The terms of office of the existing commissioners of the Human Rights Commission expire.
Timeline of events under "Human rights" issue
Two senior judges of the Supreme Court who constituted the Judicial Service Commission along with the chief justice resigned their positions, citing "grounds of conscience".
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The UN Human Rights Committee gives its views in the case of Singarasa v Sri Lanka and finds that there had been a violation of Nallaratnam Singarasa's rights.
27 prisoners, some former child soldiers of the LTTE who had surrendered to the authorities, are killed and another eighteen injured when an estimated 3,000 strong mob attacked the National Youth Services Council rehabilitation camp in Bindunuwewa, Bandarawela.
26 child LTTE cadres, aged between 15 and 18, surrender to the government security forces at Mankulam.
Five senior police officers including a Deputy Inspector General are sent on compulsory leave after the report of a presidential commission established to investigate allegations of torture and extrajudicial executions at a government-run detention center at the Batalanda Housing Estate near Colombo implicated them in the torture and “disappearances” of a large number of youths in the late 1980s.
In the first criminal prosecution of its type, the Colombo High Court sentenced to death six soldiers and a reserve policeman found guilty of the September 1996 murders of Jaffna schoolgirl Krishanthy Kumarasamy and her mother, teenage brother and neighbour.
President Kumaratunge appoints a special presidential committee to deal with complaints of harassment of Tamil civilians.
Tamil politicians protest over the roundup of more than 1,200 Tamils from Colombo.
Sri Lanka accedes to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The protocol allows individual complaints about violations to be taken to the U.N.'s Human Rights Committee.
The UN's Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, undertakes a twelve-day visit to Sri Lanka.
Tamil politicians and human rights organisations protest against the security forces’ continued use of homeguards and armed ex-militant Tamil groups to aid in security operations, as 'spotters' to identify suspected LTTE members, and to detain and interrogate suspects. They have been accused of murder, abduction, extortion, assault, illegal detention, torture, and forced conscription.
Expulsion of an estimated 70-100,000 Muslims from the Northern province by the LTTE. It is reported that Muslims were ordered to leave, giving them between 2 and 48 hours notice.
Tamil human rights activist Dr. Rajini Thiranagama is shot dead. The Tamil Tigers are blamed for the assassination.
In protest to the Indian presence, a resurrected JVP orchestrates a second armed uprising.
