The United Nations rights chief urged Sri Lanka Thursday to do more to end a culture of "entrenched impunity" for war crimes and other abuses in the aftermath of the island's decades-long conflict.
In a report, the UN rights office called on Sri Lanka to build on steps it has taken to bolster accountability for past violations, including during the 1983-2009 war.
The government "still has an opportunity to turn the tide on decades of abuse of executive power, repressive laws and custodial violence, and entrenched impunity", UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
"While it is encouraging that the Sri Lankan authorities have taken action to address corruption cases and some crimes linked to the post-war period, more needs to be done to end the long legacy of impunity in the country."
Sri Lanka's war, which claimed more than 100,000 lives, ended when government forces defeated minority Tamil rebels who had fought for an independent state in the island's north and east.
The report noted steps by the government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who took office in 2024, to tackle corruption, and hailed several high-profile arrests and investigations in connection with political killings, enforced disappearances and the country's deadly 2019 Easter Sunday attack.
But it lamented that despite the government promoting national unity and denouncing racism, it had continued to apply a "repressive" Prevention of Terrorism Act.
This had resulted in "arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions without charge", it said, urging Sri Lanka to repeal the law and "release all political prisoners".
Civil society actors, activists and journalists were meanwhile being subjected to state surveillance, it said.
This, it said, indicates "a clear and continuing pattern of state surveillance, intimidation and reprisals".
Cases of torture and deaths in custody were also continuing, it said.
The report also criticised persisting failures to effectively investigate and prosecute crimes committed during Sri Lanka's armed conflict.
Successive governments in Colombo have resisted calls to investigate allegations that security forces killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the war's final months.
Turk noted several recent high-profile indictments over a 2006 abduction and murder, but said "many other serious emblematic cases remain stalled for years".
