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Human rights, humanitarian crisis demand disqualification of GSP+ status

November 6, 2008

I am writing to call your urgent attention to the escalating crisis in Sri Lanka, and, on the basis of the Sri Lankan Government's continuing human rights violations, to urge you to deny Sri Lanka GSP+ trade status. The Sri Lankan government recently launched a military offensive against areas in the north and east of the island, causing over 300,000 people to flee their homes in fear. Despite the refugees' desperate need for basic humanitarian supplies, the Sri Lankan government ordered all international non-governmental organizations to vacate these regions.

This has further compounded the plight of civilians, and humanitarian and human rights organizations have decried the government's actions. Paul O'Callaghan from the Australian Council for International Development, predicted a "bloodbath" after aid agencies were forced to withdraw. Since then, the government has intensified its brutal military campaign, utilizing indiscriminate aerial bombardment and artillery shelling against Tamil homes and villages. After the Sri Lankan government unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire agreement in January 2008, Amnesty International released a report condemning the Sri Lankan government and other groups for carrying out violence against civilians. The report accurately foreshadowed that "a pattern of indiscriminate attacks by the Sri Lankan army will intensify and contribute further to spiraling civilian casualties."

The Sri Lankan government's human rights violations are not isolated to territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. United States-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented how internally displaced persons in government-controlled areas have been treated inhumanely, with severe restrictions on movement. HRW has sharply criticized Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse for becoming "one of the world's worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances." HRW called extrajudicial killings and state-sponsored abductions to be so endemic in Sri Lanka to constitute a "national crisis." The United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances reported that Sri Lanka had more disappearances in 2006 and 2007 than any other country in the world.

The European Commission launched an investigation on October 18 of Sri Lanka's implementation of human rights conventions, to determine whether to provide Sri Lanka with GSP+ status. Providing Sri Lanka with GSP+ status will increase the financial resources available to the Sri Lankan government to continue its egregious human rights violations. I urge you to consider the escalating atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan government, and disqualify Sri Lanka from GSP+ status.