PRI Public Radio International
By Angilee Shah -06 November, 2012
Sri Lanka has captured attention recently for a deteriorating situation around human rights. International Crisis Group researcher Alan Keenan explains why the Human Rights Council review is so important, and why the world should care.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s United People's Freedom Alliance introduced a bill last week impeach the country’s Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. On Monday, hundreds of people, including lawyers and opposition leaders, protested the impeachment in front of the Supreme Court in Colombo.
The bill was introduced on the same day that Sri Lanka underwent a regular review of its human rights record as a member of the United Nations — a review that goes on every four years.
"It's ironic and telling that on the very day that Sri Lanka's case is heard before the Human Rights Council that the government chooses to launch an impeachment process against the chief justice," said Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka Project Director at the International Crisis Group. "That tells you both how arrogant they are and the degree of contempt they have for international institutions and their own institutions as well."
Since the end of the island’s decades-long civil war in 2009, human rights organizations say that the country has made little progress in ameliorating pervasive human rights violations such as extrajudicial killings, disappearances and the weakening of checks on executive power through media freedom and judicial independence. A high court judge was assaulted in early October after complaining about executive interference in the judiciary.
Keenan has been researching human rights and humanitarian work in Sri Lanka for almost 13 years. He explained by phone from London why last week’s review was so important and why the world should care about where Sri Lanka is headed.
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