Sri Lanka silencing voices

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Enforced disappearances and killings of people suspected of being LTTE supporters also occurred in association with the government's taking of LTTE-controlled territory in eastern Sri Lanka in late 2006 and early 2007. Government security forces were implicated in the mafia-style killing of 17 humanitarian aid workers shortly after government forces retook the northeastern town of Mutur from the LTTE in August 2006. Human Rights Watch reported on numerous serious human rights violations in the east in late 2008.

"Disappearances" of ethnic Tamils in the north and east and in the capital, Colombo, allegedly by members of the security forces or Tamil armed groups remain a serious problem.

"The Sri Lankan government needs to ensure that the abuses that occurred when LTTE strongholds fell in the past don't recur," said Adams.

A report on the independence of the legal profession and the rule of law in Sri Lanka - International Bar Association

The delegation was told of specific instances where lower court judges had been wrongfully and/or arbitrarily dismissed or disciplined, including the cases of District Judges Sunil Perera,Geraldin Ganlath, Harold Wijesiri Liyanage, DM Siriwardhana, DMTBI Dissanayake and Magistrates NV Karunathilake and Hiran Ekanayake. The delegation also heard numerous accounts of lower court judges being forced to resign by the Chief Justice, confronted with the undignified prospect of having to face disciplinary or criminal proceedings if they refused to do so, no matter how baseless the allegations against them may have been.