FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AS-284-2006
November 11, 2006
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission
SRI LANKA: Only international human rights monitoring can ensure credible inquiries into the death of Nadarajah Raviraj and others
The killing of Nadarajah Raviraj, a vocal advocate for a peaceful and democratic solution to the ‘ethnic conflict’ and a Member of Parliament belonging to the TNA evoked reactions from the government, from society as well as from the media.
According to the Daily Mirror an information statement said that President Rajapakse has directed the IGP to launch a full probe and bring the assassin to book. President Rajapakse is quoted in the press as saying, The government strongly condemns and is deeply concerned over the brutal killing of Tamil National Alliance Nadarajah Raviraj. The government strongly believes that the peoples representatives elected to Parliament are the real representatives of the people and any attack on them deserves universal condemnation. The government extends its unreserved sympathies to the next of kin of the late MP and his bodyguard who was also killed yesterday.
The fact that this killing is just one in a huge amount of killings that are taking place around the country points to a greater tragedy than just the assassination of a prominent personality. The problem with the solution proposed by the president, which is to conduct an investigation, has not proved an adequate deterrence to these constant killings. The hard experience gained through these assassinations is that these local investigations are interfered with by persons with other interests and truly objective criminal justice inquiries no longer take place into such killings within the local framework.
The call for criminal inquiries and promises for such including instructions to the IGP to conduct inquiries by the head of the state himself in the past has proved nothing more than a political propaganda to appease local and international criticism. Soon the investigations will manifest that not much mileage has been covered and within a short time the matter will be buried.
On all the graves of persons assassinated for political reasons it can now be engraved that the matter was not successfully investigated.
It is this that brings us back to the issue about the presidential commission to inquire into abductions and disappearances. The assassination of Nadarajah Raviraj virtually exposed and demolished all the reasons given in favour of such fact finding commissions. The credibility of any ventures to stop such killings lies with the real possibility of conducting authentic inquiries by those who have competency to conduct investigations into crime.
Due to over three decades of the degeneration of the policing system in the country and direct interference into investigations on politically sensitive cases it is no exaggeration to say that local inquiries are just an illusion. Thus the debate that has been taking place as to whether local inquiries into gross human rights abuses are possible, or whether international monitoring on investigations into these abuses is needed is decided in favour of the latter. No one with any understanding of the local situation who considers it purely from a commonsense point of view will not find it difficult to accept that international monitoring into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka is an imperative. To forget or to ignore this commonsense inference is to allow more and more deaths such as that of Nadarajah Raviraj and the disappearances and abductions that have been happening in the capital in recent months to continue unabated.
