Demand Sri Lanka follows through on promises to end human rights abuse

Achieving a surprise election win on a campaign based largely on reform, you would expect Sri-Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to follow up on his election promises.

Sri Lanka suffered a bloody 26-year civil war pitting government forces against Tamil separatists of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, which ended in a bloody battle in 2009. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was president during the final years of the war, was defeated after calling a snap poll.
On his election, Sirisena pledged widespread reform and reconciliation between Sri Lankan communities.

Yet a year after he came into power authorities are still being accused of allowing human rights abuses, including torture and illegal detention - something Maithripala specifically promised an end his maiden speech.

New evidence has been revealed revealing ongoing abductions, torture and sexual violence by the Sri Lankan security forces and police, targeting mainly Sri Lanka’s largely Hindu Tamil minority. Survivors of this brutal practice have described nightmarish torture chambers equipped with cables, rods and batons for beating victims, water barrels and a pulley system for hoisting them upside down. Reports of sexual abuse have also been documented, by both men and woman. Accused by their interrogators of wanting to restart the LTTE – destroyed as an organisation, they are being victimised by a paranoid state who has no evidence to go on what so ever.

To his credit, Sirisena’s has recognised that reconciliation in his nation is urgently needed But the president must match his rhetoric with action. His state is still terrorising communities with no fear of accountability.

War crimes were committed by both sides in the civil war, and the nation is still scarred. But the only way forward, the only way to heal the nation is through reconciliation, and not by abductions and torture.

The Tamil minority are still being terrorised by the state, and they are helpless to stop it. Sirisena vowed to put an end to it and bring the perpetrators to justice, yet since he has come to power, nothing has changed- These tactics became notorious under the repressive rule of Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president during the war - and Sirisena has continued in this vein.

We cannot allow Sirisena to let this continue, we cannot allow a minority to be targeted and treated this way, we must do something, and we can. Sirisena is already under pressure from the United Nations for war crimes committed in the last few months of the war. Now we can heap some more pressure on him, and we can make a difference in the lives of the men, woman and children who live in constant fear. Fear of disappearing, fear of their loved ones disappearing, fear of torture and rape. This is no way to love - we must help.

We demand President Maithripala Sirisena live up to his election promises and stops this brutal campaign of fear, abduction and torture.

Sign this petition with me and demand change.

Demand he roots out kidnapping, rape and torture from Sri Lanka’s security sector and puts the perpetrators on trial.
Demand justice.