[Guardian UK]

This week the UN Human Rights Council has an opportunity and a duty to help Sri Lanka advance its own efforts on accountability and reconciliation. Both are essential if a lasting peace is to be achieved. In doing so, the council will not only be serving Sri Lanka, but those worldwide who believe there are universal rights and international legal obligations we all share.

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[SPEAK]

Human rights groups welcome the announcement that Shavendra Silva—a former military general in the Sri Lankan army who stands accused of extrajudicial killing and torture—has been removed from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kimoon’s Special Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations. In a press statement released on February 22, Louise Fréchette, the Chair of the Special Advisory Group, stated that Silva’s participation in the group is “not appropriate or helpful.”

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[Huffington Post]

Dear Secretary-General,

I write to follow up my letter of 2 June 2011 on the subject of the United Nations Panel of Experts’ reporton accountability issues in Sri Lanka.

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[Human Rights Watch]

The Sri Lankan government in the past year failed to advance justice and accountability for the victims of the country’s 26-year-long civil conflict, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north and east became more open, the government deepened repression of basic freedoms throughout the country.

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[Human Rights Watch]

The report of the Sri Lankan government’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) disregards the worst abuses by government forces, rehashes longstanding recommendations, and fails to advance accountability for victims of Sri Lanka’s civil armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said today. The serious shortcomings of the 388-page report, which was posted on a government website on December 16, 2011, highlight the need for an international investigative mechanism into the conflict as recommended by the United Nations Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts in April.

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[Channel 4]

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, appointed by the Sri Lankan government last year, admitted that some isolated allegations of civilian abuses by security forces at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009 need to be investigated further.

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[HRW]

Human Rights Watch is concerned about the failure of the Sri Lankan government to investigate well-founded allegations of very serious abuses that took place during the last months of its decades-long internal armed conflict, which ended in May 2009.