SRI LANKA TO REVIEW ‘RESOLUTION 30/1’

FOREIGN MINISTER DINESH GUNAWARDENA LIKELY TO HOLD TALKS WITH UNHRC IN COMING WEEKS PRESIDENT GOTABAYA RAJAPAKSA WILL NOT ALLOW FOREIGN JUDGES TO CONDUCT ANY PROBES

Sri Lanka’s new interim Cabinet headed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will look at making a fresh presentation to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which will lay down all the facts and figures of the atrocities committed by the LTTE during the 30- year- civil conflict, President’s spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella told Daily Mirror.

Mr.rambukwella said the new Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena was likely to hold talks with the UNHRC, in the coming weeks, once the new interim Cabinet settled in.

Rambukwella alleged that the UNHRC Resolution 30/1 which Sri Lanka co-sponsored in 2015 titled “Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka” had been solely submitted by former minister Mangala Samaraweera without the approval of the former Cabinet, Parliament or the advise of the AG’S Department, and that resolution would now be revisited.

“Before moving forward with anything, this government will revisit Resolution 30/1 as it was the work of only one single minister. Infact many clauses in this resolution is contradictory to the Sri Lankan Constitution,” he alleged.

With Sri Lanka being a sovereign nation, Rambukwella said that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not allow foreign judges to conduct any probes and the new government would request the UN and other countries to study the Sri Lankan civil war against the LTTE in its entirety and not only in its final stages.

“Within these 30 years of conflict, the LTTE committed so many atrocities such as deploying child- soldiers, murders, bombings etc. As such, one cannot only look at the final weeks and I stress here that there were no war crimes committed by our forces. The war has to be studied in whole,”

Rambukwella said.

“In 2015, the former government co-sponsored UNHRC Resolution 30/1 which, according to Amnesty International, commits the country to ‘establish a judicial mechanism with a special counsel to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, as applicable.” he said.

In 2017, Sri Lanka received a two-year extension to implement its own commitments and then at its 40th session, the UNHRC adopted a new resolution on 21 March 2019 which was cosponsored by the government of Sri Lanka, giving it a further two years to implement outstanding promises in full.