Sri Lanka’s Domestic Accountability and Human Rights Processes
by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice, London, December 2022
SLCPJ 2022-Dec-Failure-of-Domestic-Accountability-Mechanisms
A brief overview of Sri Lanka’s
history of domestic accountability
and human rights processes, from
1989 to the present day.
Introduction
Whenever the possibility of an international investigation of human rights violations is raised,
representatives of the Sri Lankan government are quick to shoot it down. The representatives
will reject such investigations as ‘unconstitutional’ or unacceptable to the people of Sri Lanka,1
and instead refer to their own domestic accountability processes, including a proposed Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) based on the South African model.2
In reality, victim-survivor communities have consistently demanded3 an international probe
into wartime atrocities and other violations, and many have long rejected the idea of a purely
domestic accountability process. For decades, victims and their families have dealt with dozens
of Commissions and investigative bodies, ostensibly established to provide justice and
accountability for past violations, only to then watch those bodies totally fail to produce any
tangible results. Successive Sri Lankan governments have manipulated these domestic bodies
for their own ends and failed to heed most of the often-meagre recommendations they have
offered, allowing the cycle of violence and abuse to continue. An excellent study by the
International Commission of Jurists4 has shown that these failed mechanisms date back to at
least 1977. Victims and families who have engaged with these processes are highly vulnerable,
as Sri Lanka lacks any proper witness protection infrastructure.
The government of Sri Lanka has also consistently rejected5 the idea of any hybrid court in the
country, saying that such measures ‘are against the Constitution’. However, for decades, Sri
Lanka’s domestic courts have failed to deliver real accountability for victims. A confidential
source has examined 303 incidents of disappearances in Mannar, Jaffna, and Vavuniya in the
Northern Province between 1990 and 2000, which represent only a fraction of the complaints
registered with various domestic Commissions of Inquiry during this period. Of these cases, at
least 67 identified either an individual perpetrator or a military camp where the alleged
disappearance took place. In three incidents, the complainants specifically identified the
perpetrator as belonging to a state-supported group. Of the 83 criminal cases filed in the courts,
only the rape and murder of Krishanthy Kumaraswamy6 resulted in any convictions.
Our source also investigated 560 further incidents of disappearances in Jaffna, Vavuniya, and
Mannar between 2001 and 2009. Of these, 110 incidents identified either a military camp or
individual who they alleged was involved in an enforced disappearance; of these, only one
reported incident has resulted in both a court case and a conviction. The convict in this case,
Sunil Ratnayake, was released via Presidential pardon7 by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, having served
only five years in prison for the murder of eight Tamil civilians, including three children. Sri
Lanka’s courts have not proved to be reliable routes for accountability for these victims. Should
President Wickremesinghe’s proposed TRC follow the South African model, it will totally lack an
accountability mechanism.
The international community should encourage all accountability processes in Sri Lanka, and
demand that future they must not accept any domestic process as a substitute for an
international or hybrid mechanism. To do so would ignore the wishes of victim-survivor
groups, Sri Lanka’s faltering legal system, the government’s long history of broken promises,
and the decades-long failure of the domestic system. These domestic mechanisms – whether
police investigations or commissions of inquiry – have time and again served only to delay
justice for the victims for so long that both victims and perpetrators pass away before
accountability has been achieved.