COLOMBO (AFP) — At least 43 aid workers have been killed in Sri Lanka since early last year amid an escalation of fighting between troops and Tamil separatists, the Asian Human Rights Commission said on Thursday.
The AHRC said that another 14 people had gone missing since January 2006 as the government and Tamil Tiger rebels blamed each other for killing civilians, including employees of local and foreign charities.
"This alarming escalation of human rights abuses over the past years clearly shows that existing domestic mechanisms for the protection of civilians and delivering justice have totally failed to deter perpetrators," the AHRC said in a statement.
It released a list of the 43 people it said had been killed, including 17 employees of Action Against Hunger who were shot dead in the embattled northeast of Sri Lanka. The government and the rebels have traded blame for the deaths.
The AHRC accused the government of acting as a "bystander" rather than as the organisation responsible for the protection of its citizens.
"No serious investigation has been initiated so far," it added.
The statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission came days after the International Committee of the Red Cross said that at least 34 people had "disappeared" in Sri Lanka in just the past three weeks.
The Red Cross said it had recorded the 34 disappearances.
The reports came ahead of a UN meeting next week to discuss the island's human rights record in Geneva from September 10-28.
The London-based rights group Amnesty International said last month that hundreds of people disappeared in Sri Lanka in the past year and more than 5,700 such cases from the past three decades were under UN review.
Amnesty said many people taken in for questioning had subsequently disappeared.
Rights groups have said that abuses have increased in tandem with an escalation of fighting between troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels.
More than 5,400 people have been killed in clashes since December 2005 in an ethnic conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.
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