Sri Lanka has rejected the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, made by an Australian NGO on Wednesday.
The International Crimes Evidence Project accused the Sri Lankan government of “crimes against humanity of persecution”, which could constitute of genocidal acts, and called for a international inquiry into the allegations.
But Sri Lankan military spokesperson Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya slammed the allegations as a ploy to mislead member countries at the UN Human Rights Council.
Wanigasuriya said that the report contained nothing that the “LTTE diaspora” has not been saying for the past few years, and that the military would not hesitate to take action against any of its members if credible evidence is presented.
"Discipline in the military is maintained at the highest level. We are the first to take action against army personnel or officers, if there are allegations of human rights violations at the hands of the Sri Lanka forces," he said, according to the Daily News.
Speaking to Reuters, the Brigadier also dismissed the claims the military exhumed bodies from mass graves and destroyed them.
"Do you think we could have unearthed skeletal remains which are in the villages where people are also resettled now and destroy the evidence?"
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Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Australia and war crimes suspect, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, also rejected the claims, to Australian media.
"Sri Lankan government did not, I repeat, did not (and) I speak with authority because I was a military commander at that time commanding the Navy, did not resort to genocide, did not resort to crimes against humanity. Yes we fought a brutal conflict because civilians were involved there could have been unfortunate, some victims but never, ever they were targeted as a system, so these are absolutely false allegations."
Samarasinghe also claimed that some people had been found guilty and punished after the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission held inquiries into accusations.
"We had an internal conflict. We fought that internally. It's an internal matter. It has nothing to do with the rest of the world and we have investigated internally. (The) Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission has been held by a lot of people and we are finding certain wrongdoings and we are going to investigate and punish them. Already there have been some punishments already delivered to some of the people who were found guilty. So Sri Lanka is a democratic country. There is a rule of law applies. There is a judiciary working and why should another country put pressure on Sri Lanka for an international investigation?"