US reviews views on Sri Lanka sent through UN

The US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said yesterday that the US was carefully reviewing a UN report on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation.

He said that the report shows worrying trends such as deepening impunity, increasing militarisation of governmental functions, ethno-nationalist rhetoric and intimidation of the civil society over the past year.

“We are carefully reviewing the significant report from” the UN Human Rights Council “on human rights in Sri Lanka,” Ned Price said in a Tweet.

The UN report urged enhanced monitoring and strong preventive action by the international community, warning that “Sri Lanka’s current trajectory sets the scene for the recurrence of the policies and practices that gave rise to grave human rights violations.”

Commenting on the report, Price said: “Sri Lanka’s future depends on respecting rights today and taking meaningful steps to deal with the past.”

On 30 August 2020, former US Defence Secretary Mark Esper telephoned Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Esper later tweeted that he urged continued progress on reconciliation and human rights in Sri Lanka.