Sri Lanka hits out at UN’S Petrie report

Sri Lanka yesterday questioned the “Report of the Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on UN action in Sri Lanka” or the “Petrie Report and asked how it was leaked to the media.

The External Affairs Ministry criticised the sections of the report that had been blacked out and

the accusations

EAM criticised the sections carrying accusations against Sri Lanka

made against the Sri Lankan government.

“The Ministry’s attention has been drawn to certain issues with regard to allegations directed at the Sri Lankan Government. These are regrettably unsubstantiated, erroneous and replete with conjecture and bias,” the EAF said in a statement.

The report was leaked to the media the day prior to its formal handover to the Secretary General on November 14, and officially made public the same day. The Report is an internal review of the UN’s action in Sri Lanka during the last stages of the conflict. The ministry, through its Permanent Mission in New York protested to

While noting that both these reports are internal advisories to the UN, it is disconcerting that the Darusman Report came into the public domain initially through a leak and in this instance the Petrie Report

the Office of the Secretary General about the report on the date it was released.

“While noting that both these reports are internal advisories to the UN, it is disconcerting that the Darusman Report came into the public domain initially through a leak and in this instance the Petrie Report. The unacceptable procedure of leaking has been resorted to establish a disturbing pattern which brings into question the bona fides of the authorship of the document and its underlying motivation,” the statement said.

It expressed disdain towards the, “exaggerated civilian casualty figure during the last stages of the terrorist conflict, the allegation of Government shelling into civilian concentrations, the allegation relating to the Government deliberately restricting food and medicine to the North and the repeated characterisation of the welfare villages without any basis as military-run internment camps.

The EAM accused the report of making, “scant reference to the long series of nego- tiations engaged in by successive Governments to arrive at a peaceful settlement, while all those efforts and brief periods of ceasefire were used by the LTTE to regroup and rearm and to be subsequently unilaterally violated”.

“The Report appears to be another attempt at castigating Sri Lanka for militarily defeating a ruthless terrorist group which has held the very people it claimed to represent as human shields. The basis

The unacceptable procedure of leaking has been resorted to establish a disturbing pattern which brings into question the bona fides of the authorship of the document and its underlying motivation

for blacking out sections of the Petrie Report is unclear and it is left to the GoSL to surmise that references which may serve positively are those which have been censored,” the statement said.

It called on the UN for equal treatment of member states.

“We remind the authors of the report that they must act within their given mandate and the Charter, and be equal and fair in their dealings with all member states. A report of this nature could serve to dangerously have the statistics and unsubstantiated information acquire a life of their own,” the statement said.