Several organisations of Sri Lankan Tamils living outside the country have expressed disappointment over India’s abstention at the U.N. Human Rights Council, where a U.S.-backed resolution was adopted on March 27.
“India’s history of moral leadership and courage, coupled with its unique cultural and intellectual affinity with Eelam Tamils, makes its abstention and vote against the operative paragraph establishing an investigation deeply disappointing,” said a joint statement put out on Sunday by the British Tamils Forum, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America, the Ilankai Tamil Sangam, the People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), the Solidarity Group for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, the United States Tamil Political Action Council and the World Tamil Organisation.
Welcoming the establishment of an international investigative mechanism to establish the facts and circumstances pertaining to “serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes” committed in Sri Lanka, they said they would have liked to see the resolution better reflect the survivors’ and victims’ narratives seeking justice, reparations and closure for the killing of “over 70,000 Tamils in just a few months in 2009 and determining the fate of 146,679 Tamils who remain unaccounted.”
