Sri Lanka is preparing to elect a new president in September, and the UN Human Rights Office declared on Thursday that the country’s fundamental liberties were under danger.
Sri Lanka, which will hold its first presidential election after emerging from a severe economic crisis, has promised to overhaul its human rights protection system, but a report released on Thursday by the UN agency emphasized that the country has not yet done so.
Rather, the OHCHR stated that since 2023, new laws and legislation have increased “restrictions on freedom of expression, opinion, and association” and granted “broad powers to the security forces”.
“This trend is particularly concerning as the country is in an important pre-election period,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said in a statement.OHCHR also highlighted the “erosion of democratic checks and balances, ongoing threats and intimidation against civil society and journalists, and recurrence” of past rights violations.
The state has continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain people, the report said, citing recent cases including “torture and deaths in custody”.
After the civil war against the separatist Tamil Tigers ended in 2009, Sri Lanka has kept a sizable military in relation to its 22 million people.
As the study condemned impunity and a persistent lack of accountability, Turk urged the South Asian nation to “recognize victims’ suffering” and “acknowledge security forces’ role” in committing “gross human rights violations.”
In the closing months of the battle, a quick military offensive claimed the lives of at least 40,000 civilians, according to UN estimates.
Sri Lankan forces were accused of indiscriminately shelling civilians.
“Crimes and violations committed during and after the civil war… must not go unpunished,” the High Commissioner said.
Due to its financial difficulties, Sri Lanka was forced to default on its $46 billion foreign debt in April 2022 after running out of money to pay for necessities.
In 2022, the island nation experienced months of food, fuel, and medication shortages due to an unparalleled economic catastrophe, which sparked massive unrest.
Following were austerity measures that, as the report pointed out, disproportionately affected women and the impoverished.
Local elections were scheduled for last year, but they were put off indefinitely when the government said it lacked the funds to hold a national election.
