UN demands Sri Lanka withdraw officer from Mali peace mission

Sri Lanka’s military said it would recall its commander leading a UN peacekeeping contingent in Mali after the world body asked for him to be sent home because of his human rights record.

Military spokesman Sumith Atapattu said on Saturday that Sri Lanka would comply with the UN request even though it did not believe Col Kalana Amunupure was guilty of any human rights abuses from the final stages of the country’s 26year civil war.

The UN said on Friday that the request for Lt Col Amunupure to leave the troubled West African nation was made “based on recently received information”.

A story in The Guardian newspaper in July quoted a confidential report that claimed the Sri Lankan commander is alleged to have committed war crimes during the war, which ended in 2009. It said the report was produced by the South Africa based International Truth and Justice Project, and cited other Sri Lankans taking part in UN peacekeeping missions.

The Sri Lankan military called its mission to Mali “one more feather in its cap” when it sent the 200-strong detachment to serve in the UN peacekeeping operation last November.

Government soldiers and the Tamil Tiger rebels were accused of war crimes during nearly three decades of civil war. Tens of thousands of people were reported to have been killed in the final months of the fighting alone.

Sri Lanka faced years of criticism for dismissing calls by the UN and foreign governments for an independent inquiry into alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by both sides during the war.

The Tamil Tigers were designated a terrorist organisation after a wave of suicide bombings. The organisation was also accused of using child soldiers as well as killing political rivals.

The International Truth and Justice Project said in April that it sent the UN a confidential list of more than 50 names of Sri Lankan paramilitary police from a special task force.

The South African group said these people should be barred from taking part in UN missions because they were either alleged perpetrators or frontline combatants at the end of the war.

The Project said its investigators “now have the largest database of sworn testimony regarding the final war and its aftermath held outside Sri Lanka”.