Executive summary of the alternate report: Apart from the reduction of the scale of human rights violations after the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in February 2002, there has been little improvement of the human rights situation since the submission of the first periodic report in 1994. Arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, custodial rape, extrajudicial executions, disappearances and the like, continue to be perpetrated by the security forces with impunity. Only on Oct 7, 2003, the Sri Lankan parliament passed the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act to bring an end to over 50 years of systemic and institutionalized discrimination...The judiciary faces serious crisis of independence. Under the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act, the judiciary functions under the executive’s caprice.

Undoubtedly, Sri Lanka faces formidable armed opposition from the LTTE, which has also been responsible for serious human rights violations. However, the government sought to justify human rights violations in the name of combating the LTTE and preserving the territorial integrity of the country. The security forces enjoy virtual impunity. The right wing Sinhalese and the powerful Buddhist clergies have often attempted to sanctify the culture of impunity, sometimes by providing legal aid assistance to the perpetrators of human rights violations. The culture of impunity, while dealing with the minority Tamils, also had its enduring negative effects on the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Sri Lankans. Impunity remains the single most important factor contributing to continuing human rights violations in the island.

A few visible measures such as the ratification of a few key international instruments and the establishment of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission have failed to improve the overall human rights situation due to the lack of political will of the government to implement international human administrative and legal obstacles to restrict the enjoyment of fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution.

National Mechanisms: Although Chapter 3 of the Sri Lankan constitution provides fundamental rights, complaints against the violations of fundamental rights could strangely be lodged only before the Colombo-based Supreme Court under section 126 of the Sri Lankan Constitution, that too within 300 days...and only by the victim or his/her attorney. Therefore, the opportunity for a poor with no high social status, or those living outside of Colombo, to obtain relief against the violations of human rights is very limited. There is no opportunity to pursue violations of fundamental rights on behalf of those who are dead or missing.

Sri Lanka is a clear case of having too many quasi-judicial national human rights institutions dealing with inter-related, inter-dependent and indivisible human rights issues. The government established a series of national institutions/commissions sometimes on the same issue such as disappearance. Each new commission of the Sri Lankan government seeks to condone omissions of the previous ones. The government has little political will to give adequate statutory powers and endow them with adequate human or financial resources to fulfil their mandates. Although the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission requested 32 million rupees for recurrent expenditure and 6 million rupees for capital expenditure, during 2001-02, the government sanctioned 23 million rupees for recurrent expenditure and 500,000 rupees for capital expenditure.