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Sri Lanka's Government is responsible for unlawful killings and disappearances, Human Rights Watch said yesterday on the anniversary of the discovery of 17 massacred aid workers thought to have been victims of security forces.
In a report entitled "Return to war: Human rights under siege", the United States-based
rights group said President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government was resorting to abuses in its two-decade civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels.
"The Sri Lankan Government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use 'dirty war' tactics," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said. "Abuses by the LTTE (Tigers) are no excuse for the Government's campaign of killings, disappearances and forced returns of the displaced. The Government has repeatedly promised to end and investigate abuses, but has shown a lack of political will to take effective steps."
About 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the LTTE, fighting for a separate state for Tamils, and security forces since 1983.
Rights groups say hundreds of people have been reported abducted or disappeared this year and 1000 more in 2006.
The Sri Lankan Government says numbers of disappearances are overblown and many cases are fakes to discredit the Administration.
The publication of the report coincides with the commemoration of the murder of 17 staff of Paris-based aid group Action Contre la Faim, shot dead in the northeastern town of Muttur last August after they were trapped by fighting between troops and rebels. Nordic truce monitors blamed the killings on the security forces and observers say an inquiry into the massacre fails to meet international standards.
The island's Human Rights Minister demanded that journalists be barred from the commemoration ceremony, said officials.
"The Muttur massacre was probably the worst single crime committed against humanitarian workers in recent history," visiting UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator John Holmes said in an address published after the ceremony.
"That is why I repeat the call of the Secretary-General to the Government of Sri Lanka to investigate this murder with the full weight and force of the justice system."
The Tigers are also blamed for killing civilians and troops with roadside bombs and forcibly recruiting people, including children, to fight in the war.
"I understand that they are going to commemorate ... these 17 people, but they have forgotten 35 people from the Muslim community butchered in the same place by the LTTE," said government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella.
Human Rights Watch is lobbying for a United Nations human rights mission to be sent to Sri Lanka to discourage further abuses, but the government has refused.
- Reuters