Under President Dissanayake, abuses continue, reforms languish

Both Sri Lanka and Germany have newly elected leaders, but key human rights concerns that Chancellor Friedrich Merz should raise with visiting President Anura Kumar Dissanayake in Berlin on June 11 have lingered for decades, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

The Sri Lankan government and the separatist LTTE fought a brutal civil war from 1983 to 2009 in which both sides committed widespread abuses, including killings, torture, and sexual violence. During the conflict’s final months in particular, government forces attacked civilians and forcibly disappeared suspected combatants.

Since the LTTE’s defeat, the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed several resolutions highlighting the need for accountability and established an evidence-gathering process. But Dissanayake’s government so far seems no different from its predecessors, protecting former senior officials implicated in war crimes and rejecting the council’s resolutions.

Dissanayake was elected in September on a platform intended to unite Sri Lankans and respond to an economic crisis. But despite a large parliamentary majority, his government has not addressed ongoing human rights violations, much less advance justice for past atrocities.

Sri Lankan government agencies continue to discriminate against Tamil and Muslim minorities, for instance seizing their land on various pretexts. In war-affected areas, hardline Buddhist monks and security forces have seized numerous Hindu temples and turned them into Buddhist monasteries.

Since 2017, Sri Lanka has benefitted from a trading relationship with the European Union known as GSP+, which gives tariff-free market access in exchange for ratifying and implementing 27 conventions on human rights, labor rights, and environmental standards. Sri Lanka is still failing to keep its end of the bargain. A notable issue is the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), a notoriously abusive law that has long enabled torture and arbitrary detention, mostly targeting Tamils and Muslims. Before the election, Dissanayake promised to repeal the PTA, a pledge successive governments have made to the EU since 2017. Instead, his government has repeatedly used it to detain people without any evidence of terrorism.

Germany was previously a leading state on the Human Rights Council’s resolution on Sri Lanka but stepped away from that role in around 2022. To maintain pressure for accountability and ensure evidence gathering, it is vital the resolution is renewed later this year.

Merz should build on UN efforts and GSP+ ties to urge Dissanayake at their Berlin meeting to deliver on his pledges and obligations for accountability and human rights reforms. Such opportunities should not go to waste.