Human rights officials have declared Monday that he is looking forward to the "concrete actions" of the Government of Sri Lanka in his promises while asking members of the Human Rights Council of the Nations United to pay "a lot of attention" to the island nation, whose registration of rights remains in international emphasis after a decade since the end of its civil war.
High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet was linked to President GottaBaya Rajapaksa's remarks in June when he told a national survey on the abuse rights investigation that his government was "committed to working with the United Nations to ensure the Responsibility "and implementing institutional reforms required" "from its previous position that Sri Lanka has removed UN mechanisms.
Delivery of an oral update on the situation of human rights in Sri Lanka at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Ms Bachelet sought "credible progress" in the promotion of reconciliation, responsibility and human rights in the country.
His statement Monday is an accompaniment in his blunt report in January of this year, where he noted that Sri Lanka was "on an alarming path for the recurrence of serious human rights violations.
His report informed the debate in March of this year, before the Council adopted a resolution on "the promotion of reconciliation, responsibility and human rights in Sri Lanka," with 22 of the 47 members voted in his favour. India had abstained.
In its Board update, Commissioner Alto noted that the current social, economic and governance challenges faced by Sri Lanka indicate "the corrosive impact that militarization and lack of responsibility continue to have fundamental rights. In civic space, in democratic institutions, social cohesion and sustainable development ".
She spoke of Sri Lanka’s draconian terrorism law, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which activists want to be repealed, pointing to the prolonged detention of lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah, for 16 months now, and of Ahnaf Jazeem, a poet, detained without charge since May 2020.
Observing that “surveillance, intimidation and judicial harassment of human rights defenders, journalists and families of the disappeared” has not only continued but “broadened” to a wider spectrum of students, academics, medical professionals and religious leaders critical of government policies, she said: “Several peaceful protests and commemorations have been met with excessive use of force and the arrest or detention of demonstrators in quarantine centres.”