bbc news sri lanka civil war navi pillay

One Catholic priest told BBC Tamil that he had been questioned by unidentified men, which he felt was tantamount to 'intimidation'. When she visited the northern city of Jaffna she met Tamil families who complained to her about missing relatives, military land grabs and life without basic facilities.Īfter Ms Pillay met the TNA, Sri Lanka's biggest Tamil party, one MP, MA Sumanthiran, told BBC Sinhala's Azzam Ameen they had raised concerns that 'people who had met her in the north and east are now being harassed by military intelligence'. In addition, she said she was concerned at recent attacks on religious minorities and at what she felt were government attempts to downplay them. Ms Pillay added that she would be reporting such incidents to the Human Rights Council. Wreckage in Mullivaikkal appeared to have been cleared away before Ms Pillay's visit 'Utterly unacceptable at any time, it is particularly extraordinary for such treatment to be meted out during a visit by a UN high commissioner for human rights.' 'This type of surveillance and harassment appears to be getting worse in Sri Lanka, which is a country where critical voices are quite often attacked or even permanently silenced,' the statement said.

Ms Pillay said that she was allowed to go wherever she wanted but that Sri Lankans who came to meet her were harassed and intimidated by security forces. The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the statement issued by Ms Pillay's office is astonishingly blunt, and parts of it will not go down well with the Sri Lankan government, which had not been especially keen on her visit in the first place. She told reporters then that her job was to ensure that the government was conforming to human rights standards agreed by all nations.

She arrived in Sri Lanka last Sunday for a fact-finding mission after the government promised her access to former war zones. Ms Pillay is the most senior UN official to visit the north since Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009. Since the civil war ended four years ago, democracy had been undermined and the rule of law eroded, she added. In a statement, Ms Pillay said she feared the country was becoming increasingly authoritarian.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has sharply criticised the government of Sri Lanka, at the end of a week-long visit.

Commonwealth faces 'real test' on Sri Lanka.

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Bbc news sri lanka civil war navi pillay