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Three human rights reports in Parliament

20 Oct, 2015

The report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Sri Lanka as well as the reports by?Nissanka Udalagama and Maxwell Paranagama were tabled in?Parliament today.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe presented the reports and they will be taken for debate by Parliament on Thursday.

Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) leader Dinesh Gunawardena however requested that the resolution on Sri Lanka adopted by the UN Human Rights Council recently also be tabled in Parliament.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he will table the resolution in Parliament tomorrow as requested to be included in the debate.

Constituted in August 2013, the?Maxwell Paranagama Commission has looked into complaints about the disappearance of thousands of people in the Northern and Eastern Provinces during June 1990 to May 2009. In early April, the Commission submitted its preliminary report to the President.

In 2006 the then Government appointed an eight-member Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice Nissanka Udalagama to investigate a series of incidents, including the killing of five students in Trincomalee and the massacre of aid workers of Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Muttur. Although the commission concluded its work, its report was never published by the Government.

The?OHCHR report on Sri Lanka was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council last month and was discussed by the Council.

The opposition had opposed the report and the resolution on Sri Lanka for which the Sri Lankan Government is a cosponsor. (Colombo Gazette)

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