UN urges ur gent reforms to end arbitrary detention in Lanka

The United Nations yesterday urged the Sri Lankan government to urgentlyimplement reforms to end war-time arbitrary detention and strengthenindependent monitoring of tough legislation.Sri Lanka has used the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to pursue atough line to prevent aiding and abetting terrorism in the islandnation’s long conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels.That legislation gives wide powers to police to arrest a suspect withoutinforming the immediate family, restricts access to lawyers and allowsdetention of up to 18-months without charging.The war ended in 2009, but the government has not repealed PTA, though it had promised to end arbitrary detentions.Many ethnic minority Tamils who have been arrested under the PTA have complained of years of detention without being charged.The UN is now asking Sri Lanka to repeal the draconian law and introduce an internationally acceptable law.The government says it has begun moves to replace the PTA and is in the process of introducing new legislation.“There are no effective safeguards against arbitrariness in this contextand there is an urgent need to strengthen mechanisms for independentmonitoring and oversight,” Leigh Toomey, a member of the UN workinggroup on arbitrary detention told reporters in Colombo after concluding a11-day mission.She said they had identified significant challenges to the right ofpersonal liberty in Sri Lanka, resulting in arbitrary detention acrossthe country.The Working Group also said their attention had been drawn to a loss ofliberty among the socially vulnerable, such as children, women, elderlypeople, people with psycho-social problems and the poor.Sri Lanka is under criticism from the rights groups over its slowprogress on the commitments it made to the UN human Rights councilfollowing a UN resolution that called for post-war reconciliation and aninvestigation of all alleged war crimes.Sri Lanka ended a 26-year-civil war crushing the separatist LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelan in 2009. The United Nations and rights groups haveaccused the military of killing thousands of civilians, mostly Tamils,during the final weeks of the conflict.The Tamil Tigers were also accused of widespread abuses during the war,such as using child soldiers and targeting civilians with suicidebombers.In November European lawmakers said they were disappointed about SriLanka’s slow roll-out of human rights reforms that it had promised inexchange for trade concessions.A UN rights watchdog in 2016 called on Sri Lanka to investigatedocumented allegations of torture and rape of detainees by securityforces and to rein in broad police powers.The UN Committee against Torture described continuing reports ofabductions, deaths in custody, poor conditions of detention and the useof forced confessions in court.