“I don’t believe merely having the President changed at the top is going to solve anything. But merely removing the individual at the top, without the prospective new President having concrete proposals to solve the Tamil national question, is not going to be a ‘Regime Change’ but merely a ‘Personality Change.’ Such an exercise is going to be irrelevant to the Tamils.”

“So far we are yet to see all the prospective common opposition candidates saying anything on the ethnic question and what they see as a solution,”

Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law and Co-Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law has called on the United States to prosecute Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for war crimes, highlighting various laws that the administration may be able to pursue charges against the Sri Lankan Defence Secretary.

Writing in Just Security this week, Goodman stated that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a US citizen, could face charges under the War Crimes Act of 1996, as well as coming under investigation from other agencies for immigration fraud and possible tax evasion.

Goodman added that the Justice Department could also consider pursuing civil liability, for charges such as “torture committed by a US citizen abroad of foreign nationals” and witness tampering.

His piece is the second in a series arising out of a presentation he made to a US Congressional briefing earlier this year.

See his full opinion piece here.