Report: Sri Lanka guilty of rights abuse

The Sri Lankan government has committed a wide array of human rights abuses in its fight against Tamil rebels, illegally detaining some opponents, secretly abducting others and waging battles with little regard for the safety of civilians, a human rights group said Monday.

In a sharp rebuke to the government, New York-based Human Rights Watch called for the creation of a U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka and appealed to donors to pressure the government to end its abuses.

The government said the report was baseless and a violation of the country's sovereignty.

"We take every possible step to maintain human rights," said spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella.

The government has long blamed the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels for any abuses that have occurred during the new round of fighting that began nearly two years ago.

The 129-page report said the rebels were responsible for killing civilians, recruiting child soldiers and extorting local populations, but that did not alleviate the government's responsibility.

"Abuses by the LTTE are no excuse for the government's campaign of killings, 'disappearances' and forced returns of the displaced," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Sri Lanka has been locked in a civil war since 1983, with the rebels fighting to create an ethnic Tamil homeland in the north and east against the majority Sinhalese-dominated government. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

A Norwegian-brokered cease-fire took hold in 2002, but the truce has all but collapsed in new fighting over the past 21 months that has killed an estimated 5,000 people.

The human rights report said the new fighting has led to a wide array of government abuses, mainly against the Tamil minority.

In its offensive against the rebels in eastern Sri Lanka, the government indiscriminately attacked civilians and blocked the delivery of some humanitarian aid, the report said.

In one incident cited in the report, the government killed 62 people when it shelled a school Nov. 8 in the eastern Vahaira area where thousands of displaced civilians had sought shelter. The human rights group said its investigations turned up no evidence to support the government claim that the rebels had fired at troops from the school or were using the civilians as human shields.

About 315,000 people have fled their homes because of the violence, and the government forced some to return to areas that remained insecure, the report said.

The group said more than 1,100 abductions or "disappearances" were reported between January 2006 and June 2007, and blamed many of them on the government and its armed allies.

The report was released on the one-year anniversary of the killing of 17 workers for the international relief agency Action Against Hunger, who were shot execution-style amid a fierce battle between the government and rebels for the eastern town of Muttur.

The aid group held ceremonies across the world to commemorate the killings, which prompted an international outcry and demands for a U.N. investigation. Cease-fire monitors blamed the military for the killings, while the government blamed the rebels.

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Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org

(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 2 to correct that the report asked donors to pressure the government, not withhold aid.)