Sri Lanka blocks UN human rights official

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In this week’s Seven Questions, International Crisis Group chief Gareth Evans warns that Sri Lanka is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. The situation there is one “that could deteriorate because of underlying ethnic tensions,” between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers.

Today, there are new indications that Evans is spot-on. Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe (at left) announced that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour will not be allowed to visit parts of the country controlled by the Tigers. 

Forbidding UN human rights officials from entering the country bolsters claims that both the Tigers and the government are committing mass human rights violations, including kidnapping and killing of citizens and political opponents. Amnesty International reports hundreds of people have disappeared in the past year, and nearly 6,000 have vanished in the past three decades. Another humanitarian group in Sri Lanka has said more than 2,800 Tamil citizens have been killed and nearly 1,000 have disappeared since 2002. 

Without UN officials inside the country, it will be extremely hard to determine exactly what kinds of abuses have occurred. But it appears that without external intervention, Evans’s prediction could be on the mark, and the situation in Sri Lanka could deteriorate into a human rights disaster.

UPDATE: Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, ambassador and permanent representative of Sri Lanka to the U.N. in Geneva, writes in:

Far from being “forbidden to enter”, Mr Francis, Madame Louise Arbour, whose visit is being facilitated and coordinated by me as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva, is, I repeat, entering the country, at the explicit personal invitation of its elected President. Furthermore, Mr Manfred Novak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture is visiting Sri Lanka right now.