Sri Lanka rights probe hampered, commission's head says
By Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO, July 14 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's probe into rights abuses including the killing of 17 aid workers in 2006 was hampered by the lack of witness protection and its abrupt winding-up, the commission's head said on Tuesday.
On Aug. 4, 2006, 17 mostly Tamil staff members of charity Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were gunned down inside the ACF compound in the northeastern town of Muttur, near where fighting was taking place between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
The government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) blamed each other for what was then the deadliest attack on aid workers since the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
Nordic peace monitors whom the government accused of a pro-rebel bias blamed the attack on security forces.
The report by the commission of inquiry appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to investigate serious human rights abuses is inconclusive about who killed the aid workers.
Foreign observers to the panel two years ago predicted the commission would fail to find anything substantive and quit last year, saying it did not meet international standards and had been interfered with politically. The government denies that.
The commission's mandate was not extended when it expired in June, making it the latest in Sri Lanka's long history of probes into rights abuses that were incomplete or inconclusive.
"We have not been able to complete the whole thing because we didn't have the video conferencing facility and a witness protection bill...is still in parliament," retired Supreme Court Judge Nissanka Udalagama told Reuters.
A number of witnesses have fled the country in fear for their lives, and video-conferencing was needed to contact witnesses who live abroad, he said.
Udalagama, head of the eight-member commission, said they could have called other witnesses but the president wanted a report based on what had been done so far.
The report exonerates the army and navy, but says auxiliary police known as home guards could have carried out the killings. "There was other evidence like the presence of Muslim home guards. They had access to the weapons. And it could have been LTTE," Udalagama said.
Rights watchdogs have reported hundreds of abductions, disappearances and killings blamed on both the government and the LTTE throughout the course of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, which ended in May.
Sri Lanka has a long history of failing to prosecute rights abuses, particularly when members of the security forces are involved, going back to the early 1970s when the government violently suppressed a Marxist insurrection. (Editing by Bryson Hull)
COLOMBO, July 14 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's probe into rights abuses including the killing of 17 aid workers in 2006 was hampered by the lack of witness protection and its abrupt winding-up, the commission's head said on Tuesday.
On Aug. 4, 2006, 17 mostly Tamil staff members of charity Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were gunned down inside the ACF compound in the northeastern town of Muttur, near where fighting was taking place between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
The government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) blamed each other for what was then the deadliest attack on aid workers since the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
Nordic peace monitors whom the government accused of a pro-rebel bias blamed the attack on security forces.
The report by the commission of inquiry appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to investigate serious human rights abuses is inconclusive about who killed the aid workers.
Foreign observers to the panel two years ago predicted the commission would fail to find anything substantive and quit last year, saying it did not meet international standards and had been interfered with politically. The government denies that.
The commission's mandate was not extended when it expired in June, making it the latest in Sri Lanka's long history of probes into rights abuses that were incomplete or inconclusive.
"We have not been able to complete the whole thing because we didn't have the video conferencing facility and a witness protection bill...is still in parliament," retired Supreme Court Judge Nissanka Udalagama told Reuters.
A number of witnesses have fled the country in fear for their lives, and video-conferencing was needed to contact witnesses who live abroad, he said.
Udalagama, head of the eight-member commission, said they could have called other witnesses but the president wanted a report based on what had been done so far.
The report exonerates the army and navy, but says auxiliary police known as home guards could have carried out the killings. "There was other evidence like the presence of Muslim home guards. They had access to the weapons. And it could have been LTTE," Udalagama said.
Rights watchdogs have reported hundreds of abductions, disappearances and killings blamed on both the government and the LTTE throughout the course of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, which ended in May.
Sri Lanka has a long history of failing to prosecute rights abuses, particularly when members of the security forces are involved, going back to the early 1970s when the government violently suppressed a Marxist insurrection. (Editing by Bryson Hull)
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