Thanks for your comments. However, the article refers to a specific issue: i.e. about Sri Lanka’s accession to the ICCPR OP. Your points about failed investigations or differences between ethnicities were not raised in the article. Hence, I refrain from commenting on them. If you want to proceed with the conversation, kindly tell me whether in your view Sri Lanka needs to find an answer to the OP problem, or not, or whether there is a problem relating to the OP at all. Debating such issues, I believe, would be more useful. There are many other articles on GV under which you can raise (and perhaps may have raised) issues relating to failed investigations, disappearences etc. Not here, my friend. Thanks.

2.The Intra-Group Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Learning to read between the lines(2003): ”In the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001, very nuanced and complex conflicts around the world have been strained through a simplistic lens to be reframed as one-dimensional confrontations between ‘terrorists’ and anti-terrorists, not unlike the dichotomization that was sustained in the earlier era of bi-polarity.”

Against a background of absence of investigations into tens of thousands of killings/disappearances in the North and the South and the East and the West for decades?

Against a background of the state most maliciously highlighting and deepening the intrinsic differences between ethnicities?

Kalana and Kathir are in pre-UDHR era. Nay, much earlier era.

”Terrorism poses a significant challenge to the promotion and protection of human rights.”

Yes, terrorism of successive governments has been trampling the human rights of ethnic minorities:

Power-sharing as peace structure: Case of Sri Lanka, Prof Galtung(2005) –
”External Colonialism:Democracy::Internal Colonialism:Human Rights”.

1. Violence of LTTEbeginning in mid-70s was reaction to state terrorism
i.official through government institutions from 1948 up to now -includes army occupation of Northeast, PTA, …
ii.”unofficial” state-aided pogroms, ”disappearances” in many manifestations…

2. Assessing Damage, Urging Action: Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights, An initiative of the International Commission of Jurists, February 2009:
”….. The war paradigm as applied by the United States has however had a detrimental impact around the globe. In many Hearings, the Panel learnt that governments elsewhere appear to relativise or justify their own wrong-doing by comparisons with the US. Some countries have sought opportunistically to re-define long-standing internal armed conflicts as part of the worldwide “war on terror” (the report notes an example of this in relation to Colombia). Elsewhere – particularly at its Hearings in Canada and the European Union – the Panel learnt of the alleged complicity of numerous States in practices such as extraordinary renditions.
The Panel recommends that the incoming US administration, repeal all laws, policies and practices associated with the war paradigm where they are inconsistent with the country’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law. Other countries that have been complicit in human rights violations arising from the war paradigm should similarly repudiate such behaviour and review legislation, policies and practices to prevent any such repetition in future. ….”

3.World Federation of Scientists: PERMANENT MONITORING PANEL ON TERRORISM on ‘’war-on-terror”, May 2006:
”We discussed at some length the relationship between terror intentionally inflicted by state actors and terrorism espoused by weaker players as a tactic in asymmetric struggles, and noted that one could scarcely be fully understood without reference to the other. The profound economic and human costs, not least on ordinary people, were underlined along with the threats to respect for international law and the system of multi-lateral relationships which had contributed to global stability over the previous half century and which were now at profound risk.”