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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ramarajan" data-source="post: 1603361" data-attributes="member: 86701">In December 2006 President Rajapaksa established another presidential CoI and charged it with investigating 16 high‑profile killings from 2005. In February, in response to international concern over escalating human rights abuses, President Rajapaksa also invited the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) to assist the CoI and monitor its progress. The CoI began interviewing witnesses in three cases but did not hold public formal hearings by year's end. According to IIGEP, the investigations were delayed by the lack of effective witness protection and the role of the attorney general's office in steering the inquiry. The IIGEP concluded that the “persistent disregard for its observations and recommendations” by both the government and the CoI tended to make the IIGEP’s continued role "irrelevant." The IIGEP called for an international human rights monitoring mechanism. The attorney general and the CoI publicly objected to the IIGEP's observations.The August 2006 execution‑style killing of 17 members of a French NGO Action Contre La Faim fell under the CoI's mandate. The SLMM asserted that state security forces were responsible for the killings, a charge the government denied. By year's end no arrests were made. The CoI continued its investigation but made little progress.Two cases listed as abductions in 2006 were reclassified as killings: The first was the August 2006 abduction of human rights activist and Reverend Thiruchchelvan Nihal Jim Brown and Wenceslaus Vinces Vimalathas of St. Mary's Church at Allapitty on Kayts Island. On March 14, a decapitated and mutilated body was found on a beach in Jaffna bound with barbed wire in a large army duffle bag. Those close to Father Brown identified the body as his. Media reports indicated that a DNA test confirmed that the body belonged to Brown, but the government announced in June that according to its DNA test it belonged to neither Brown nor Vimalathas. Detailed reports show that the government used the Judicial Services Commission to suppress the investigation by removing judges on the case and interfering with the judicial process. No further investigation was conducted. The second case was the September 2006 abduction of Eastern University Vice-Chancellor Raveendranath, who disappeared while attending a conference in a high security zone in Colombo. The government did not acknowledge Raveendranath's death. It also did not conduct a formal investigation into his abduction.In August the Supreme Court held that the public and the international community are generally not entitled to obtain information about pending human rights cases. Therefore, the government rebuffed efforts to obtain official information on the status of 2006 killings allegedly involving police, military personnel, or progovernment paramilitary groups. Among the cases were the January killing of five Tamil youths in the Trincomalee High Security Zone (HSZ), allegedly by the police Special Task Force (this case is being investigated by the CoI); the March beating to death of Nallawarige Sandasirilal Fernando by two police officers; the April killing of TNA parliamentary candidate V. Vigneswaran by gunmen allegedly from the Karuna group; the April beating death of Don Wijerathna Munasinghe by police officers; the April discovery of five beheaded Tamil farmers near Batticaloa; the May Jaffna killing of Tamil‑language newspaper Uthayan Marketing and Circulation Manager B. G. Saeadas and night supervisor R. Ranjith, allegedly by EPDP cadres working in concert with state military intelligence; the May killing of a family of 13 Tamils in their home on Kayts Island allegedly by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN); the May killings of eight civilians in the home of Sellathurai Amalathas on Kayts Island allegedly by the SLN; the May killings of an elderly man and two members of his family along with a tea shop owner in Jaffna; the June killing of one Tamil civilian by uniformed men who fired into a church in Pesalai, Mannar, where Tamil civilians sought refuge from aerial bombardment; the August aerial bombardment of Trincomalee in which approximately 50 civilians were killed and 200 were wounded; the August aerial bombardment of Mullaitivu in which 51 teenage girls were killed and more than 100 injured; the October killing by unknown gunmen of a TNA local government member for Serunuwara, Trincomalee district–Eastern Province, Gopala Krishnan Padmanathan; the November assassination of a TNA MP Nadaraja Raviraj in Colombo (this case is being investigated by the CoI); and the November killing of two brothers while in the custody of the Ambalangoda police after they surrendered to the Special Investigative Unit in Galle.The government made no progress in the investigations of the 2005 assassinations of former TNA MP A.C. Nehru or MP Joseph Pararajasingham while he was attending midnight mass in a Batticaloa HSZ. The CoI was charged with investigating Pararajasingham's assassination. There was also no progress made in the investigation of the killing of E. Kausalyn, political head of the Batticaloa‑Ampara division of the LTTE.During the year media reports and observers implicated the LTTE in attacks on high‑profile political opponents and civilians. For example, on July 16, suspected LTTE cadres shot Chief Secretary of the Eastern Provincial Council Herath Abeyweera.The LTTE is suspected of having used claymore mines to attack buses in Sinhalese areas, including some carrying civilians. On March 27, the LTTE used a suicide bomber driving a tractor with an attached trailer to attack the Chenkallady Army Base in Batticaloa district, killing three soldiers and five civilians and wounding one soldier, two policemen and 18 civilians. The SLN reported that the LTTE used suicide boats to attack naval outposts and vessels.There was a drastic reduction in deaths and injuries resulting from land mines and unexploded ordnance, with only one death and one injury reported this year.</blockquote>

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