{"id":55765,"date":"2016-06-19T22:01:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T04:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=55765"},"modified":"2016-06-19T15:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T22:00:51","slug":"gl-govt-in-a-soup-of-its-own-making-foreign-judges-in-accountability-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/19\/gl-govt-in-a-soup-of-its-own-making-foreign-judges-in-accountability-process\/","title":{"rendered":"GL: Govt. in a soup of its own making Foreign judges in accountability process:"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris yesterday said that the government found itself in the current predicament owing to its irresponsible action.<\/p>\n

Prof. Peiris said: “They have solemnly committed themselves to binding agreements at the Human Rights Council in Geneva without giving any thought to the consequences. The sequence of events is really unbelievable.<\/p>\n

“The resolution which the government of Sri Lanka co-sponsored in October last year states that \u2018it takes note with appreciation\u2019 of the report High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sri Lanka. We wonder whether the government studied this report at all.<\/p>\n

“The report states that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Sri Lankan security forces were implicated in unlawful killings carried out in widespread manner against civilians.”<\/p>\n

“The report further states that these are “longstanding practices of arbitrary arrests and detention by government security forces.”<\/p>\n

“The report states that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that Sri Lankan authorities have, in a widespread and systematic manner, deprived a considerable number of victims of their liberty and then refuse to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or concealed the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared persons.”<\/p>\n

“The report also states that there was “brutal use of torture by the Sri Lankan security forces.”<\/p>\n

Prof. Peiris said: “This is the report which the Sri Lankan government noted with appreciation and called upon all other nations to support.”<\/p>\n

The 47-member Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) unanimously adopted the resolution on Oct. 1, 2015.<\/p>\n

UNHRC will receive an oral report on Sri Lanka as regards the progress made since the passage of the resolution ten months ago.<\/p>\n

Responding to another query, Prof. Peiris said: “The resolution which is a Sri Lankan resolution because it was co-sponsored by Sri Lanka advocates to try war crimes through the setting up of a judicial mechanism with the participation of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers as well as authorized prosecutors and investigators.”<\/p>\n

Referring to repeated assurances given by President Maithripala Sisisena and Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe in respect of non-inclusion of foreign judges in the proposed war crimes court, Prof. Peiris said that he couldn\u2019t understand how the government now could feign ignorance of its own resolution and wanted the public to believe that the new administration advocated nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

Prof. Peiris pointed out that Jaffna District MP M.A. Sumanthiran on behalf of the TNA had reminded both the\u00a0government and the US of having reached an understanding in respect of foreign judges before the passage of the resolution. The former law professor said that the government hadn\u2019t disputed MP Sumanthiran\u2019s declaration made at a Congressional briefing on June 14. (SF)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island Former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris yesterday said that the government found itself in the current predicament owing to its irresponsible action. Prof. Peiris said: “They have solemnly committed themselves to binding agreements at the Human Rights Council in Geneva without giving any thought to the consequences. The sequence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55765","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=55765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}