It appears that the new Sri Lanka Government has agreed to a domestic war crimes probe within 18 months, and the United States, which sponsored three successive UN resolutions against Sri Lanka, has said it would support a domestic process, if credible.
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Sri Lanka became an worldwide pariah after repeatedly resisting calls for a credible probe into the horrendous crimes allegedly committed by government forces during and after the war.
Further, given that both the HCHR’s report (A/ HRC/30/ 61) and the Report on the OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) (A/HRC/30/SRP.2) recognizes that the report represents a “human rights investigation” and not a “criminal investigation”, emphasizing excessively on the criminal justice aspects, makes the resolution imbalanced.
“That (denial) was the biggest mistake Sri Lanka made”, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said. “Foremost of which was that it was instituted outside the established procedure of the UN Human Rights Council”, Rajapaksa said. For the Wickremesinghe government, it is probably a no-go area in Sri Lankan politics.
The second informal briefing on Sri Lanka took place in Geneva yesterday on the sidelines of the 30 session of the UN Human Rights Council. The United Nations report suggests that he is talking rot.
Sri Lanka has doubled a tax on large onions to 20 rupees from 10 rupees a kilo ahead of a domestic harvest, the finance ministry said.
Rajapaksa won the 26-year war against Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009, but his military was accused of killing thousands of civilians during the final weeks of the conflict. “It is for this reason that the establishment of a hybrid special court, integrating global judges, prosecutors, lawyers. and investigators, is so essential”. “People in Jaffna are not aware of what is going on in Geneva, but what they are hoping for is justice”, said local Tamil politician Suresh Premachandran. But Tamil leaders feel Sirisena’s moves are only symbolic aimed at warding off economic sanctions and Western pressure for an worldwide inquiry into the war atrocities. It concluded that “the patterns of commission of gross human rights violations and serious violations of worldwide law, the indications of their systematic nature, combined with the widespread character of the attacks all point to the possible perpetration of global crimes”.
As you are aware, the government, on its own volition, and conviction that it has to do right by all her people, has already commenced taking steps to address numerous concerns in the previous resolutions and reports as well.
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Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, center left, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier share a light moment as they arrive for their meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, September 22, 2015.
