HR campaigners want Canberra to investigate Sri Lanka war crime allegations

PM with Mark Colvin | ABC
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Efforts by human rights groups to get the Australian Federal Police to conduct a war crimes investigation into Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Australia could cause a diplomatic row at next week's Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth.

The push has already prompted calls by the International Commission of Jurists for Sri Lanka to be sanctioned at the meeting.

In Canberra, the opposition has been demanding to know whether the Government knew of allegations against the former navy second in charge, retired Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, before it accepted him as high commissioner.

Rights campaigners have revealed to PM that they began preparing a legal submission to the Federal Police only after it became clear that both Sri Lanka's government and the United Nations were not going to proceed with an investigation into claims of war crimes in the final stages of Sri Lanka's civil war.

Peter Lloyd reports.

PETER LLOYD: Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa has never accepted the right of the United Nations to investigate the end of the civil war. He refused to let a UN panel speak to ministers or officials.

Back in May when the UN report was made public, the Rajapaksa regime called the document fundamentally flawed and patently biased.

The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon said he had no power to launch a fully-fledged war crimes investigation unless the Sri Lankans agree to it. So in the absence of action, the International Commission of Jurists stepped in.

It prepared a submission to the Federal Police, among other agencies, that sets out a case for Australia to investigate war crimes.

Media reports named the Sri Lankan high commissioner, Thisara Samarasinghe as a former top navy commander and possible prosecution target.

But John Dowd, the head of the Australian section of the ICJ, declined to name names when he spoke to PM.

JOHN DOWD: Well, we're not talking about the contents of the submission, that's material we furnished to the Australian Federal Police, asking them to carry out an investigation or to continue investigations they've already begun. That's a matter for them and it's our duty to provide them with the information and to assist them in their task.

PETER LLOYD: What's the motivation behind it?

JOHN DOWD: We've been collecting evidence for over a year of war crimes within Sri Lanka. There has not been an independent war crimes tribunal set up; there've been egregious breaches of war crimes legislation, humanitarian, human rights law and nothing's happened thus far.

And we therefore have to go to the Australian Federal Police who are the people tasked, under Australian law, with looking at international war crimes.

PETER LLOYD: The United Nations report on the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka found credible allegations of war crimes on both sides of the conflict.

It said heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan Government may have led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths, while Tamil Tiger separatists contributed to the carnage by using civilians as human shields.

This is an excerpt from that report.

VOICEOVER: The panel found credible allegations which if proven indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international law and international human rights law was committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

PETER LLOYD: The UN said Sri Lankan troops encouraged civilians to gather in three no-fire zones and then carried out large-scale shelling.

When the fighting stopped, the UN said, government troops carried out summary executions of former Tiger fighters.

Sri Lanka's current high commissioner to Canberra, Thisara Samarasinghe, was then the second in charge of the Sri Lanka’s navy.

THISARA SAMARASINGHE: Sri Lankan navy never targeted civilians and never shelled any location during the final stages.

PETER LLOYD: The high commissioner is emphatic in his denial that the navy fired on civilians.

THISARA SAMARASINGHE: I am totally denying any allegations, whoever it may be, that the Sri Lankan navy fired at civilians.

PETER LLOYD: Under questioning at Senate Estimates today, the federal police commissioner, Tony Negus, spoke for the first time about the submission his department received from the ICJ.

TONY NEGUS: It's quite a lengthy document; in fact it's almost a ream of paper, in the context of - to give you an idea of what size the document is.

They are complex legal areas and particularly where most of the evidence that can be obtained is usually offshore and we need to make sure that it is a reasonable chance of the matter progressing.

So there's a lot of factors for consideration before we actually take these matters forward to a prosecution sense.

PETER LLOYD: Commissioner Negus said the AFP had not been asked by government for its views on the appointment of Thisara Samarasinghe before he arrived in Australia.

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