Now Sri Lanka has warned the UN that publicly releasing a report on allegedwar crimes committed as its civil war was ending could harm efforts at post-war ethnic reconciliation.
You wipe out a generation and exposing them shall harm the ‘Reconciliation Efforts’
Sri Lanka is being let off easily.
India instead of bringing out the Truth is keeping mum for geopolitical reasons or is it because those who were exterminated belong to South of Vindhyas?
This attitude ,whatever be the reasons, shall breed separatism in India .
It is in the interest of India in the long run that it intervenes on behalf of Tamils.
Well, I am not saying anything about the ‘Leader of Tamils World Wide’
He is busy getting berths in the Cabinet for his kin and of late trying to wiggle out of Scams,especially 2G scam.
Probably he will write a letter to Center on the plight of Tamils.
DELHI: The Sri Lankan government deliberately shelled hospitals, fired on civilians in no-fire zones and attacked the United Nations and Red Cross in the dying days of the country’s civil war two years ago, a leaked UN report says.
Extracts of the report, which was to be released this week, say there are ”credible” reports of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Tamil Tiger movement, which was finally defeated in May 2009 after a 30-year insurgency.
The UN committee, led by Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney-general, has called for an independent investigation into the final months of the war, when fighting was focused on the Vanni area in the north-east, as government troops pushed retreating Tigers and thousands of civilians into smaller and smaller no-fire zones.
The naked man, his hands bound behind his back, is pushed to the ground. Then a man in military uniform delivers a forceful kick to the back of the prisoner’s head with the heel of his boot. As the prisoner slumps forward, another soldier points his automatic weapon and fires a single shot. The man’s body jolts. “It’s like he jumped,” laughs one of the giggling soldiers.
As gunfire rattles, the camera pans left to reveal a further seven bloodstained bodies, all handcuffed and bound, and – with one exception – similarly naked, strewn on the ground. The camera then pans right again, as another naked man is forced to the ground and shot in the back of the head. This time the body falls backwards.
These scenes, captured on video, allegedly show extra-judicial killings of Tamils by Sri Lankan troops earlier this year in the bitter and bloody endgame of the country’s civil war. As government forces made a decisive thrust into the stronghold of rebel forces to end the decades-long conflict, a Sri Lankan soldier apparently took this footage, which was then smuggled out of the country by activists. It may constitute the first hard evidence for those who believe war crimes were committed in the effort to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The significance of this footage – particularly shocking for the seemingly casual way in which the killings were carried out – is even greater given the way that journalists and independent observers were prevented by the government from reaching the war zone. The UN has estimated that 10,000 civilians were killed in what was, in effect, a war with no witnesses.
Butenis said complicity in alleged war crimes by the president and leader of the opposition was stalling progress in launching investigations into the country’s civil war.
The long running conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers, was ended in May 2009 after the Sri Lankan army defeated LTTE leaders in an area known as the “no fire zone”.
The cable, dated 15 January 2010, updated the Secretary of State on war crimes accountability following the end of the country’s long and bloody conflict.
Ambassador Butenis noted there had been some limited progress in investigating potential war crimes, but noted:
“There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power.
“In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka.”
With regard to alleged LTTE war crimes, Butenis noted:
“Most of the LTTE leadership was killed at the end of the war, leaving few to be held responsible for those crimes. The Government of Sri Lanka (GSL) is holding thousands of mid- and lower-level ex-LTTE combatants for future rehabilitation and/or criminal prosecution. It is unclear whether any such prosecutions will meet international standards.”
The revelations coincide with a visit by President Rajapaksa to the United Kingdom. Rajapaksa, who has been in the UK since Monday, is due to meet with UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox.
Rajapaksa was also scheduled to speak at the Oxford Union on Thursday until the university issued a statement cancelling the event on Wednesday afternoon. The statement cited “security concerns” due to the large number of protestors expected to picket the event.
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