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End the Cycle of Abuse and Impunity in Sri Lanka

According to testimonies, the Tamil Tigers were responsible for using civilians as human shields during the final stages of the armed conflict with the government of Sri Lanka. However, there is evidence that many civilians were killed as a result of shelling. The Sri Lankan military continued to use heavy weapons despite promising previously that it would stop using them. Urge UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to demand that Sri Lanka provide full access to humanitarian organizations and to establish an international inquiry into possible war crimes committed by all sides to the conflict. » Background Information on the situation
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Ban Ki-Moon - UN Secretary General

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Susan Rice - US Representative to the United Nations

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Dear (recipient name),

I would like to commend you for your calls for accountability of grave violations of human rights by both the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). I would like to especially thank you for your recent trip to the former war zone and your statement from June 5 that “whenever and wherever there are credible allegations of violations of humanitarian law, there should be a proper investigation.” I encourage you to follow up on your statement and to call on the Security Council to demand an international, independent inquiry into the evidence of serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes, perpetrated by the Tamil Tigers and the government. Alternatively, you should establish such an investigation under your own mandate.

The need for an international inquiry is underscored by the lack of clarity about the number of civilians killed during the fighting. There is evidence, including in the United Nations’ own data, that as many as 20,000 people, many of them civilians, may have been killed during the conflict. You yourself have called these figures “unacceptably high.”

According to testimonies, the LTTE were responsible for using civilians as human shields, but there is evidence that many civilians were killed as a result of shelling. The Sri Lankan military continued to use heavy weapons despite promising on February 24 and again on April 27 that it would stop using them.

There is strong ground to question the Sri Lankan government’s sincerity about its most recent promise to provide accountability for the war crimes and human rights violations that occurred in the past few months, given the extremely poor track record documented in Amnesty International’s most recent report, "Twenty Years of Make-Believe: Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry".

In order to verify the mounting evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights – including high resolution satellite imagery – by all parties to the conflict, I urge you to call on the Security Council to:

•Set up a fact-finding mission to inquire into allegations of serious violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law by Sri Lankan forces and by the Tamil Tigers in the recent military hostilities, with a view of establishing facts and making recommendations on how best to ensure accountability for those violations and abuses.

•Immediately publicize the UN’s estimate of the number of civilians killed by the two sides in the final weeks of fighting in Sri Lanka.

•Establish an effective UN human rights monitoring mission, to assist the government of Sri Lanka in implementing legislative and other reforms that would safeguard human rights for all Sri Lankan citizens.

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