Asia's human rights record has worsened Amnesty International said in a report that paints a gloomy picture of the region where serial offenders such as North Korea and Myanmar remain unchecked.
Amnesty also criticised governments for their lack of accountability and said it was time to ensure that no one is above the law.
'When compared to the rest of the world, Asia-Pacific is a gloomy story,' Catherine Baber, the deputy AsiaPacific director at Amnesty International, said in Hong Kong.
'There has been a crackdown across the region on human rights. Governments are willing to use colonial laws and draconian measures' on their populations, she said.
Sri Lanka came in for particular criticism for the thousands of Tamil civilian deaths in the closing weeks of the war against the Tamil Tiger guerillas.
Baber said that in one display of how countries are being allowed to carry out killings and torture with impunity, the United Nations Security Council had refused to intervene.
Some 7,000 people are believed to have died from government shelling of so-called 'safe zones' but the number could be as high as 20,000.
