remain in prison.
The Anti-Terrorism Bill, presented to parliament by the previous administration as a proposed replacement for the PTA, would expand the definition of terrorism to include crimes such as property damage and contains draconian new powers to give the president, police, and military broad scope to detain people without evidence. It makes vaguely defined forms of speech a criminal offense, and would enable arbitrary prohibitions of gatherings and organizations without meaningful judicial oversight.
We urge your government to:
- Immediately impose a full moratorium on the use of the PTA, and promptly implement your commitment to repeal it;
- Release remaining long-term PTA prisoners who were convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture;
- Ensure that any new counterterrorism legislation is compliant with international human rights standards;
- Direct security agencies to end the harassment and intimidation of people, mostly Tamils and Muslims, who were previously accused under the PTA and released due to lack of evidence.
Accountability and Justice
Successive Sri Lankan governments have appointed at least 10 commissions since the 1990s to examine human rights violations and war crimes. They collected extensive testimony from victims and witnesses, but none led to accountability or revealed the fate of the disappeared. Instead, the authorities blocked the few criminal investigations into grave abuses that had made some progress.
In June 2023, President Ranil Wickremesinghe announced plans to establish a new truth and reconciliation commission, called the Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation (CTUR), to examine conflict-related rights violations. Victims’ and civil society groups said they had not been properly consulted, and that the new commission would put them at risk of re-traumatization and further threats from security forces. Six UN special procedures mandate holders said the proposals “appear not to be in compliance with international standards.”
The state’s ongoing abuses against victims of past violations, their families, and communities, undermine the purported goals of the proposed commission. For example, events to commemorate Tamil victims of the war are frequently disrupted by the police.
In Sri Lanka’s statement to the UN Human Rights Council on October 9, your government pledged that “[d]omestic mechanisms and processes that deal with reconciliation, accountability and justice will be credible and independent,” and stated that, “[a]s directed by the President, investigative authorities have already announced redoubling of investigation into a number of clearly identified accountability cases that were pending from the past… Justice will be delivered to the victims of the senseless Easter Sunday attacks.”
We urge your government to:
- Promptly initiate the process to create the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, separate from the attorney general’s office, as pledged in your manifesto;
- Conduct extensive and genuine consultation with affected individuals and communities, and pursue confidence building measures, before proceeding with a domestic process to address conflict era crimes;
- Build on evidence gathered by previous commissions of inquiry to reveal the truth of past abuses and pursue justice and accountability;
- Ensure fair and thorough investigations of crimes including the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, and of emblematic cases that were partially investigated between 2015-19 before those investigations were dropped under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association
Restrictions on civic space, which are most intense in the north and east, continued and perhaps intensified under the presidency of Ranil Wickremesinghe. Tamil activists and victims of previous violations, including the families of the disappeared, are routinely subject to surveillance and harassment. Civil society organizations have frequently encountered official obstacles to receiving funding from abroad, including from the Central Bank, on the pretext of combatting terrorist financing.
Non-governmental organizations play many vital roles, including in advocating for human rights, and providing services to people effected by the economic crisis. The NGO Secretariat, responsible for regulating civil society organizations, is part of the Ministry of Public Security, indicating that the previous administration treated civil society as a threat. The 2023 IMF Governance Diagnostic Assessment of Sri Lanka 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 “opportunities for public participation and oversight of official behaviour, including by civil society, are increasingly restricted.”
The Non-Governmental Organizations (Registration and Supervision) Bill proposed by the previous administration 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.
We welcome your commitment to amend the Online Safety Act to remove abusive provisions. Since much of the law is concerned with creating broad and ill-defined speech-related offenses, punishable with lengthy prison terms, it would be better to repeal it entirely and bring new legislation that is targeted at addressing genuine online harms such as harassment and fraud, not restricting protected speech.
We urge your government to:
- Remove the NGO Secretariat from the Ministry of Public Security and place it under a ministry responsible for supporting social welfare activities;
- Direct the police, security and intelligence agencies to end the intimidation and arbitrary surveillance of human rights defenders and civil society activists, especially in the north and east;
- End the unwarranted obstruction of international funding to civil society organizations;
- Abandon the approach of previous governments represented by the NGO Bill, and instead seek to strengthen and engage constructively with civil society;
- Announce that the Online Safety Act will not be implemented before it is extensively amended, or replaced with rights respecting legislation.
Arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings
The HRSCL has informed OHCHR that it received 2,845 allegations of torture and 675 complaints of degrading treatment between January 2023 and March 2024. The HRCSL reported that between January 2023 and March 2024, it received 21 allegations of extrajudicial killings; 26 cases of deaths in custody, and 1,342 complaints of arbitrary arrests and detentions.
There have been widespread arbitrary arrests, as well as allegations of torture and ill treatment, in connection with the anti-drugs “Yukthiya” campaign, launched by the previous government in December 2023. By May this year there had been over 120,000 arrests, many of them apparently on the basis of no evidence, and often of individuals from marginalized socio-economic communities. Thousands of people have been sent without due process to abusive military-run custodial drug “rehabilitation” where their basic rights are violated.
We urge your government to:
- Ensure that allegations of human rights violations against the police and other security agencies are fairly and thoroughly investigated and those accused are appropriately prosecuted;
- End operation “Yukthiya” and release people who have been arrested without evidence or reasonable suspicion, release people sent without trial to compulsory drug rehabilitation, and end the involvement of the armed forces in drug control and treatment activities;
- Provide drug dependent people with voluntary, community and evidence-based drug treatment and care, under the leadership of the Ministry of Health.
Freedom of Religion or Belief
The campaign to redesignate Hindu temples as Buddhist sites gathered speed in 2020, when then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa established the Presidential Task Force for Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province. Although the task force is no longer active, the policy continued under President Wickremesinghe. Agencies, including the Department of Archaeology, Department of Forests, Department of Wildlife Conservation, the military, and police, have taken part in a concerted strategy assailing the culture and practices of religious minorities. In some cases private lands belonging to Hindu or Muslim communities have also been affected. These actions violate rights including to freedom of religion or belief, and make government rhetoric of postwar “reconciliation” appear hollow.
We urge your government to:
- Direct state agencies to end the practices of encroaching upon or denying access to minority religious sites;
- Ensure that the police and other state agencies respect court orders upholding the rights of minorities to religious sites;
- Ensure that minority communities’ rights to lands that they use for economic activities are not subject to discriminatory interference or obstruction by government agencies.
Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act
The Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) contains numerous provisions that violate the rights of women and girls, including by allowing child marriage without setting any minimum age. The act stipulates that only men can be judges of the Qazi (family) court, makes it easier for men than for women to obtain a divorce, and does not require a woman or girl’s consent to be recorded before the registration of her marriage. Furthermore, the penal code permits what would otherwise constitute statutory rape in cases of child marriage that are permitted under the MMDA.
For decades, campaigners have called for the MMDA to be amended. In 2021, the cabinet approved reforms to the act that Muslim women’s rights activists welcomed. However, they were not presented to parliament and the process appeared to have been stalled.
We urge your government to:
- Reform the MMDA on the basis of the proposal approved by the cabinet in 2021.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
The penal code prohibits “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” and “any act of gross indecency.” These provisions are widely understood to criminalize consensual same-sex activity. Another provision, which prohibits “cheating by personation,” is used by police to target transgender people, and the 1841 Vagrants Ordinance contains overbroad and vague provisions that are used to target transgender women and women suspected to be sex workers.
A private member’s bill was presented in parliament in 2022 to decriminalize same-sex relations but was not brought to a vote.
We urge your government to:
- Bring new legislation to decriminalize same-sex relations and ensure equal rights for transgender people.
Reproductive Rights and Abortion
Sri Lanka has among the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, imposing long prison sentences for all abortions with exceptions only for saving a woman’s life. In 2022, the then-justice minister called for parliament to consider legalizing abortion in cases of rape. However, the government failed to bring new legislation.
We urge your government to:
- Bring legislation to fully decriminalize abortion, not only in cases of rape.
