{"id":48884,"date":"2015-10-24T10:22:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T17:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=48884"},"modified":"2015-10-24T10:22:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-24T17:22:36","slug":"sir-desmonds-opinion-prof-peiris-alleges-attempt-to-confuse-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/10\/24\/sir-desmonds-opinion-prof-peiris-alleges-attempt-to-confuse-public\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Desmond\u2019s opinion: Prof. Peiris alleges attempt to confuse public"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Former External Affairs Minister, Prof. G. L. Peiris yesterday alleged that an attempt was being made to confuse the public regarding an opinion expressed by Sir Desmond de Silva on the issue of wartime accountability.<\/p>\n

\"article_image\"<\/p>\n

Prof. Peiris said: “There is an opinion by Sir Desmond de Silva, QC which was submitted to the Commission on Missing Persons. This is an opinion which was published in the Oct 18 issue of The Island.<\/p>\n

This opinion is exceedingly useful for the purpose of establishing that no form of criminal liability can be imposed on armed forces of Sri Lanka for any action by them during the closing stages of the war.<\/p>\n

The gist of this opinion is that the armed forces acted entirely within the parameters of established principles of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.<\/p>\n

Sir Desmond de Silva specifically concludes: \u2018It is my opinion that a war crime cannot be ascribed to the government\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sir Desmond in his legal opinion refers to the context in which the armed forces were compelled to take action. He says \u2018it was occasioned in the process of the security forces fighting to overwhelm and defeat the LTTE who had taken hostages in such large numbers that this may well be considered to be one of the largest hostage takings in history. The stakes were colossal, considering that the hostages were being murdered if they tried to escape. The end result of saving some 290,000 hostage lives and the defeat of the ruthless LTTE were legitimate military and humanitarian objectives”.<\/p>\n

Sir Desmond goes on to state that the action by the armed forces \u2018wholly consistent with the humanitarian imperatives that prevailed at that grim time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Prof. Peiris: “We are totally at a loss to understand why this material which is obviously of the greatest value in protecting the country\u2019s armed forces is being suppressed by the government. It should receive the widest possible exposure. Sir Desmond\u2019s opinion contains a wealth of legal considerations which rule out any blame or culpability on the part of our security forces. This should have been placed fairly and squarely before the UNHRC and the member states.<\/p>\n

Far from conceding any criminal responsibility involving the armed forces and talking of measures to ensure \u2018non-recurrence\u2019, the government should have taken it upon itself to demonstrate before the bar of world opinion that our armed forces acted as they should have done in a manner entirely permitted by international law to rid this country of terrorism\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island Former External Affairs Minister, Prof. G. L. Peiris yesterday alleged that an attempt was being made to confuse the public regarding an opinion expressed by Sir Desmond de Silva on the issue of wartime accountability. Prof. Peiris said: “There is an opinion by Sir Desmond de Silva, QC which was submitted to […]<\/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-48884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48884","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=48884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}