In his first public response to a U.N.report on alleged war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka, President Maithripala Sirisena on Friday said the change of government in January rescued the country from facing “strictures” from the international community.
Mr. Sirisena, flanked by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera, told a gathering of editors and heads of media groups at the President’s House here that there were indications that the international community would have insisted on the strictures.
Also, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Investigation on Sri Lanka would have named some people as perpetrators of human rights violations and barred them, he said.
Mr. Sirisena, who met UN Resident Coordinator Subinay Nandy on the eve of the report’s release, claimed that the “positive steps” taken by his government in the last eight months helped reverse the situation.
“The international community is satisfied with the actions taken by the government towards restoration of rights, media freedom, good governance and other positive steps,” he said, citing the adoption of the 19 Constitutional Amendment as one of the steps. The amendment envisages the dilution of many powers of Executive Presidency,
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said his government would inform the international community of its intention of setting up a domestic mechanism to look into the alleged violations during the civil war.
The Amnesty International South Asia research director, David Griffiths, asked the Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution supporting implementation of the OISL’s recommendations on accountability and reform and ensuring monitoring of the implementation.
The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, a New York-based body, commended the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, for rejecting the idea of a domestic mechanism.
