Ger­many, Switz­er­land and Vat­i­can grant di­plo­mat­ic pro­tec­tion to al­leged war crim­i­nal

The Eu­ro­pean Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tio­n­al and Hu­man Rights
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The Eu­ro­pean Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tio­n­al and Hu­man Rights (ECCHR) has yester­day (03) pub­lished a new dossi­er which sub­s­tan­ti­ates al­le­ga­tions of war crimes com­mitt­ed by the 57 Di­vi­sion of the Sri Lankan Army un­der the com­mand of Ja­gath Dias. Ja­gath Dias was Ma­jor Gen­er­al of the Sri Lankan Army dur­ing the fi­nal of­fen­sive against the re­bel group Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in 2009. Ac­cord­ing to a re­cent re­port by the Unit­ed Na­tions, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40.000 civilians died ac­cord­ing dur­ing this phase of the con­flict. Since Septem­ber 2009, Dias has been an ac­credit­ed di­plo­mat in the Sri Lankan em­bassy in Ber­lin for Ger­many, Switz­er­land and Vat­i­can.

In Jan­uary 2011, ECCHR pre­sent­ed the de­tailed dossi­er to the Ger­man Fed­er­al For­eign Of­fice, and then joint­ly with the So­ci­e­ty for Threat­ened Peo­ples and TRIAL to the Swiss Fed­er­al De­part­ment of For­eign Af­fairs and fi­nal­ly to the Vat­i­can in April 2011. On each oc­ca­sion, ECCHR and its part­n­er or­gani­za­tions urged the coun­tries to with­draw the di­plo­mat­ic visa of Ja­gath Dias and to de­clare him as a per­so­na non gra­ta. Meet­ings to dis­cuss this mat­ter were pro­posed; but to date none have tak­en place. In spite of the grave al­le­ga­tions of war crimes faced by Ja­gath Dias at the time of his ac­cred­i­ta­tion in 2009, he was is­sued di­plo­mat­ic visas by the Ger­man, Swiss and Vat­i­can gov­ern­ments.

The now-re­leased ECCHR-Dossi­er de­tails nu­mer­ous crimes com­mitt­ed by the 57 Di­vi­sion, fo­cus­ing in par­tic­u­lar on the tar­get­ed shelling of the civilian pop­u­la­tion in no-fire zones, hos­pi­tals, hu­mani­tarian ob­jects and re­li­gious sites. The re­search is based on of­fi­cial Sri Lankan gov­ern­ment sources, nu­mer­ous wit­ness state­ments and re­ports by in­ter­na­tio­n­al NGOs. How­ev­er, no genuine in­vesti­ga­tions have been ini­ti­at­ed. Just last week, a UN pan­el of ex­perts echoed two years of de­mands by in­ter­na­tio­n­al NGOs and called for in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tio­n­al in­vesti­ga­tions. ECCHR has sup­port­ed the UN pan­el by pro­vid­ing wit­ness state­ments, a sub­mis­sion on sex­u­al vi­o­lence in armed con­flicts and a study on crim­i­nal ac­count­a­bil­i­ty in Sri Lan­ka.

© ECCHR