Sri Lanka "war crimes" is "Srebrenica moment"

Channel 4 News
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The former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka Gordon Weiss tells Channel 4 News that a leaked UN report into "credible allegations" of war crimes represent Sri Lanka's "Srebrenica moment".

A leaked United Nations report estimates that tens of thousands of civilians were killed during the fighting between Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE - known as the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The document cites "credible allegations" that government forces deliberately shelled civilians and repeatedly targeted hospitals. If proven, the allegations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Tamil Tigers are also heavily criticised by the three member panel, and stand accused of forcing civilians to remain in the conflict zone and using them as hostages and human shields.

Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Sri Lanka during the government's offensive against the LTTE in 2009, compared the war crimes claims to the infamous massacre of 7,000 men during the Bosnian war in 1995.

He told Channel 4 News: "This is Sri Lanka's Srebrenica moment, in fact it's a Srebrenica moment for the rest of the world."

The UN is also criticised in the reporting for failing "to take actions that might have protected civilians." The panel says casualty figures collected by the UN should have been made public at the time.

Releasing the figures "would have strengthened the call for the protection of civilians while those events ...were unfolding" the panel concludes.

But conditions for aid agencies and UN officials on the ground were difficult.

Weiss told Channel 4 News they were at the "hard edge of humanitarian work" and were prevented from reaching the area by the Sri Lankan government. There "no foreign observers there to observe what was happening", Weiss said.

Weiss, who left the UN to write a book on Sri Lanka's civil war said he was "part of that structure" and "I bare my portion of the responsibility and blame for that."

He said that culpability rested on a "a fairly narrow range of senior leaders in Sri Lanka".

The Sri Lankan government, who received a copy of the report, said they found the report "fundamentally flawed in many respects" and that it was based on biased material.

In a statement on their website the Sri Lankan government said that it will respond in due course.

Weiss said however that he thinks ultimately there will be a war crimes tribunal:

"I think it will be very difficult for any of the great powers to ignore now what went on in Sri Lanka.

"It may well have been swept under the carpet, but this panel report has reversed the tide and I think we will see action.

"I believe we will eventually see a war crime process."

The civil war, which lasted 26 years, officially finished in the summer of 2009 when the government forces pushed the LTTE forces into northern Sri Lanka and defeated them within an area designated the "no-fire zone".

Hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped in the fighting and it's estimated that between 20,000 to 40,000 were killed.

In August 2009 Channel 4 News received a video showing naked, bound men being executed with a shot to the back of the head by two men who appear to be Soldiers.

The Sri Lankan government said the video was a fake, but in January 2010, a UN investigation said the video "appeared authentic". Following pressure from human rights groups and western governments the UN setup a panel into the end of the war.

He said: "I believe any inquiry will be narrowing on the circle of people around the Rajapaska family in Sri Lanka, who were ultimately responsible for driving and steering the decisions over this offensive."

© Channel 4 News

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UN warns Sri Lanka to protect staff

AFP | Yahoo! News
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The United Nations on Monday warned the Sri Lankan government that it must protect UN staff, after the country's president called for protests against a UN war crimes report.

President Mahinda Rajapakse has called for this year's May Day rally to be turned into a "show of our strength" against international calls for a war crimes investigation.

"We have made it very, very clear to the government of Sri Lanka that we take it very seriously that they ensure the security and safety of UN staff in Sri Lanka," UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

"We have underscored that again and we want to make sure that regardless of what their positions are on the report that they abide by their obligations to the security of our staff," Haq told a press briefing.

The report by UN experts into alleged war crimes committed during the fight against Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in 2009, is to be officially released by the United Nations this week.

Details of the report were leaked to a Sri Lankan newspaper and published at the weekend. It says there were "credible" allegations that Sri Lanka committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its final 2009 offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels.

The government has already called the study "flawed" and "biased."

Haq said the details released by The Island, a pro-government newspaper, were accurate but an "incomplete" account.

"I do not know who leaked the report. It did leak to a Sri Lankan newspaper and it did leak shortly after we gave the report to the government of Sri Lanka but I do not know definitively who it was who turned this over," Haq said.

"Whenever we share a communication with a member state there is an understanding that it will not be leaked," he added.

The UN report said "tens of thousands" of people died between January and May 2009 in the final offensive that resulted in the defeat of the Tigers, ending a decades-old ethnic conflict which had claimed up to 100,000 lives.

The report said allegations of attacks against civilians demanded a serious investigation and the prosecution of those responsible.

© Yahoo! News

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Sri Lanka put on Security Council schedule

Photo courtesy: UN News & Media

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sits on the Panel of Experts' report on Sri Lanka, it was scheduled to be a topic in the UN Security Council's Monday afternoon meeting, Ban's top political official Lynn Pascoe told Inner City Press Monday at 3 pm.

Inner City Press asked Pascoe, “Are you one of the senior advisers studying the report among with Ban?”

“I'm always a senior adviser,” Pascoe quipped in reply. Later two Security Council members told Inner City Press that the topics known in advance to be coming up in the so-called “horizon briefing” by the UN Department of Political Affairs specifically included Sri Lanka, as well as Pascoe's trips to Qatar and Cairo.

During the final stage of the conflict in 2009, requests by then members Costa Rica and Mexico to take up Sri Lanka in the Security Council were blocked, by Russia, China and others. Non official Council meetings -- called informal interactive dialogues -- were held in the UN basement, to little avail.

Now in 2011 the Security Council itself has moved to the basement, and with the new “horizon briefing” format, Sri Lanka will come up in the Council. Some say, better late than never. But what will the Security Council do?

A Council member told Inner City Press that the leak of portions of the report -- which many attribute to the government of Sri Lanka itself -- may change how the matter is considered. But how?

Footnote: Sri Lankan officials have named Pascoe as being presenting at the meeting between Lankan Attorney General Mohan Peiris and Ban's three member panel, and as the one discussing the secrecy of that meeting.

© Inner City Press

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Rift over Sri Lanka president's call for anti-UN rally

BBC News
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Trade unions affiliated to Sri Lanka's ruling coalition are divided over the president's call for mass protests against a UN report.

The leaked summary of the report allege that war crimes were committed at the end of the civil war when the government troops crushed the rebels.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa said the claims were not new but called for a "show of strength" against the report.

But unions say the May Day protest should be reserved for workers' issues.

Responding to a leak of the reports in a Sri Lankan newspaper, Mr Rajapaksa told party officials May Day gatherings should be used to protest.

But trade unions affiliated to the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and Communist Party (CP) - both members of the ruling coalition - are angry about the president's call.

"The challenge for the workers at the moment is not the UN but the IMF," TMR Rasooldeen of Ceylon Workers Union affiliated to LSSP said.

He said the workers should focus on "IMF -sponsored" new pension scheme instead of "political issues" on May Day.

The union affiliated to president's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) said it will support Mr Rajapaksa's call.

The UN-appointed inquiry gathered evidence for 10 months and submitted its findings to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon several days ago.

"The panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations were committed [by both sides]," the report says, according to excerpts quoted by the Associated Press.

Sri Lanka's government, which also received a copy of the report, described it as "fundamentally flawed and patently biased."

Both sides were accused of atrocities in Sri Lanka's long conflict. The Tamil Tigers were fighting for an independent homeland for minority Tamils in the island's north and east.

The BBC has heard numerous allegations from Tamils that their relatives are missing, among them a number of senior rebel fighters.

© BBC News

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Rajapaksa calls for show of strength against U.N. report

PTI | The Hindu
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Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called for turning May Day worker rallies into a massive “show of strength” against a U.N. panel's report that allegedly holds the government responsible for war crimes during the offensive against the LTTE.

Mr. Rajapaksa, who departed this morning on an official visit to Bangladesh, said Sri Lankans needed to rally against the U.N. special panel's report and that the International Labour Day was the time to do so.

“The time has come to show our strength and this should not be confined to expressing worker solidarity but to demonstrate against injustice done to the country before the world,” said the President in a statement.

“I am prepared to face any punishment on behalf of the motherland with great honour,” the President was quoted as saying.

The statement was in response to the three-member U.N. panel's report that called for setting up an “independent international mechanism” to look into what it called “credible” allegations that Sri Lankan military committed war crimes in its final decisive offensive against Tamil Tigers.

Leaked

The panel, appointed by U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon submitted its report last week without making it public. But leaked excerpts were published here in the media. The report also seeks an acknowledgement of the government's role and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties.

The government has dismissed the report as flawed and biased. Senior Minister Maithripala Sirisena called on the public to unite to protest the U.N. panel report. “These forces were trying to discredit the president and soldiers in trying to make them answer for war crimes,” he said.

But, the main Tamil party lauded the recommendations of the report. Responding to the leaked contents, the Tamil National Alliance said they welcomed the recommendations made by the panel and trusts they will be “honestly implemented”. “The panel has recommended certain measures which as a whole, it hopes will serve as a framework for an ongoing and constructive engagement between the Secretary-General and the government of Sri Lanka on accountability,” said the statement.

© The Hindu

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Report finds Sri Lanka attacked civilians

By Lydia Polgreen | The New York Times
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A United Nations panel investigating allegations of war crimes by Sri Lankan troops at the end of the bloody battle against Tamil rebels in May 2009 found credible evidence that government soldiers made civilians a target, shelled hospitals and attacked aid workers, according to an unauthorized copy of the panel’s report.

“Tens of thousands lost their lives from January to May 2009, many of whom died anonymously in the carnage of the final few days,” the report said, significantly increasing the United Nations estimate for the civilian death toll in the last days of the war.

The long-awaited report, the result of an extensive investigation by Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney general, contradicted the government’s assertion that the war had been a humanitarian effort aimed at liberating civilians trapped with the Tamil Tigers in an ever shrinking corner of northern Sri Lanka.

“The government shelled on a large scale in three consecutive no-fire zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, even after indicating that it would cease the use of heavy weapons,” the report said, according to a leaked copy that was published over the weekend in The Island, a Sri Lankan newspaper. “Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling.”

In a statement, the government rejected the report as “fundamentally flawed” and based on “patently biased material, which is presented without any verification.”

The Sri Lankan government has come under harsh scrutiny for its handling of the war against the Tamil Tigers, a separatist rebel group that for decades sought to establish a Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island nation. The Tigers fought a vicious and bloody insurgency that pioneered brutal tactics like using female suicide bombers and forcibly conscripting children as soldiers.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, had pledged to end the war in his successful 2005 campaign. By May 2009, his troops had the Tigers pinned down in a remote corner of the northeast. The government refused to allow any civilian observers into the war zone, where hundreds of thousands of people were trapped between the rebels and government troops.

The government claimed it had a zero-tolerance policy for civilian casualties, but people who escaped the war zone told of indiscriminate shelling of civilians by the government. No one has been able to pinpoint the exact number killed because much of the area remains off limits to outsiders.

The Sri Lankan government has set up its own body to look into the last days of the war, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. The United Nations report said that the government panel was riddled with conflicts of interest and was not impartial, concluding that it “has not conducted genuine truth-seeking about what happened in the final stages of the armed conflict, not sought to investigate systematically and impartially the allegations of serious violations on both sides of the war.”

The United Nations report also said that the Tamil Tigers had committed war crimes. “Despite grave danger in the conflict zone, the L.T.T.E. refused civilians permission to leave, using them as hostages, at times even using their presence as a strategic human buffer between themselves and the advancing Sri Lanka Army,” it said, referring to the rebels’ formal name, the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam.

“From February 2009 onwards, the L.T.T.E. started point-blank shooting of civilians who attempted to escape the conflict zone, significantly adding to the death toll in the final stages of the war.”

© The New York Times

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