SRI LANKA: Extrajudicial Killings --- The miserable breakdown of the rule of law

 March 21, 2012

By Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?- Stanley Kunitz*

“They finished off my husband after two days of torture, and then took me to Hambantota where a number of women were held on suspicion. To my knowledge, most of them were innocent like me. There too they tortured me and urged me to reveal the names of the people who had connections with the JVP, but I did not know anyone who had JVP connections and I didn’t have any link with them either.” - Mrs. Premasili**

Every national and international observer agrees that Sri Lanka today is a state facing tremendous upheaval and chaotic social disorder, even after the elimination of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), on May 19, 2012 (when the Government of Sri Lanka officially declared the longest civil war in Asia over1). The national and international civil society organizations have documented that violations of fundamental human rights are occurring every day². The tabling of the drafted resolution on human rights in Sri Lanka by the United State of America, to the 19th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, has questioned an old phenomenon in a new framework, though it continues, as previous resolutions have, to open widespread discussion on human rights violations by the Government of Sri Lanka, as well as by non-state actors in recent times in the island nation. There is no doubt that the Government of Sri Lanka needs tremendous pressure from the international community, not only to take responsibility for its conduct during the war, but also to address the many constitutional shortcomings that resulted from the introduction of the 1978 Constitution³ and most of its amendments, where the principles of common law were manipulated by the executive branch to place itself above the law.

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