From News Dispaches NEW DELHE: Amnesty International said on Tuesday that it went to considerable length to verify the information that it received including in the form of sworn statements by eyewitnesses to political arrests, killings and other Human Rights Violations and based its reports on a wide range of sources.
Reacting to the Government of India’s stand that Amnesty International’s report “Sri Lanka: Continuing human rights violations” was “one sided and biased” Amnesty said “In questioning the authenticity of Amnesty International’s information the Indian government gave no indication that it had investigated any of the cases cited by Amnesty International and found the allegations to be false. Referring to the report on Sri Lanka, which was released last month Amnesty International said it has repeatedly sought to obtain information from the Sri Lankan Government in relation to alleged violations but had generally received no substantive response.
Amnesty said it had documented 780 “disappearances” in Sri Lanka since 1983. Only six people out of these 780 were subsequently traced by the organization. All six were released from custody after their arrest had been denied by the authorities.” In all other cases the government has failed to give a satisfactory explanation as to their whereabouts, the organization ‘said.
The statement said: “No official reaction by the Sri Lanka government has yet come to Amnesty International’s office, although, according to press reports, the Sri Lanka President showed the report to the Sri Lankan press on LTTE and acknowledges the difficult task of maintaining law and order which both the Sri Lanka security forces and IPKF face. However it said that Amnesty International’s mandate was concerned with the protection of specific human rights which governments had pledged themselves to uphold. The report describes human rights violations in all areas of Sri Lanka, whether allegedly committed by the IPKF of by the Sri Lanka forces. And regardless of the political affiliation of the victims. For example, it describes 41 cases of “disappearances” for which the Sri Lanka security forces are allegedly responsible and 31 such cases involving the IPKF”, Amnesty said.
The Indian Government also questioned the validity of Amnesty International’s sources notably the value of sworn statements by relatives and others testifying to torture, “disappearances” or deliberate killings. It said these seemed “to be taken at face value without rigorous scrutiny” and that Amnesty International’s information was based “exclusively on affidavits of doubtful authenticity.”
In a statement on May 29, 1989, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi also said that “every specific complaint received from any source about the behavior of IPKF troops was invariably
investigated. Wherever and whenever charges were proved, the guilty were punished in an exemplary fashion.” But the spokesman for the ministry did not say whether any of the cases reported by Amnesty International had been investigated or what the outcome of any such investigations had been.
Amnesty International’s report does refer to inquiries which have been instituted by the Indian authorities into specific allegations of abuses by the IPKF, but none concern cases which Amnesty Intentional had asked the authorities to investigate, the statement said.
In its May 29, 1989 statement the Indian government said the report avoided reference to the misdeeds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
“This is not correct. The report describes killing committed by the May 13, 1989 commenting that it listed former officials among the victims of violence.”
Article extracted from this publication >> July 7, 1989
