{"id":47874,"date":"2015-09-16T21:38:41","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T03:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47874"},"modified":"2015-09-15T14:57:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T21:57:14","slug":"tamil-protesters-call-for-sri-lankan-president-maithripala-sirisena-to-be-tried-for-war-crimes-and-genocide-committed-during-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/09\/16\/tamil-protesters-call-for-sri-lankan-president-maithripala-sirisena-to-be-tried-for-war-crimes-and-genocide-committed-during-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil protesters call for Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to be tried for war crimes and genocide committed during civil war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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QADIJAH IRSHAD<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Courtesy The Independent (UK)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

On the eve of a delayed UN report into the bitter conflict, Tamils are on the march calling for justice from the international community<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m looking for my daughter, my daughter-in law and two little grandchildren who disappeared during the war,\u201d says Sivaneswari, rubbing her arthritic legs as she rests after a five-day protest march across the northern tip of Sri Lanka. I have faith they are still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Like Sivaneswari, 63, most of the bedraggled Tamil protesters from Sri Lanka\u2019s biggest ethnic minority community, holding up photographs of their missing family members and placards calling for a war crimes investigation into the tiny island, are women. And six years after a three-decade war, they are old and they are tired.<\/p>\n

The duo leading the protest march are the wife of a missing\u201d Tamil Tiger terrorist chief who was responsible for hundreds of child soldier conscriptions and a cousin of the Tiger supremo Velupilla Prabhakaran who ran a ruthless terrorist organisation replete with suicide bombers. Now, they are ready for another kind of battle \u2013 they want the international community to try the island\u2019s Sinhalese leadership for war crimes.<\/p>\n

Maithripala Sirisena is a war criminal,\u201d says Mahalingam Shivajilingam, a provincial council member and a cousin of Prabhakaran, referring to the current President. And we demand that he be tried for war crimes and genocide against the Tamil people of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MaithripalaMaithripala Sirisena, the Sri Lankan President, served as Defence Minister at the end of the civil war (Getty)<\/span><\/span>
\nAllegations against Mr Sirisena are spurred by the fact that he served as Acting Defence Minister under the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa during the last two weeks of the war, where, according to the United Nations, more than 40,000 Tamils were killed. Sparing no one, Ms Shivajilingam accuses the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mr Rajapaksa, his brother the former Defence Secretary Gotabhya Rajapaksa and the field marshal, Sarath Fonseka, who commanded the military during the final war years, of also being war criminals.<\/p>\n

The protest in the former northern war zone is timed to coincide with an ongoing United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) investigation in Geneva, where the head of the organisation Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al-Hussein will release a delayed report on Sri Lanka\u2019s war crimes tomorrow. The report addresses alleged extra-judicial killings, rape of Tamils and bombing civilian no fire zones\u201d by the Sri Lankan military. Addressing a session in Geneva, Mr Al Hussein said that the report\u2019s findings are of the most serious nature\u201d.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: TAMIL LEADS SRI LANKA OPPOSITION FOR FIRST TIME IN 32 YEARS<\/a>
\nFOUR SOLDIERS HELD IN CONNECTION WITH MISSING JOURNALIST<\/a>
\nEX-TAMIL FIGHTERS BECOME POLITICIANS AS QUEST FOR SELF-RULE GOES ON<\/a><\/h5>\n

Mr Rajapaksa has refused to comment until the release of the report. Mangala Samaraweera, the Foreign Minister, told the human rights commission that Colombo will set up a truth and reconciliation commission modelled on post-apartheid South Africa to look into atrocities committed during the final phase of the war. But the Tamils call any effort of an internal investigation an eyewash\u201d.<\/p>\n

You cannot compare South Africa with us,\u201d says Ananthi Shashitharan, the wife of the eastern Tiger chief who, she says, disappeared after surrendering to government troops. We are not ready to trust any Sinhala government,\u201d adds Manmohini, another woman with missing children. We want justice for the ethnic cleansing that happened to us Tamils. For the 2009 and 1983 riots.\u201d<\/p>\n

World News in Pictures<\/a><\/div>\n

The mistrust between the two communities goes beyond to the riots in 1983, when a faction of the majority Sinhalese killed more than 3,000 innocent Tamil civilians across the country. While the Government watched, Sinhalese rioters dragged out and shot, clubbed and stabbed Tamil men and women, burnt their homes and set aflame vehicles with entire families inside. The Tamils have always felt marginalised.<\/p>\n

Tamil qualms go beyond the Government too. They blame the West, particularly the United States and the UN, for watching while genocide was committed during the final phase of the war\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are angry with the international community,\u201d says Ms Shashitharan. All of them, with their fancy satellite technology watched while we died by the thousands and now the US is backing out on its promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The broken promise of the United States that the Tamils refer to has been America\u2019s recent change of heart towards Sri Lanka following the new pro-West Government that came into power in January. After sponsoring and pushing for an anti-Sri Lankan resolution that called for an international investigation into the country\u2019s war crimes, the US recently said it would adopt a collaborative approach\u201d where Sri Lanka would be allowed to conduct a domestic investigation.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t believe in domestic inquiries. We\u2019ve been cheated by America,\u201d says Rahumalar Thiruchchelvan, 52, a Tamil woman who joined the walk in protest against a probable softer UN report. A change of presidents and governments doesn\u2019t wipe out our losses,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

QADIJAH IRSHAD\u00a0Courtesy The Independent (UK) On the eve of a delayed UN report into the bitter conflict, Tamils are on the march calling for justice from the international community I\u2019m looking for my daughter, my daughter-in law and two little grandchildren who disappeared during the war,\u201d says Sivaneswari, rubbing her arthritic legs as she rests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}