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[NEW YORK, 7 May 2008] â Sri Lankaâs worsening human rights record and failed promises for improvement undermine its claim for a place on the UN Human Rights Council, a coalition of more than 20 national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) said in a letter. Elections to the 47-member council, the United Nationsâ leading human rights body, will be held in New York on 21 May 2008. Council members are required to âuphold the highest standardsâ of human rights and âfully cooperateâ with the council. In a letter to UN members, the NGO Coalition for an Effective Human Rights Council (www.hrw.org/effectiveHRC/SriLanka) noted that Sri Lankan Government forces have in the past two years been implicated in a wide range of serious abuses, including hundreds of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, widespread torture, and arbitrary detention. Sri Lanka obstructs the work of the councilâs own appointed human rights experts, ignores their recommendations, publicly attacks senior UN officials who speak out on human rights issues, and has been unwilling to engage in serious discussions regarding UN human rights monitoring. The coalition noted in the letter that the armed separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have long been implicated in serious human rights abuses, but says this provides no justification for government abuses. Sri Lanka pledged when it joined the Human Rights Council in 2006 to implement recommendations from UN bodies. It has notably failed to do so â including through its refusal to confront the problems of torture and enforced disappearances. The coalitionâs letter follows concerns expressed last week by a group of leading Sri Lankan NGOs, which urged UN members to âhold the Sri Lankan government accountable for the grave state of human rights abuse in the countryâ by rejecting its candidacy. The Sri Lankan organisations said that their government has âpresided over a grave deterioration of human rights protectionâ since first winning membership in 2006, and âhas used its membership in the Human Rights Council to protect itself from scrutiny.â âThe Human Rights Council is meant to uphold human rights, not undermine them,â said Steve Crawshaw, UN advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. âTo elect Sri Lanka would be a travesty, given its appalling rights record over the past two years.â Six candidates â Bahrain, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Timor Leste â are running for four seats allocated to Asian states. âMany countries have human rights problems, but Sri Lanka truly stands out amongst this yearâs candidates,â said Michael Anthony, programme coordinator of the Asian Human Rights Commission. âSri Lanka is the Asian state in this yearâs election which most clearly fails to meet the councilâs membership standards, without even a hint of possible improvement.â In 2007, a coalition of NGOs successfully opposed the candidacy of Belarus for the Human Rights Council. âCheers went up amongst human rights defenders around the world when Belarus was defeated,â said Hassan Shire Sheikh of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project in Uganda. âThis yearâs election provides an opportunity for African states to send a strong signal, following up on the defeat of Belarus. The Human Rights Council must stand with the victims, not become an abusersâ club.â âSri Lankaâs record of torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings should lead Latin American countries to oppose electing such an abusive government to the Human Rights Council,â said Salvador Herencia, legal adviser with the Andean Commission of Jurists. To read the letter from the NGO coalition to the UN Human Rights Council, opposing Sri Lankaâs candidacy, visit: http://www.hrw.org/effectiveHRC/SriLanka/INGOletter.html Further information Â