Judge Human Rights relative to ground reality - Part IV:
Civilians’ in war: ‘These are Sri Lankans’
Text of the address by Plantation Industries Minister and Special Presidential Envoy on Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe at the 14th session of the Universal Periodic Review Meeting of the UNHRC in Geneva
At present, 2,061 sq.km have been identified as hazardous areas. The area cleared is over 1,953 sq. km. The scale of the problem the Government faced in demining can be clearly seen from the number of mines and other devices unearthed and neutralised during the demining process.
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Security Forces personnel engaged in demining activities in
North. File photo
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Over 900,000 hazardous devices have been recovered. These include anti-tank, anti-personnel and IEDs amongst the recovered UXO. As of 25 October 2012, about 98 percent of the areas identified for demining have been cleared and approximately 108 square kilometers of territory remains to be cleared.
This data refers to 10 Districts in all including 3 in the East, 5 in the North and 2 in the North Central Province. Further demining will enable the remaining contaminated areas to be used for resettlement.
The Sri Lanka Army was responsible for demining approximately 75 percent of the land which was the largest single area assigned to any of the parties involved in demining and included most of the densely mined regions.
The entire demining programme was carefully planned and executed. Priority areas were chosen to maximize efficiency and enable the speedy return of the displaced. The first was to demine towns and villages; the second, to demine agricultural areas and paddy fields; and finally to clear forested areas. Presently, nearly all of the two main priority areas have been dealt with.
Work only continues in a few areas where the concentration of mines is at its highest. Many of these are places where heavy fighting took place during the last stages of the conflict. It is our aim to completely clear these in the near future. I ask the question once again: isn’t this progress?
Humanitarian operation
As we pointed out in our National Report, special emphasis has been given to regulating the activities regarding the management of land in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The Ministry of Land and Land Development has decided to resolve the land disputes in these areas by implementing a special programme. Cabinet approval has been received for policy proposals relating to the matter.
It is proposed to set in place mediation boards in terms of the Mediation (Special Categories of Disputes) Act to resolve disputes between owners who have paper title and have been displaced and those of them who are in unlawful occupation as an alternate dispute resolution mechanism.
Furthermore, an amendment to the Prescription Ordinance is presently being considered whereby displaced or disadvantaged owners of land will be exempted from the rules of prescription during a period of 30 years so as to enable them to defeat any competing claims based on the lapse of time.
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Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and the delegation at the 14th
session of the Universal Periodic Review Meeting in Geneva.
Picture by Sudath Silva |
With regard to matters of accountability and the allegations as to the violations of humanitarian and human rights law, the LLRC in its report clearly states, that protection of civilian life was a key factor in the formulation of government policy for carrying out military operations, and the deliberate targeting of civilians formed no part of that strategy.
We have pointed out in our national report that the government has already carried out a series of measures which will enable firm and verifiable conclusions to be arrived at on issues involving accountability, without any element of conjecture or speculation.
If reliable evidence is available in respect of any contravention of the law, the domestic legal process will be set in motion. I must stress that these are Sri Lankans and our government is determined to make a full accounting for our people.
As no comprehensive census has been carried out in the Northern Province since 1981, the Department of Census and Statistics was charged with the task of making an enumeration of vital events in the Northern Province and this task was completed in 2011.
Economic development
Critical for socio-economic and development planning, the enumeration, followed by an islandwide census in 2012, will provide an accurate picture of patterns of deaths, outward migration within and outside the country, caused by the conflict and other reasons.
A comparison of the population data from the enumeration and from the island wide census will enable the government to gain an understanding of the magnitude and ramifications of the conflict.
Causes could include LTTE cadre killed in action, cadre and civilians who escaped the conflict and migrated to other parts of the country and/or overseas, civilians likely to have been killed in the crossfire, civilians killed by the LTTE while seeking to escape from their control, false reporting and reported deaths that did not occur during the period of the humanitarian operation. To be continued
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