United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has criticised the Sri Lankan government, at the end of a week-long visit to the country on a fact-finding mission on war crimes.
In a statement, Pillay said she feared the country was becoming increasingly authoritarian.
She added that since the end of the civil war four years ago, democracy had been undermined and the rule of law eroded.
According to the BBC, Pillay said that she was allowed to go wherever she wanted, but that Sri Lankans who came to meet her were harassed and intimidated by security forces.
She added that surveillance and harassment appears to be getting worse in Sri Lanka, which is a country where critical voices are quite often attacked or even permanently silenced.
Pillay added that she would be reporting such incidents to the Human Rights Council.
She added she was concerned at recent attacks on religious minorities and at what she felt were government attempts to downplay them.
When she visited the northern city of Jaffna she met Tamil families who complained to her about missing relatives, military land grabs and life without basic facilities.
Pillay said that she had raised the alleged harassment with the government, adding that she would keep the focus on what happened to the people she had met, the report said.
Pillay's visit comes after a second UN resolution in March urged Colombo to properly investigate killings and disappearances during the war, especially in its final stages, it added.
