Don’t holiday with war criminals or human rights abusers

The Sri Lankan armed forces, along with members of the current and former regime, are responsible for some of the most appalling human rights violations in recent history. Multiple investigations by the UN have documented how, during the final stages of the war in 2009, many tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed after the humanitarian ‘safe zones’ in which they had been encouraged to gather were repeatedly shelled by advancing government forces. Despite credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity – charges also levelled at members of the defeated LTTE (‘Tamil Tigers’) – no one has yet been brought to justice.

Despite the end of the fighting, serious human rights violations – including extra-judicial killings, torture, sexual violence, abductions, arbitrary detention and land-grabbing – have persisted. These abuses, and the culture of impunity that enables them, are a result of the lack of accountability for what happened at the end of Sri Lanka’s long and bloody civil war. This means that despite the recent change of regime in Sri Lanka, the root causes of oppression and repeated mass violence remain intact.

Today, the armed forces and other human rights abusers are deeply embedded in the tourism industry and poised to benefit from your spending.We believe it is the duty of the ethical traveller to ensure they are not supported, and to deny the military the financial resources with which they have been able to maintain a tight grip over civilian life, particularly in the war-affected north and east of the country.

In order to help tourists to live up to that ethical duty, we have compiled a list of tourism ventures that we think tourists should consider avoiding. It includes, most importantly, ventures that are owned by, or have financial links to, the military or other individuals believed to be complicit in grave human rights violations. But it also includes those whose operations have been linked with specific kinds of exploitation (such as land grabbing), as well as those whose record is problematic for other reasons (such as because they are involved in the white-washing of human rights abuses).