The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday said that it is confident of support from China, Russia and India for a domestic inquiry to investigate crimes detailed by the UN in the OHCHR Investigation into Sri Lanka (OISL), despite the OISL recommending a hybrid special court to be established with significant international involvement.
"The resolution to be brought tomorrow will be for a domestic mechanism. We have the support coming from China, Russia and India they all agree for the local mechanism," Sri Lanka's cabinet spokesperson, Rajitha Senaratne was quoted by PTI as saying the night before a resolution on a criminal investigation is tabled before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Speaking in parliament earlier that day, the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the government aims to “establish an independent, trustworthy and enforcing local mechanism to investigate, maintain justice and equity, and to compensate, making sure that such unpleasant incidents will never happen again".
Releasing the OISL report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed that “a purely domestic procedure will not succeed in overcoming decades of broken promises… it is an inescapable reality that Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system is not ready to handle these types of crimes.” See more here.
A domestic inquiry has been widely rejected by international NGOs, Tamil diaspora groups and Tamil victims in the North-East and across the world.
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