"By requesting a report from a panel of experts and making it public, [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon has taken a crucial step towards justice for the thousands of civilians who suffered abuses by the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tigers during the war. "Ban should now follow the panel's advice and set up an independent international mechanism that will investigate alleged violations. It should name names and lay the groundwork for international prosecutions ." - Philippe Bolopion , Human Rights Watch’s UN Director. See his comments to The Independent here . "Sadly, the Sri Lankan...
This is what the United States' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Susan Rice said in response to the release of the UN Panel of Experts' Report on Sri Lanka: “The US welcomes [the] public release of the ... report. We appreciate the detailed and extensive work of the panel and believe it makes a valuable contribution to next steps that should be taken in support of justice, accountability, human rights, and reconciliation in Sri Lanka . “We commend the Secretary General for his decision to release the report publicly. “The United States has been at the forefront of efforts to...
"With the UN report practically confirming human rights violations and brutal repression that was earlier in the realm of speculation or dismissed as biased or partisan reportage, the Indian government should now move the UN to initiate necessary steps to bring Rajapaksa to stand trial for war crimes and genocide along with his generals, senior ministers and all others who were party to the brutal excesses ." "India should spearhead an international movement to put pressure on Sri Lanka to ensure that all people in that country are treated equally and are allowed to live a life of dignity. "...
“India should not subject itself again to be charged as supporting genocide by Sri Lanka .” - BJP national executive member L. Ganesan , on reports India is supportive of Sri Lanka's attack on the UN expert panel's report. See The Hindu’s news brief here . "I believe that [the] Indians were aware of the civilian casualties that were happening [in 2009], because they had pretty good intelligence inside [Sri Lanka's] siege zone. "If foreign governments knew what was going on this latter stage of the war and continued to supply arms, then I think it is a matter worthy of investigations in those...
The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon released on Monday the much anticipated report by the independent expert panel he appointed last year to look into war crimes and crimes against humanity during the final phase in 2009 of Sri Lanka's war. The full text of the report is available on the UN website here . The Secretary General's statement accompagnying the release of the report is found here . The release of the report comes despite Sri Lanka's strident objections, and Colombo's vituperative criticism of the report, its authors and the UN. In his statement, Mr. Ban said "The...
Reports on gender-based war crimes in Sri Lanka from Headlines Today, part of the India Today group: On April 22, 2011: ‘ Evidence of warcrimes in Sri Lanka ’ On December 2, 2010: ‘ Sri Lanka war crimes ’ On January 25, 2010: ‘ War crimes return to haunt Sri lanka ’
“The publication of this report will cause irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka. It will damage the UN system too.” - G. L. Peiris , Sri Lanka’s foreign minister. “ To speak of an ongoing process of reconciliation in Sri Lanka that will be complicated by international and UN investigations or interest in the last stages of the war, and the crimes that seem to have been committed, is just nonsensical .” - Alan Keenan , International Crisis Group’s senior analyst on Sri Lanka. “The UN secretary-general believes that the panel has done a good and conscientious job and...
“The UN report says that the alleged crimes of both the warring parties and subsequent cover-up by the government constitutes ‘an assault on the entire system of international law and security’ . “By that, it means that should the government of Sri Lanka be allowed to get away with it, the system of international justice built on the back of the crimes in Rwanda and Bosnia is weakened. “Srebrenica recalls a painful and costly UN failure. In a month during which the UN swiftly forestalled potentially disastrous internal conflicts in Libya and Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka cannot be allowed to erode...
This is the English text of the Sri Lankan government-sponsored petition against the UN expert panel's report: “We Sri Lankans consisting of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities who enjoy the newly earned freedom, hereby strongly denounce the comments and relevant discussions made against the independence of our country by the UN’s Committee on war crimes allegations.” See TamilNet's report on the petition here . See Groundviews' comment, and photos, here . Muslim and Buddhist clergy sign a petition against the report on Sri Lanka’s war crimes. Photo Nishan Priyantha/The Island
Based on leaked extracts, the UN expert panel’s report on Sri Lanka constitutes a watershed moment in international understanding of the crimes committed in the closing phase of the war in Sri Lanka. Crucially, although the word does not appear in the extracts, the report’s contents well supports the charge that Sri Lanka engaged in genocide of the Tamils. The report lays out in detail the calculated, deliberate and systematic targeting of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces, operating under the direct command of the country’s top political leadership. The former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, has aptly termed the publishing of the UN experts’ report as a ‘Srebrenica’ moment for Sri Lanka and indeed for the world. The analogy is correct on many counts. Firstly, it was in relation to Srebrenica that the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) most clearly formulated the principle that part destruction – specifically, a geographically contained (i.e a small territory) destruction - of an ethnic or national group constituted genocide.