GENEVA (Reuters) – The UN human rights chief called yesterday for an international investigation to determine if Sri Lankan government forces and Tamil rebels had committed war crimes.
Ensuring accountability for abuses committed in the recent fighting was important for the island nation’s reconciliation, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said.
“An independent and credible international investigation should be dispatched to ascertain the occurrence, nature and scale of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as specific responsibilities,” she told a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Sri Lanka declared total victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a week ago after killing their leaders.
“Establishing the facts is crucial to set the record straight regarding the conduct of all parties in the conflict,” said Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge who spoke by teleconference from Doha. “Victims and the survivors have a right to justice and remedies.”
She said the Sri Lankan government had already indicated it may grant amnesty to lower and mid-level LTTE officers and only prosecute senior leaders.
“I would like to underscore that amnesties preventing accountability of individuals who may be responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity or gross violations of human rights are impermissible,” she said.
UN human rights investigators said that they continued to receive “disturbing reports of torture, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances” in Sri Lanka.
Human right activists were still being arrested and detained without charges, and “attempts to portray them as traitors or enemies of the state put their lives in peril,” they said in a statement read out to the Council.
It was clear that the Tamil separatists had violated international law by using civilians as human shields and in preventing them from leaving the conflict areas, the UN investigators said.
The government still detained in temporary camps more than 300,000 people who had fled the fighting, giving rise to “concerns of arbitrary detention”, they said. “We deplore that in the camps some have already died from starvation or malnutrition.”
Sri Lanka’s delegation was expected to defend its record at the special session, which continues on Wednesday. It is to consider separate draft resolutions submitted by Sri Lanka and its allies, and a Western text presented by European countries.
