August 4 marks the day in which Sri Lanka’s military entered a town in Trincomalee and executed 17 aid workers of the French NGO Action Contre La Faim (ACF) working on a post-tsunami rebuilding project.
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| Photograph:ACF |
The massacre, which occurred in 2006, was widely condemned by global institutions including the United Nations and European Union who immediately called for a probe into the killings.
The UN spokesman at the time, Farhan Haq, condemning the killings, urged Sri Lanka’s authorities to do ”everything possible to apprehend the perpetrators… and to bring them to justice.”
Expressing shock at the “execution style killing” the EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferroro Waldner, said,
“The commission urges authorities in Sri Lanka to investigate these killings immediately and thoroughly and to give assurances that they will do everything possible to ensure a safe humanitarian space in the country.”
Sri Lanka’s attempt of serving justice for the killings, over a year later, was criticised by the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) for its omission of international expertise in the process.
A statement by the ICJ’s official observer at Sri Lanka’s hearings into the massacre QC Michael Birnbaum cast doubts over the process.
Stressing the importance of the gaining the victims’ trust in the process, Mr Birnbaum said,
“Involvement of independent, outside experts would have helped to allay any suspicion of tampering with evidence - an issue which has been raised in at least one other similar case. The Sri Lankan Government needs to dispel serious concerns about whether the justice system is now able to carry out independent and credible investigations into who was responsible for these killings and to mount effective prosecutions. The Government should entrust the investigation to a national body that has the trust of all Sri Lankans and if that is not possible, then the Government should look elsewhere for assistance in the investigation”
In 2014 ACF publically accused Sri Lanka of delaying justice for the massacres and called for an international inquiry into the killings. A report released by the organisation in December 2013 accused the Sri Lankan government of preventing justice by the intimidation of witnesses and destruction of evidence.
“The current political regime is in itself the main factor preventing justice from being done for the victims of war crimes,” said the report.
A former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butens, commenting on the struggle to find justice for the massacre, said,
“In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rest with the country’s senior civilian military leadership.”
9 years on, justice for the killings of the Tamil aid workers is yet to be seen.
