Killing of aid workers: HRW says no action taken

Sri Lankan authorities have not brought to justice those responsible for the slaying of 17 aid workers a decade ago, the Human Right Watch claimed yesterday.

On August 4, 2006, gunmen murdered local staff members attached to the Parisbased Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger, ACF) at their compound in the town of Muttur, in the eastern Trincomalee district.

The special court being set up by the government of President Maithripala Sirisena should ensure that the ACF killings and other wartime atrocities are fully and fairly tried with significant foreign involvement, and all those culpable brought to account, regardless of rank or position, the Human Rights Watch said.

“The failure to provide justice for the ACF massacre is Exhibit A in the breakdown of accountability for serious crimes during Sri Lanka’s civil war,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “The mishandling of the ACF case shows why a war crimes court needs international involvement to shield it from political pressures.”

The killings of the ACF workers – 16 ethnic Tamils, including four women, and one Muslim – occurred after several days of fighting between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for control of Muttur. The ACF team had been providing assistance to survivors of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The war ended in May 2009, with the LTTE’S defeat. The non-governmental University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) published detailed findings on the Muttur killings based on accounts from witnesses and weapons analysis that implicate government security forces present in the area.

The group alleges that two police constables and Sri Lankan naval Special Forces commandos were directly responsible, and that senior police and justice officials were linked to a cover-up.

In July 2007, then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa established the Presidential Commission of Inquiry to investigate 16 major human rights cases, including the ACF case. Families of ACF workers who testified before the commission reported threats by security force personnel. And the commission’s international monitors resigned in protest in 2008, citing grave problems with its investigations.

While the Sirisena government has taken important steps to address the serious human rights problems in the country, a number of the commitments made to the Human Rights Council in its October 2015 resolution remain unfulfilled.

Most notably, the government has at times backtracked on its commitment to a judicial mechanism for investigating war crimes and other serious rights abuses by both government forces and the LTTE.