{"id":78358,"date":"2018-06-13T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T22:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=78358"},"modified":"2018-06-13T15:40:18","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T22:40:18","slug":"sri-lanka-moves-to-compensate-war-victims-after-years-of-delay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/06\/13\/sri-lanka-moves-to-compensate-war-victims-after-years-of-delay\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka moves to compensate war victims after years of delay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Daily Mail (UK)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\n

Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena is under pressure to address war-era abuses<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sri Lanka on Wednesday announced the first steps in a long-delayed process to compensate victims of the civil war, nearly a decade after the end of the conflict which claimed 100,000 lives.<\/p>\n

The government said it had approved draft legislation to set up an office of reparations, a key demand from international observers urging reconciliation in the ethnically divided nation.<\/p>\n

\"Sri<\/p>\n

The office would decide on potentially tens of thousands of compensation claims from those afflicted by fighting that ended in 2009 with the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.<\/p>\n

“It is proposed to give members of the office of reparations the right to decide on compensation where it is necessary,” said government spokesman and cabinet minister Rajitha Senaratne.<\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena has faced international criticism for the lack of progress towards reconciliation since his election three years ago.<\/p>\n

The United Nations Human Rights Council has led a chorus pressing Sirisena and his administration to take urgent steps towards addressing war-era abuses, including punishing soldiers and rebels accused of atrocities.<\/p>\n

After years of delay the government bowed to international pressure in March and established an office to trace the tens of thousands still missing since the end of the war.<\/p>\n

Sirisena’s pledge upon election in January 2015 to investigate the war and compensate its victims saw Sri Lanka narrowly avoid being slapped with international sanctions.<\/p>\n

The previous regime of strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse, who ruled with an iron fist and crushed Tamil separatist fighters in 2009, refused even to acknowledge war-era abuses.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan forces were accused of killing up to 40,000 Tamil civilians during the final months of the war when the Tigers’ quest for independence came to a bloody end.<\/p>\n

International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers.<\/p>\n

Sirisena has expressed willingness to investigate specific allegations of wrongdoing, but maintains he will allow only a domestic inquiry and oppose any foreign investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Daily Mail (UK) Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena is under pressure to address war-era abuses Sri Lanka on Wednesday announced the first steps in a long-delayed process to compensate victims of the civil war, nearly a decade after the end of the conflict which claimed 100,000 lives. The government said it had approved […]<\/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-78358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78358","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=78358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}