Sri Lanka’s Failing Transitional Justice Process
by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, Washington, DC, May 14, 2018
PEARL’s new report, “Delayed or Denied? Sri Lanka’s Failing Transitional Justice Process”documents Sri Lanka’s failure to fulfill its transitional justice commitments and the complacency with which its intransigence has been received by members of the international community. Sri Lankan officials have publicly repudiated their promises on at least 30 occasions in the last year alone. Nevertheless, members of the international community continue to treat Sri Lanka as a good faith actor, ignoring glaring red flags that it is unwilling to pursue a meaningful accountability process. PEARL’s interviews with the victim-survivor community show that they are growing frustrated with the international community’s lenience towards Sri Lanka’s endless delays and broken promises and are increasingly willing to mobilize in defense of their rights.
“It is clear that Sri Lanka needs international pressure to implement a comprehensive transitional justice process,” said PEARL’s Legal Researcher Anjali Manivannan. “But members of the international community keep taking the Sri Lankan government at its word, despite years of back-and-forth dialogue and broken promises. The failure of states to continue calling for a hybrid court to investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes has betrayed Tamil victims and survivors whose only hope lies with the international community. The international community must increase—not decrease—pressure on Sri Lanka in order to preserve peace on the island.”
See full report here and at PEARL-TJ-Report-Final.
PEARL’s new report documents Sri Lanka’s failure to fulfill its transitional justice commitments
and the complacency with which its intransigence has been received by members of the
international community. Sri Lankan officials have publicly repudiated their promises on at least
30 occasions in the last year alone. Nevertheless, members of the international community
continue to treat Sri Lanka as a good faith actor, ignoring glaring red flags that it is unwilling
to pursue a meaningful accountability process. PEARL’s interviews with the victim-survivor
community show that they are growing frustrated with the international community’s lenience
towards Sri Lanka’s endless delays and broken promises and are increasingly willing to mobilize
in defense of their rights.