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New Sri Lankan govt. eyes UN support for domestic probe

Saturday, 21 February 2015 5:57 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 21 February 2015 5:57 PM ]

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera (© AFP)

Sri Lanka seeks to gain the United Nations’ support for a domestic investigation into the alleged war crimes perpetrated under the administration of ex-president, Mahinda Rajapakse.

Mangala Samaraweera, the foreign minister of the Sri Lankan government that took office last month, will head to the Swiss city of Geneva in March to hold talks with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

A Sri Lankan official, who requested anonymity, said Samaraweera aims to brief Zeid al-Hussein on the measures that Colombo plans to take in the course of the investigation.

The UN has conducted an investigation of its own into the claims that about 40,000 Tamil civilians were massacred under Rajapakse’s rule in the last months of a bloody war, which lasted from 1983 and 2009.

Rajapakse had refused to cooperate with the international investigators in the probe back when he was in power.

The move by the new administration in Sri Lanka to carry out the domestic probe has prompted the UN to delay the publication of its report. The report, whose release had initially been scheduled for March, will now not be published before September.

The new Sri Lankan government has been taking action to enhance the human rights situation in the country by introducing reforms and opening up the political atmosphere in the country. It has already won parliamentary approval for a long-awaited witness protection law.

International and local rights groups, who have brought up charges against the ex-government for suppressing dissent, had demanded the law’s approval.

The newly-elected administration has also vowed to get parliament approval for a piece of legislation on the right to information.

The UN has estimated that at least 100,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka’s civil war. The last year of the war saw security forces declaring victory over the rebels, who fought for independence.

Tamils account for about 15 percent of the Sri Lanka’s population.

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