Sri Lankan leader furious at UN ‘charge sheet’
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected a UN appeal to allow international judges to investigate alleged war-era atrocities, vowing it would not prosecute soldiers.
“I am not going to allow nongovernmental organisations to dictate how to run my government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute my troops,” the president said on Sunday.
These were his first remarks since the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva handed down a new scorecard on Sri Lanka.
On Friday, the UN criticised Sri Lanka’s “worryingly slow” progress in tackling its wartime past, urging the government to adopt laws allowing for hybrid courts to try war criminals.
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 in the island’s 37-year civil war, which ended in May 2009.
Sirisena, a member of the Sinhalese community, received the support of the Tamil minority after promising accountability for excesses carried out by the largely Sinhalese military.
He agreed to a UN Human Rights Council resolution in October 2015 that called for special tribunals and reparations for victims and gave Sri Lanka 18 months to establish credible investigations. But the deadline lapsed without those commitments being met.
The UN said coalition politics in the unity government Sirisena formed after ousting former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa were probably to blame for the slow pace of progress.
Last week, the main Tamil party accused Sirisena of failing to deliver on his promises and urged the UN to hold his government to account.
Sirisena’s response marks a sharp shift in his policy towards reconciliation, which had earned him the praise of international observers. “A charge sheet is now brought against our forces with a demand to include foreign judges to try them,” he said in a speech to troops in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna.
The defiant tone contrasted with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who asked the UN for more time, promising that his country remained committed to seeking justice.