Facebook icon
Twitter icon
e-mail icon

Tamils ‘very concerned’ about progress on accountability and justice acknowledges US ambassador nominee

The nominee for the next US ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina Teplitz acknowledged that “the Tamil community is very concerned about progress made towards reconciliation, accountability, justice,” in her testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last month.

Responding to questions posed by the committee on the “reconciliation prospects between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities”, Ms Teplitz said, “there remain significant differences”.

The Tamil community is very concerned about progress made towards reconciliation, accountability, justice, specifically commitments made by the current government to the international community in that regard,” she stated.

“The government has established an office of missing persons, office of reparations was just gazetted; and we hope that this progress will continue at pace. However, I don’t think that is fully satisfactory to a community that is looking for constitutional reform and some political solutions to this in addition to efforts to address the past.

She went on to add that she was “committed to helping the government to achieve their commitments to the people of Sri Lanka, but also to helping address openly and transparently the hard issues in the room which are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious strife”.

Senator James Risch told Ms Teplitz that the “ethnic strife in Sri Lanka is just stunning,” adding that it is about as obvious as anywhere in the world and really acts as a story for humanity about conflict between ethnicities”.

When questioned on US-Sri Lankan military relations, Ms Teplitz acknowledged that the United States was “slowly renewing relationship on a mil-to-mil level”.

As you know in the aftermath of the conflict we’ve been very concerned about gross violations of human rights and progress made to address those atrocities,” she said. “Engagement is going very gradually and in proportion to progress on reforms in this area.  Overall scope remains modest; but we have engaged in military exchange, have some limited engagement with discreet, carefully vetted units and individuals around maritime security. And we hope to build on those areas, again commensurate with progress and the limits established by congress, to strengthen our military relationship in order to address broader issues of national security of the region around maritime domain awareness and transnational crime.”

See video footage of her testimony and answers to questions here.

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

For more ways to donate visit https://donate.tamilguardian.com.