Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 1st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I want to welcome you to this meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. This is November 1 and this is meeting n^o 5.

Today we will begin our study on human rights in Sri Lanka. I'll turn to our witness and introduce her in just a moment.

Before I do that, I want to alert members to the fact that on Thursday I have called for the meeting to be a planning meeting. It will be in camera. The purpose will be to try to settle our agenda for the upcoming weeks. We now have enough topics to keep us busy for quite a while. We also have enough proposed topics that have come forward in the form of motions to keep us busy for yet a longer while.

I think we need to make sure that we are working in a timely fashion on the issues that the consensus regards as being the most important. This can be achieved only by having a meeting to plan that. That's what we'll be doing on Thursday. If you have anything you need to bring forward and want to have on the agenda on Thursday, motions have to be submitted 48 hours in advance. You have until this afternoon, so bear that in mind, or else, as they say at weddings, forever hold your peace--or at least until the next meeting.

As our witness today we have Ms. Elaine Pearson, who is the deputy director of the Asia Division, Human Rights Watch. She is joining us from New York City. We welcome her.

Ms. Pearson, normally we invite our witnesses to give about 10 minutes of testimony. That's not a firm rule, but it's a suggestion to you. Then we'll turn things over to the members to ask questions, typically in rounds of questions and answers that are about six minutes long, although I'll determine that at the time, based on how much time is available.

Our members will ask questions in either English or French. Translation is provided.

May I invite you to begin, please?

Ms. Pearson.

[Elaine Pearson, Deputy Director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you very much for inviting Human Rights Watch to testify at this important and timely hearing.

Over the last two decades, Human Rights Watch has documented human rights violations in Sri Lanka, especially those committed by security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE, particularly during the conflict that ended in May 2009.

Today I'll talk a little bit about the lack of accountability for alleged war crimes, particularly during the final stages of the conflict, and also about the current human rights situation in the country.

With regard to the final stages of the conflict, Human Rights Watch has interviewed hundreds of victims and eyewitnesses to abuses. We have analyzed photos, video, and satellite imagery. Our findings are consistent with the investigations by other independent human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group, and more recently, a panel of experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General.

The panel's report, which was published in April this year, found strong and credible allegations that both the government and the LTTE committed serious violations during the final months. The report actually concludes that up to 40,000 civilians may have died during this period, the majority as a result of government shelling.

In terms of the specific abuses that we have documented, we documented abuses by the LTTE such as the use of civilians as human shields and deliberately firing on civilians to prevent them from fleeing to safety. The LTTE also forcibly recruited children.

On the government side, government forces killed civilians by widespread shelling. They committed numerous indiscriminate attacks, including attacks on the government-designated safe zones, including clearly marked hospitals, as well as humanitarian objects such as food lines and UN trucks that were trying to deliver aid. The government also deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid. Many more people died because of insufficient food and medical attention.

Some specific examples of war crimes that were committed by government forces are included in video footage that has now been released and was recently shown in a U.K. Channel 4 documentary, The Killing Fields. It included some footage of summary execution of prisoners on May 18, 2009.

Human Rights Watch has obtained a longer version of this video and photographs of the same incident from various different sources. We believe this footage is authentic. It shows what appears to be a summary execution of various prisoners by government troops. The footage also pans over about a dozen dead bodies in a field.

One of the dead bodies in the video and photographs is a woman named Isaippiriya, a 27-year-old reporter for the LTTE. Her body and the bodies of other women that appear beside her are partially naked, and soldiers who recorded the video make lewd comments, raising concerns that these women may have been sexually assaulted.

Despite the existence of such graphic evidence of alleged war crimes, the Sri Lankan government has taken no efforts to genuinely investigate these allegations.

Immediately after the war ended, in a joint communiqué issued in May 2009, the Sri Lankan government and the UN Secretary-General agreed to address accountability; however, since that time, there really have been zero good faith efforts on accountability by the Sri Lankan government for any of the extensive laws-of-war violations committed by both parties to the conflict.

The government has established a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, but this lacks the mandate to investigate serious violations such as war crimes. Instead, the mandate of this commission is to look at what were the failings of the 2002 ceasefire agreement. The members of this commission also lack independence and impartiality. The UN panel report has described the process of the LLRC as deeply flawed.

The government has really used the LLRC as a delaying tactic. After several delays, the report is now expected to be presented to the Sri Lankan president on November 15 of this year. So far, interim recommendations that have been made by the commission have not contained a single recommendation relating to accountability.

Since 1977 the Sri Lankan government has established 14 government commissions, and usually these commissions have been established in response to international criticism of its human rights record. The work of these commissions has been tainted by political interference and has mainly served to exonerate government security forces.

The last such commission prior to this one was the Independent International Group of Eminent Persons, the IIGEP, which had a broad mandate, but even they in the end terminated their work, citing a lack of political will on the part of the government to take any action on their findings and recommendations.

If we return to that example of the video of summary executions aired on Channel 4, there is information posted on the website of the Ministry of Defence of Sri Lanka implicating the 53rd division of the Sri Lankan army in the killing of several of these individuals. Yet there has still been no credible investigation, either by the military or by the civilian authorities. Incredibly, the government continues to dismiss the footage as fake, despite several UN experts who have found it to be authentic.

Now I will turn to the current human rights situation in the country. The human rights situation in Sri Lanka remains bleak, despite the end of the war. Constitutional amendments passed last year have expanded the president's powers and reduced the independence of key institutions such as the judiciary, the National Human Rights Commission, and the Elections Commission.

The Rajapaska family has really consolidated power and extended their authoritarian rule. They hold key government portfolios, and about 94 government departments are in control of various members of the family.

Severe restrictions on free expression remain. People are unable to express views opposing those of the government. This year there have continued to be several reports of independent journalists and editors who have been severely beaten or threatened. Opposition political candidates have also faced violence in Sri Lanka.

The armed forces continue to have police powers, and there's a strong military presence in the north. While most of the internally displaced people have left the detention camps, there hasn't been a permanent durable solution for those who come from areas where the final stages of the fighting occurred.

While emergency regulations in Sri Lanka lapsed at the end of August, there continue to be very strict counter-terrorism laws that remain in place and that allow for up to 18 months of preventive detention. Several thousand suspected LTTE members are still being held under the lapsed emergency regulations and have not been brought to trial.

This repressive government has really shown no serious effort to address accountability, and it still fails to protect the fundamental rights of its people. Instead of investigating these alleged violations, the Sri Lankan government has engaged in an aggressive public relations offensive against anyone who calls for accountability, summarily dismissing a lot of these allegations as fake or LTTE propaganda.

The Government of Canada has recently taken a number of positive steps with regard to its foreign policy on Sri Lanka. Canada's Prime Minister said recently in Perth that he intended to boycott the 2013 Commonwealth heads of government meeting to be held in Colombo unless Sri Lanka really shows progress in addressing human rights issues and accountability.

Human Rights Watch supports this move and, together with other groups, we have suggested various benchmarks that really need to be met before Sri Lanka can host the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

Firstly, there needs to be an effort at criminal investigations into alleged war crimes that have been committed. It has long been evident that justice and accountability in Sri Lanka cannot simply rely on the government, but depend on strong and concerted actions by the international community. What's really needed is an international accountability mechanism, as recommended by the Secretary-General's panel of experts, to investigate war crimes that were committed in the final stages of the war.

The Canadian government has already expressed support for this recommendation. What we need to see now is for Canada to show some leadership on this issue by mobilizing other countries ahead of the next Human Rights Council session in March. We would certainly welcome Canada's leadership in establishing such a mechanism.

Given Sri Lanka's dismissive approach, there needs to be international oversight of any domestic accountability measures that may result from the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. The victims of Sri Lanka's war crimes have waited long enough and deserve nothing less.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to questions. Given the fact that you've wrapped this up in a very timely fashion, I believe we'll have time for two rounds of questions. The first will be seven minutes long, including the question and the answer. The second round will be five minutes long.

We'll begin with Mr. Marston, from the New Democratic Party.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Pearson, I want to commend you on your work and the work of Human Rights Watch. This is not the first time we have crossed paths with your organization. I've received some of your members in my office on a number of occasions. This is not one of the glowing times.

For those of us who have see the Channel 4 video, it was so hard to watch, although I think there was a responsibility to watch it. There's one question I would have off the top.I presume you have seen the video. Do you believe in the validity of the video?

[Elaine Pearson]

In terms of the Channel 4 video, I have watched it, too many times. It's difficult to watch those incidents. We have been able to substantiate some of the individual incidents that are reported in that video.

For instance, there is a scene that has been documented of several bound and naked Tamil men who are being brought to a field to be shot at point-blank range. We have received those photographs and those videos from various sources.

We believe it's authentic. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has also released a report about this video. He also believes it's authentic.

The Sri Lankan government, on the other hand, conducted their own investigations. However, all of the people who conducted the investigations into the authenticity of the video were either members of the Ministry of Defence or Sri Lankan citizens living in other parts of the world, so we have quite a lot of concerns about their objections to the video.

In addition, as I mentioned, we have been able to identify a number of those victims in that video, such as one of the women whose dead body appears. If you go to the Ministry of Defence website, her name appears as being killed by Sri Lankan government forces, so there's no dispute, actually, that this woman was killed by government forces.

But the question that remains is why the government hasn't conducted any further investigations.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

In the summer we started a petition drive in Canada to call on our government to press the United Nations to proceed with an independent investigation, and the High Commissioner wanted to attend our press conference. I mean, there are a lot of pressure tactics out there.

You've written very clearly on the government's efforts to mask what has happened there. Are you seeing much of a reaction on the international front? The international community, when they look at the LLRC, see that it's clearly a whitewash. Have you seen this starting to evolve into action?

[Elaine Pearson]

The UN panel of experts report came out in April and was very damning of the alleged war crimes. Then there was the Channel 4 video. Since these sources have come to light, we've seen stronger statements coming from various governments, particularly from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They are saying that enough is enough.

There has been an opportunity to establish domestic accountability mechanisms, but these haven't happened.

At the same time, I think a number of these governments are waiting to see what will happen with the LLRC report, which is due to be presented to the president in just a couple of weeks, on November 15. I don't think we even need to wait until that report is presented to know what will be included. Based on the experience of past commissions, we know that there's going to be no serious accountability effort.

We don't even know if the report is going to be made public at the time that it's presented to the president, so our advice to governments has been simply to press ahead with an international accountability mechanism as a result of all of this mounting evidence.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

The government members who sit on this committee more times than not agree on issues of human rights, so I'm looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have on this situation. We often talk about impunity in the various governments of the world that assault their own citizenry.

In Sri Lanka, it's clear that both sides were stained in this war. We can't solely look at the government side, but we have an opportunity via the United Nations to address impunity. Here's a government trying to hide or bury these stories and change the history.

I'm looking forward to our deliberations.

I want to thank you for your input here today.

[Elaine Pearson]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We will turn to Mr. Daniel, please.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much, and thank you for being represented here.

I listened with interest to your comments, in particular your comment that both sides actually committed atrocities. There seems to be very little documentation, very little publicity, and very little follow-up on the LTTE crimes that were committed. Can you comment on that? Is there more documentation around?

It's all well and good having all of this stuff against the Sri Lankan government, but a balanced view of this would be very useful.

[Elaine Pearson]

Sure, I would be happy to comment.

My organization has produced a series of reports that look at the abuses committed by both the LTTE and the government forces. We've released one. Actually, I have a copy of it here, “Besieged, Displaced and Detained”, which particularly looks at abuses by the LTTE.

It's true that there has been a lot of attention focused on government security forces. I think that is because the LTTE, as a result of this war, does not exist anymore. It does not have a leadership. It's very difficult to present the accounts of those abuses to an armed group, as we do in a number of other conflicts where we work.

However, there is a need for accountability on both sides. As I mentioned, there are several thousand suspected members of the LTTE in government custody right now in Sri Lanka. None of those people has been brought to trial. They've been held for a period of time, coming up to two and a half years now.

There really is a need to look at both sides of the conflict and at all of these abuses, but also to remember that it's the responsibility of the Government of Sri Lanka to ensure there is accountability.

Particularly, knowing that this government had control over its security forces, it really needs to engage in a serious, good-faith effort to ensure that there are criminal investigations into the activities of its military. We simply haven't seen this come to pass, even when they've been presented with graphic video evidence taken by Sri Lanka's own armed forces that displays some of these alleged war crimes.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

I kind of beg to differ with you with regard to the LTTE leadership, because a lot of the LTTE leadership wasn't actually in Sri Lanka. They were in North America raising funds and creating all sorts of issues here.

There is actually a YouTube video floating around at the moment of a Canadian LTTE person declaring war on Canada. There are three LTTE people in jail in the U.S. for trying to acquire a million dollars' worth of weapons.

So I'm not confident that all the LTTE leadership was actually destroyed or whatever in the conflict. Have you any thoughts on that?

[Elaine Pearson]

I was talking about the members of the leadership who were actually involved directly in committing a lot of these abuses on the ground in Sri Lanka. We're talking about quite horrific abuses: the use of civilians as human shields; the fact that anyone who tried to escape from that zone was shot; and the fact that these people were also forced to participate in the hostilities.

The LTTE really blurred the line between civilians and combatants, which also made it difficult for the government to identify who was an LTTE suspect.

Human Rights Watch has cooperated in a number of international prosecutions of the LTTE. For instance, at the moment, in Holland, there has been a prosecution regarding illegal fundraising for a criminal terrorist organization, and we have provided evidence to the prosecutors. We have provided testimony because we have also done our own reporting on this issue.

Certainly I totally agree that more needs to be done in terms of holding both sides of the armed conflict to account. Right now we have an opportunity with the government to set up some kind of international mechanism, and it's important that this mechanism look not simply at government security force abuses but at the role of the LTTE as well.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Have I more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

With that in mind, and with the thought in mind of actually trying to move forward on the whole situation, what sort of recommendations would you make to the Canadian government and to the international community in general on some form of reconciliation process that we could all rely on and that could actually be implemented?

[Elaine Pearson]

On the issue of reconciliation, I think there has also been a number of problematic aspects. Although the government has claimed that the LLRC is tasked with both addressing accountability and reconciliation efforts, we haven't seen talks move very far with some of the groups, particularly in the north.

I know that some of the political groups have expressed frustration in dealing with the government because of the centralization of power in Colombo. I think this is certainly something that Canada should look at--to what extent there has been a devolution of power to the north--in order to ensure that people are really able to participate in their local government and decision-making.

What we continue to see in the north is a very high military presence. Where once you had the presence of the LTTE that was monitoring and surveilling people's movements, now it's the presence of the army. Again, this is quite problematic.

If there's going to be any kind of genuine effort at reconciliation, then there also needs to be a movement away from such a high military power in the north. We are particularly concerned about this because there has been a number of reports of abuses by the security forces in the north continuing.

The whole area of reconciliation is not something where Human Rights Watch has so much expertise. Our expertise is really in the documentation and moving forward in addressing human rights abuses and ensuring that there's accountability.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Is there any opportunity for the UN, Canada, or other Commonwealth countries to actually establish some kind of totally independent reconciliation process that brings both parties together, so it's not biased one way or the other?

[Elaine Pearson]

As I said, as a human rights organization, we generally don't get into making recommendations on peace processes because it's really outside our mandate.

Looking at what has been happening and the fact that there haven't really been effective measures taken by the government to include a number of other political parties and views, there needs to be a bit more action in this regard, but it is something that really goes beyond the mandate of my organization.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

We'll move to the next questioner.

Professor Cotler, please.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to express my appreciation for your comprehensive presentation this morning. I have a question which you've actually been addressing, but more specifically, and it's not on the LTTE or otherwise. I'm wondering about the extent to which the Tamil community has been engaged in the reconciliation process and in the reform process, such as it is.

I have a broader, not unrelated, question: what is the extent of systemic discrimination against the Tamil community? What steps have been taken, if any, to address that systemic discrimination?

[Elaine Pearson]

Again, this is an issue where there are still a lot of problems in terms of discrimination faced by the Tamil population, particularly in northern parts of Sri Lanka.

We've seen this discrimination in all sorts of areas, even from universities that have shown discrimination particularly in how they address history in textbooks, to other discrimination in terms of representation in local governments and authorities, and in terms of policing in the northern areas and ensuring that there is equal opportunity and representation for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.

There have certainly been some efforts by some Tamils to make some recommendations at the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, the government commission that has been set up, so there have been some opportunities for people to air their grievances. But this does not act as a fact-finding, investigatory body, and this has been partly problematic.

Perhaps one of the efforts made by the commission has been to provide some space to Tamils to air their grievances and air some of the things they have faced.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

What about the situation with regard to internally displaced people? To what extent has the Government of Sri Lanka been involved in helping to reintegrate the internally displaced people? What is their situation at this point?

[Elaine Pearson]

I think the vast majority of people have returned to their communities, but not all of them have returned to their homes. After being detained in these IDP camps, most of them have gone back now. However, there are still major problems because they don't have homes. A lot of these people are still living in temporary accommodation, quite like tent accommodation. There is a high military presence in a lot of these communities, which has caused some problems, particularly because a lot of these households are now headed by women.

Human Rights Watch has been doing a bit of documentation around cases of sexual assault, and also around the fact that, in some cases, women are trading sex in order to obtain some protection, sometimes from local members of the security forces and the military, because they're facing sexual abuse not only from the security forces, but also from other people in their own community.

So there are certainly a lot of issues around vulnerability, lack of protection and really, again, still around a real lack of humanitarian access and space to afford the right kinds of protections to these communities.