{"id":86126,"date":"2019-03-06T13:46:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T20:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=86126"},"modified":"2019-03-06T13:47:11","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T20:47:11","slug":"sri-lanka-u-turns-on-war-crimes-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/03\/06\/sri-lanka-u-turns-on-war-crimes-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka U-turns on war crimes probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia<\/em><\/h2>\n
\n
Colombo, (AFP) \u2013 Sri Lanka\u2019s president went back Wednesday on pledges to the UN Human Rights Council to investigate war-time atrocities, saying he did not want to re-open old wounds\u201d.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Sri Lankan government troops were accused of killing at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians in the final months of the island\u2019s 37-year guerrilla war that ended in May 2009.<\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena said he will formally ask the United Nations rights body to reconsider a 2015 resolution which called for credible investigations into alleged atrocities.<\/p>\n

\"Sri<\/p>\n

It is a decade since we have established peace in this country,\u201d Sirisena told reporters at his official residence in Colombo. I want to tell them (the UN) not to pressure us.\u201d<\/p>\n

What I want to tell them is don\u2019t dig the past and re-open old wounds. Let us forget the past and ensure that we all live in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after coming to power in January 2015, Sirisena pledged to ensure accountability for war-time abuses.<\/p>\n

The UN has estimated that over 100,000 people were killed during the guerrilla war.<\/p>\n

Exactly two years ago, Sirisena bought two years from the UN rights body after a previous deadline ended without any progress in bringing war criminals to justice.<\/p>\n

A UN Human Rights Council resolution in October 2015 granted Sri Lanka 18 months to establish a credible investigation. The two-year extension expires this month with no results.<\/p>\n

Sirisena said he will send three of his senior party members to the UNHRC sessions in Geneva this month to plead on his behalf.<\/p>\n

I hope they (the UN) will respond positively,\u201d Sirisena said.<\/p>\n

Despite previous pledges to the UN, Sirisena has not set up any investigation.<\/p>\n

Top UN diplomats had expressed concern over worryingly slow\u201d progress by Colombo.<\/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

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

But it has also cautioned that the measures taken under Sirisena were inadequate, lacked coordination and a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia Colombo, (AFP) \u2013 Sri Lanka\u2019s president went back Wednesday on pledges to the UN Human Rights Council to investigate war-time atrocities, saying he did not want to re-open old wounds\u201d. Sri Lankan government troops were accused of killing at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians in the final months of the island\u2019s 37-year guerrilla […]<\/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-86126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86126","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=86126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}