On 24 March 2025, the United Kingdom sanctioned four individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009).
The sanctions, which include travel bans and asset freezes, seek long awaited accountability for extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual violence, among other violations.
In November 2023, the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), in partnership with PJI, submitted an extensive 100-page dossier followed by a briefing to the UK Foreign Office advocating action against the now-sanctioned commander, Jagath Jayasuriya. ITJP has been instrumental in highlighting evidence against a number of those who committed such abuses during the Sri Lankan civil war, and PJI is honoured to have partnered with them in drafting this submission.
“We are delighted that after so many years the truth about these war criminals has finally been acknowledged by the United Kingdom, one of the main countries where thousands of [Sri Lankan] victims have sought shelter… We have spent the last decade compiling evidence on them but it’s the victims who testified who deserve recognition today, and the individuals in the Tamil community who quietly and relentlessly kept on advocating for justice for years.” – ITJP Executive Director, Yasmin Sooka.
The Sri Lankan civil war was a decades-long conflict, spanning 1983 to 2009, between the largely Sinhalese Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE sought an independent state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. Following Sri Lanka’s independence from British occupation in 1948, the Sri Lankan government instituted policies increasingly marginalising and alienating the Tamil minority. These policies, though ostensibly to correct for the favourable treatment of the Tamil ethnic group during British occupation, resulted in communal violence and radicalization. By the mid-1970s, many Tamil militant groups began calling for a separate Tamil state—Tamil Eelam—with the LTTE overcoming rival groups to become the sole militant group agitating for Tamil Eelam. The civil war began in earnest in July 1983. During “Black July,” thirteen government workers were killed in an LTTE attack, after which communal violence saw up to 3000 Tamils killed.
Over the next decades, both the LTTE and Sri Lankan government committed human rights abuses and war crimes. The civil war ended in 2009, when the Sri Lankan government defeated the LTTE—but the underlying marginalization of Tamils, including their ongoing “Sinhalisation,” persists today.
PJI considers the United Kingdom’s imposition of sanctions a welcome victory for Sri Lankan victims of human rights abuses. We urge all governments to remain steadfast in their commitment to seeking justice for victims, wherever they may live.
Read ITJP’s press release at bit.ly/ITJPUK
Read the UK’s press release at bit.ly/UKsanctions
To learn more about the Sri Lankan civil war, see the Report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Investigation on Sri Lanka. PJI Co-Director Maxine Marcus was the gender and international criminal law advisor on the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL).