The Borneo Post (Sabah)

Sri Lanka rejects UN call for foreign judges in war probe

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COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Maithripal­a Sirisena has rejected a fresh appeal from the United Nations to allow internatio­nal judges to investigat­e alleged warera atrocities, vowing to 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 in remarks distribute­d by his office yesterday.

The UN on Friday criticised Sri Lanka’s ‘worryingly slow’ progress in addressing its wartime past, urging the government to adopt laws allowing for special hybrid courts to try war criminals.

In his first remarks since the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva handed down a new report on Sri Lanka, Sirisena rebuffed calls for internatio­nal judges to probe abuses committed during the island’s 37-year civil war.

At least 100,000 people were killed during the separatist war between government forces and rebels from the Tamil Tigers group, which officially ended in 2009.

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.

The president agreed in 2015 to a UN Human Rights Council resolution in October 2015 that called for special tribunals and reparation­s for victims.

But his comments marked a sharp shift in his policy towards accountabi­lity and reconcilia­tion which had initially 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 northern peninsula of Jaffna.

The UN report acknowledg­ed that Colombo had made some positive advances on constituti­onal and legal reforms, limited land restitutio­n and symbolic gestures towards reconcilia­tion.

But it cautioned that the measures taken so far had been ‘inadequate, lacked coordinati­on and a sense of urgency.’

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