HRW: SINHALA MILITARY/ CID/ PLOTE INTERROGATE TAMIL IDPs/YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN DURING NIGHT IN VAVUNIYA DETENTION CAMP!!!

Minister says rights group breached immigration laws but researcher denies charge

By Easwaran Rutnam

The government has launched a probe as to how a team from the Human Rights Watch (HRW) had managed to visit Vavuniya and interview displaced people without obtaining the necessary clearance to carry out such research in the country.

Anna Neistat, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch told the US Senate during a hearing on Sri Lanka last week and later in a press statement over the weekend that she had visited the country two weeks ago and carried out research on the plight of displaced people from the Wanni.

When contacted by the Daily Mirror the researcher confirmed that she visited Vavuniya and interviewed people. “I was in the hospital and at the camp sites but not inside the camps.

But I did interview IDPs who were outside the camps as well as people who work in the camps,” she told the Daily Mirror.

However when asked if clearance was given for the HRW to carry out such research in Sri Lanka both the Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management Mahinda Samarasingha and the Foreign Ministry said no such clearance was issued and a probe into the matter will be launched.

“We have not given such clearance for anyone under that name Anna Neistat or for Human Rights Watch to come here and carry out research. They might have come as tourists and done work which is a clear violation of immigration laws. It is a serious matter and we will probe this and deal with it accordingly,” Minister Samarasingha told Daily Mirror.

However Anna Neistat insisted she had not violated any laws in Sri Lanka when conducting her research for the New York based rights group. “More importantly don’t you as a journalist wonder why the government is so concerned about it? If they are claiming our information is wrong the best way to address it would be allowing independent journalists and other groups to the area. When there is no access the first question will be what are the authorities trying to hide,” the HRW researcher told the Daily Mirror.

This is not the first time HRW has been charged by the government of violating local immigration laws. In 2007 a team from HRW came to Sri Lanka as tourists and carried out similar research and also held a press conference before departing.

A Foreign Ministry told the Daily Mirror on the condition of anonymity that if an HRW team managed to visit Vavuniya two weeks ago to carry out research, they may have done so in the guise of staff from an aid agency.

Minister Samarasingha said all aspects will have to be looked into including the possibility of the researchers being “smuggled” in as this was not the first time HRW officials had abused the laws of the country in order to carry out research. In her statement to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Anna Neistat said Human Rights Watch visited the Vavuniya hospital on February 11, 2009 and interviewed several patients from LTTE controlled areas after visiting almost all the wards the maternity ward.

In a statement over the weekend Anna Neistat said “Visiting the Wanni left me stunned by the escalating humanitarian crisis there, and the need for an urgent Security Council response. Civilians who manage to escape the Tamil Tigers and the shelling soon find themselves locked up in military camps by the government, surrounded by barbed wire and cut off from the outside world.”

Earlier she told the US Senate that originally the government proposed to keep the displaced persons in “welfare villages” for up to three years, but following protests by the UNHCR, said it intended to resettle most of the displaced persons by the end of 2009.

She said during her visit to the North several sources reported to Human Rights Watch the presence of plainclothes military intelligence and paramilitaries in the camps. A UN official in Vavuniya told Human Rights Watch that she and her colleagues have seen members of paramilitary groups in different camps.

In particular, local staff members recognized several members of the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), a pro-government Tamil paramilitary organization long implicated in abuses, present at one of the camps. Military and CID officers regularly conduct night time interrogations inside the camps, summoning young men and women into their premises, she said.
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