The North-East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) was established on July 9, 2004, in

Kilinochchi Kilinochchi (; ) is the main town of Kilinochchi District, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some south-east of Jaffna. It was the administrative center and de facto capital of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) until ...

by the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; , ; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eela ...

(LTTE) as part of the 2002 Norway-facilitated peace process to monitor human rights in the

North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka The North Eastern Province was one of the provinces of Sri Lanka. The province was created in September 1988 by merging the Northern and Eastern provinces. This merger was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2006. The province ...

. According to its former secretary N. Malathy, who volunteered and worked closely with the LTTE Peace Secretariat to assist with the peace process, some leading members of citizens' committees in the

North-East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, ...

collectively put pressure on the LTTE to establish a civilian human rights body independent of the LTTE Peace Secretariat. According to pro-rebel

TamilNet TamilNet is an online newspaper that provides news and feature articles on current affairs in Sri Lanka, specifically related to the erstwhile Sri Lankan Civil War. The website was formed by members of the Sri Lankan Tamil community residing in ...

, NESoHR functioned in the Tamil areas until the end of 2008 when it was forced to end its operations. During its operations from Vanni, it released a large number of reports on the ongoing atrocities against Tamils.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

claimed in 2006 that NESoHR had "limited autonomy, and capacity and security constraints" that restricted its access to the

Eastern Province, Sri Lanka The Eastern Province ( ''Næ̆gĕnahira Paḷāta'' , ''Kiḻakku Mākāṇam'') is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka, the first level administrative division of the country. The provinces have existed since the 19th century but did not have ...

Joseph Pararajasingham Joseph Pararajasingham (; 26 November 1934 – 25 December 2005) was a Sri Lankan Tamil civil servant, journalist, businessman and politician. He was Member of Parliament for Batticaloa District from 1990 to 2004 and a National List Member ...

, a member of the Sri Lankan Parliament, and

A. Chandranehru Ariyanayagam Chandranehru (; 15 October 1944 – 8 February 2005) was a Sri Lankan merchant seaman, politician and Member of Parliament. Early life and family Chandranehru was born 15 October 1944. He was from Thirukkovil in south-eastern Ceylo ...

, a former member of Sri Lankan Parliament, were founding members of NESoHR. Both were later

assassinated Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...

allegedly by state-affiliated paramilitaries and posthumously awarded the honour of Maamanithar by the LTTE. Father M. X. Karunaratnam was the Chairperson of the organization until his assassination on April 20, 2008. In a press release, NESoHR condemned, "in the strongest possible terms", "the Sri Lankan State" for his death. NESoHR has been cited by the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and

, as well as Sri Lankan newspapers. In addition to reporting on human rights, NESoHR has also formed an informal partnership with the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers to discuss the application of international humanitarian law to Sri Lanka's armed conflict. In the post-war period, NESoHR along with the Chennai-based human rights trust ''Manitham'' co-published a book titled "''Massacres of Tamils: 1956–2008''" documenting 171

massacres A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians en masse by an armed group or person. The word is a loan of a French term for "b ...

of Tamil civilians. The organization was relaunched again in 2013 from outside Sri Lanka, and as of 2015 exiled attorney K. Sivapalan was its vice chairman, who was a former local member of the

Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) was a multinational body that existed from 2002 to 2008 to monitor the ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also known as the ''Tamil Tigers'') during ...

References

External links

archive of NESoHR website
Imprisonment and detention 2004 establishments in Sri Lanka 2009 disestablishments in Sri Lanka Human rights organisations based in Sri Lanka Organizations established in 2004 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam {{Asia-org-stub

See also

References

External links