Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa said it was the duty of the government to look after “the interests of our war heroes” in a statement criticising the response to a UN Human Rights Council resolution passed last week.

A Sri Lankan navy officer and former police constable have been taken into custody over the murder of Tamil National Alliance MP Nadaraja Raviraj in 2006, reports The Sunday Leader.

A Navy Petty Officer identified as Senevi and a former police constable named Manamperi were reportedly arrested by Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID), accused of carrying out the assassination.

The Sunday Leader also reported that the weapon used to gun down the parliamentarian, was reportedly given to paramilitary leader Pillaiyan by Sri Lankan Colonel Shammi Karunaratne, who is currently being detained over the disappearance of journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda.

Canadian Tamil Congress welcoming the UNHRC resolution on the findings of the UN report into Sri Lanka’s atrocities noted that “a significant” amount of work still remained to be done to “earn the trust and support of the Tamil community.”

“While CTC acknowledges that this resolution is an important step in the right direction, we know there remains significant work to be done to ensure that the ensuing processes earn the trust and support of Tamil victims and war-affected communities.”

CTC went on to call for any accountability mechanism to involve international judges, investigators and prosecutors whilst highlighting the need for full consultation fo victims and confidence building measures.

The JVP says the UNHRC's resolution, calling on Sri Lanka to implement a credible justice mechanism to account for mass atrocities, poses some dangers to the country.

The party's secretary general, Tilvin Silva, said to reporters that several of the proposals in the resolution, including the call for international involvement cannot be accepted and could be a tactic by the West and the US to interfere in Sri Lanka.

The government's claim that the resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday called for a domestic justice mechanism was a "big lie", the National Freedom Front's leader Wimal Weerawansa said.

The MP pointed out that the resolution contained a proposal for setting up a hybrid court.

“Even though the word ‘hybrid’ has been removed in the adopted resolution, the mechanism proposed remains the same. Participation of foreign experts including investigators and judges has clearly been mentioned in the resolution. It is better to describe it as a foreign judiciary than to say a domestic mechanism,” Mr. Weerawansa said.

He stated that foreign experts were expected to arrive in the country to question the heads of the security forces and to punish those who were responsible for giving orders during the armed conflict.

The resolution on Sri Lanka, passed at the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, "falls short" of ensuring the international justice mechanism long demanded by Tamils, the advocacy group PEARL said in a press release on Friday.

Welcoming the OISL report, the US-based organisation said the recommendations, highlighting Sri Lanka's inability to conduct a credible inquiry on its own, were not heeded in the drafting of the resolution.

"Despite the robust investigation conducted by the High Commissioner’s office and detailed recommendations which emphasize Sri Lanka’s inability to conduct a credible domestic inquiry, Resolution A/HRC/30/L29, passed yesterday by the UN Human Rights Council, falls short of ensuring an international accountability mechanism, consistently demanded by Tamil victims over the past 6 years," the statement said.

PEARL said Sri Lanka's past and current conduct demonstrated the lack of political will to implement a meaningful accountability mechanism, and called on the co-sponsors of the resolution, to ensure that said mechanism is satisfactory to all communities.

The United States Tamil Political Action Council (USTPAC) said it “joins in victims’ continuous and unequivocal calls for a strong international role in all transitional justice mechanisms” in Sri Lanka, in a statement released on Friday.

Stating that the UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka and the OISL report provides “a way forward,” the organisation said “immediate confidence-building measures are also necessary”. 

“These include repeal of the odious Prevention of Terrorism Act, a review and strengthening of the Witness and Victim Protection Act and the urgent demilitarization of the North and East,” said Dr Karunyan Arulanantham, president of USTPAC. “Sri Lanka should also seize this opportunity to work towards a political solution that guarantees non-recurrence, with the help of the United States and India,” he added.

Sri Lanka’s finance minister pledged that “there will be no questions asked” on undeclared funds kept in Swiss bank accounts, as he appealed to Sri Lankan citizens to transfer cash back into the country.

With Sri Lanka having faced a fall in official reserves, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, appealed to those who have kept cash abroad to bring funds back to the island in order to shore up reserves.

“We can offer a considerable interest rate,” said Mr Karunanayake. “We will ask no questions. In fact we will provide measures to make them feel safer.”

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe claimed to have saved former president Mahinda Rajapaksa from going to the electric chair and averted an international probe into violations of international humanitarian law.

Speaking at a ceremony organized by the National Movement for Peace in Colombo on Friday, Mr Wickremesinghe said:

"I saved Mahinda Rajapaksa from the electric chair as well as avoiding an international inquiry.”

"The present leadership was able to rescue the country by removing Sri Lanka from the agenda,” he added. “It was the former President who promised UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and USA to allow an international probe into alleged war crimes".

Mr Wickremesinghe also said his government had managed to change the view that Sri Lankan security forces had committed human rights violations.

"We have changed this and have been able to tell that the LTTE was responsible for human rights violation,” he told the audience. “We did not betray our Armed Forces.”