{"id":63945,"date":"2017-03-05T15:29:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T22:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=63945"},"modified":"2017-03-05T15:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T22:30:15","slug":"lanka-rejects-un-call-for-foreign-judges-in-war-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/05\/lanka-rejects-un-call-for-foreign-judges-in-war-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Lanka rejects UN call for foreign judges in war probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Gulf Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected a fresh appeal from the United Nations to allow international judges to investigate alleged war-era atrocities, vowing to not prosecute soldiers.<\/p>\n

I am not going to allow non-governmental organisations to dictate how to run my government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute my troops,\u201d the president said in remarks distributed by his office yesterday.<\/p>\n

The UN on Friday criticised Sri Lanka\u2019s worryingly slow\u201d progress in addressing its wartime past, urging the government to adopt laws allowing for special hybrid courts to try war criminals.<\/p>\n

In his first remarks since the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva handed down a new scorecard on Sri Lanka, Sirisena rebuffed calls for international judges to probe abuses committed during the island\u2019s 37-year civil war.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has resisted calls to establish a special court to investigate allegations that government forces killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of fighting, which ended in May 2009.<\/p>\n

Sirisena, a member of the majority Sinhalese community, received the support of the Tamil minority after promising accountability for excesses carried out by the largely Sinhalese military.<\/p>\n

He had agreed to a UN Human Rights Council resolution in October 2015 which called for special tribunals and reparations for victims and gave Sri Lanka 18 months to establish credible investigations.<\/p>\n

But the deadline lapsed without those commitments being met.<\/p>\n

The UN said coalition politics in the unity government Sirisena formed after ousting former strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse were likely to blame for the slow pace of progress.<\/p>\n

Last week the main Tamil political party accused Sirisena of failing to deliver on his promises, and urged the UN to hold his administration to account.
\nSirisena\u2019s response marks a sharp shift in his policy towards accountability and reconciliation, which had earned him the praise of international
\nobservers.<\/p>\n

A charge-sheet is now brought against our forces with a demand to include foreign judges to try them,\u201d he said in a speech to troops in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, the Tamil heartland.<\/p>\n

The defiant tone contrasted with his Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who asked the Human Rights Council for more time, promising that his country remained committed to seeking justice.<\/p>\n

At least 100,000 people were killed during the separatist war between government forces and rebels from the Tamil Tigers group, with atrocities recorded by both sides.<\/p>\n

In its report, the UN said abuses including torture remain widespread in the ethnically divided island nation of 21mn, with a prevailing culture of impunity\u201d partly to blame.<\/p>\n

The UN acknowledged that Colombo had made some positive advances on constitutional and legal reforms, limited land restitution and symbolic gestures
\ntowards reconciliation.<\/p>\n

But it cautioned that the measures taken so far had been inadequate, lacked co-ordination
\nand a sense of urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Gulf Times Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected a fresh appeal from the United Nations to allow international judges to investigate alleged war-era atrocities, vowing to not prosecute soldiers. I am not going to allow non-governmental organisations to dictate how to run my government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63945","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=63945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}