Amnesty report "imbalanced": Lanka

Accusing Amnesty of giving prominence to “unclarified” and “unsubstantiated” reports against the Government, the official statement said the organisation had ignored measures taken by the Government against members of the armed forces found to have been involved in rights violations.

Amnesty has said that of the 600 people who disappeared since July 1996 in Jaffna peninsula after their arrest by the security forces, “nearly all have died as a result of torture”. Only four of the 41 cases reported in the first seven months of 1997 have been traced by the Board of Investigation set up by the Govt, an Amnesty Press release said. The Board has traced 180 of the 760 people reported missing.

The UK-based rights group has also held the LTTE responsible for “gross human rights abuses” in the peninsula and elsewhere, including indiscriminate killings of civilians during attacks on checkpoints and summary executions of suspected informants.

An Amnesty team visited Jaffna earlier this year and their report is based on evidence gathered from relatives of several of those who had disappeared. The group has called for an “active approach” to tackle the root causes of human rights violations, which it pinpoints as a “lingering sense of impunity among perpetrators.”