{"id":82795,"date":"2023-09-27T00:36:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T04:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=82795"},"modified":"2023-09-28T01:18:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T05:18:31","slug":"12-members-of-us-congress-write-to-secretary-of-state-anthony-blinkenurging-the-biden-administration-to-hold-sri-lanka-responsible-for-violations-of-international-humanitarian-law-woul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=82795","title":{"rendered":"12 Members of US Congress Write to Secretary of State , Anthony Blinken,Urging the Biden Administration to Hold Sri Lanka Responsible for Violations of International Humanitarian Law; \u201cwould like to see the Biden administration take the case all the way to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anusha Rathi and Jack Detsch<\/strong><\/p>\n

Congress is calling on the Biden administration to formally hold Sri Lanka responsible for its human rights abuses and violation of international humanitarian law, including decades of torture, military abuse, and other \u201chorrific crimes\u201d carried out against the country\u2019s minority Tamil population.<\/p>\n

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and obtained by Foreign Policy, 12 members of Congress from both sides of the aisle urged the State Department to follow Article 30 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and hold Colombo, which has \u201cconsistently failed to make tangible progress toward justice and accountability,\u201d responsible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our view, the impunity enjoyed by Sri Lankan perpetrators, which has also enabled Sri Lanka\u2019s economic and political crises, is counter to America\u2019s commitment to upholding human rights and democratic principles and must be stopped,\u201d wrote the lawmakers, led by Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who are calling on the State Department to hold Sri Lanka legally accountable to the U.N. convention on torture.<\/p>\n

Since the Sri Lankan Civil War broke out in 1983, the country has been marred with sectarian violence between the majority ethnic Sinhalese and minority ethnic Tamil population at the hands of the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a rebel group that aimed to establish an independent Tamil state. During the three-decade insurgency, which ended in 2009, the Sri Lankan military carried out deadly attacks on civilians, sexually abused hundreds of Tamil women and girls, and forcibly disappeared thousands of Tamil people who remain unaccounted for still. Four decades later, the families of victims and witnesses of the atrocities are still calling for justice.<\/p>\n

While successive governments have tried to establish independent commissions\u2014more than 15 have been set up since the 1970s\u2014to carry out criminal investigations into the country\u2019s dark past, including one by the current administration led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, none have achieved success in doing so and continue to play deaf to the pleas of the Tamil community.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWitnesses and others who care about accountability don\u2019t think that the government\u2019s approach is right. They want real investigations that can hold people accountable for not just what happened but the fate of people who disappeared,\u201d said John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe whole idea of any kind of commission to do anything is just deja vu.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress is pushing the State Department to hold Sri Lanka to the U.N. torture conventions by opening up formal negotiations under the international statute, but if those measures and arbitration fails, Congress would like to see the Biden administration take the case all the way to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague, as Canada and the Netherlands recently did to punish Bashar al-Assad\u2019s brutal dictatorship in Syria.<\/p>\n

A coalition of nine human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, expressed concern over Colombo\u2019s latest initiative, writing that it risks \u201cexposing victims to renewed security threats and re-traumatization without any realistic chance of a different outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many in Sri Lanka, this is just the latest case of going through the motions and doing something to appease the international community, just to take the pressure off of the government,\u201d said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asian Institute at the Wilson Center, who described Colombo\u2019s latest initiative as \u201cwindow dressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government needs donor support and support from the IMF and so it wants to show that it can get its economic house in order so that it can continue to get economic assistance,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not addressing the human rights concerns.\u201d
\nThe Sri Lankan authorities today continue to stifle activists, journalists, and non-governmental organizations. The country\u2019s northeast region, home to a majority of the Tamil population, remains heavily militarized with residents being forced to flee or give up land. <\/p>\n

Last summer, the country\u2019s military cracked down on hundreds of peaceful protestors as they demonstrated against the government amid a brutal economic crisis while Sri Lanka battled a food and fuel shortage and inflation skyrocketed to 55 percent.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Foreign Policy<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Anusha Rathi and Jack Detsch Congress is calling on the Biden administration to formally hold Sri Lanka responsible for its human rights abuses and violation of international humanitarian law, including decades of torture, military abuse, and other \u201chorrific crimes\u201d carried out against the country\u2019s minority Tamil population. In a letter sent to Secretary of …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘12 Members of US Congress Write to Secretary of State , Anthony Blinken,Urging the Biden Administration to Hold Sri Lanka Responsible for Violations of International Humanitarian Law; \u201cwould like to see the Biden administration take the case all the way to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague\u201d’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82796,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82795\/revisions\/82796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}