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AFP: President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected a fresh appeal from the United Nations to allow international judges to investigate alleged war-era atrocities, vowing to not prosecute soldiers.
“I am not going to allow non-governmental organisations to dictate how to run my Government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute my troops,” the president said in remarks distributed by his office Sunday.
The UN on Friday criticised Sri Lanka’s “worryingly slow” progress in addressing its wartime past, urging the Government to adopt
laws allowing for special hybrid courts to try war criminals.
In his first remarks since the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva handed down a new scorecard on Sri Lanka, Sirisena rebuffed calls for international judges to probe abuses committed during the island’s 37-year civil war.
Sri Lanka has resisted calls to establish a special court to investigate allegations that Government forces killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of fighting, which ended in May 2009.
Sirisena, a member of the majority Sinhalese community, received the support of the Tamil minority after promising accountability for excesses carried out by the largely Sinhalese military.
He had agreed to a UN Human Rights Council resolution in October 2015 which called for special tribunals and reparations for victims and gave Sri Lanka 18 months to establish credible investigations.
But the deadline lapsed without those commitments being met.
The UN said coalition politics in the unity government Sirisena formed after ousting former strongman leader Mahinda Rajapaksa were likely to blame for the slow pace of progress.
Last week the main Tamil political party accused Sirisena of failing to deliver on his promises, and urged the UN to hold his administration to account.
Sirisena’s response marks a sharp shift in his policy towards accountability and reconciliation, which had earned him the praise of international observers.
“A charge sheet is now brought against our forces with a demand to include foreign judges to try them,” he said in a speech to troops in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, the Tamil heartland.
The defiant tone contrasted with his Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who asked the Human Rights Council for more time, promising that his country remained committed to seeking justice.
At least 100,000 people were killed during the separatist war between Government forces and rebels from the Tamil Tigers group, with atrocities recorded by both sides.
In its report, the UN said abuses including torture remain widespread in the ethnically divided island nation of 21 million, with “a prevailing culture of impunity” partly to blame.
The UN acknowledged that Colombo had made some positive advances on constitutional and legal reforms, limited land restitution and symbolic gestures towards reconciliation.
But it cautioned that the measures taken so far had been “inadequate, lacked coordination and a sense of urgency.”
(Xinhua) COLOMBO- Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Friday that a ‘hybrid court’ is not politically feasible in Sri Lanka. Addressing a gathering of lawyers in Colombo, the Premier made these remarks in obvious reference to the ongoing calls for a judicial mechanism with the participation of international judicial personnel to hear human rights cases from the last phases of the war.
“We will have to find a feasible alternative to it. How do we fulfill the expectation of the international community? Let’s get together and think of a feasible alternative to hybrid courts,” he said.
Wickremesinghe further said that Sri Lanka’s court system is older than its political system and can, therefore, be trusted.
“We had courts under the Dutch. The first members of the legislative council were all lawyers. People had faith in the legal system. Sri Lanka’s judicial system is one of the oldest in Asia,” he said.
Wickremesinghe also noted that the country’s laws are in compliance with international human rights standards, and added that changes will be made where there is need for improvement.
The Government and the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), a powerful Tamil diaspora group based in London, are to work together to address the Tamil issue.
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera had talks with the President of the Global Tamil Forum Father S. J. Emmanuel in Geneva last week.
Father Emmanuel said he met Samaraweera and a Sri Lankan delegation for about 45 minutes behind closed doors.
“In all my meetings I have openly said that I do it as an act of critical and constructive collaboration by a moderate diaspora organisation and from me as one of the oldest victims and witnesses of this conflict right from June 1956. Hence our exchanges are about helping one another,” he said.
Father Emmanuel also said that while expressing some dissatisfaction and disappointment at the ongoing accountability process, he will not lose hope and will remain on the path of truth and justice with the help of the UNHRC. (Colombo Gazette)
