Sri Lanka has rejected U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay’s call for an international inquiry into the allegations of rights abuse and war crimes in the country, saying it has a “preconceived, politicised and prejudicial agenda.”
The government statement, released on Tuesday, comes in response to the latest report of Ms. Pillay, which has said national mechanisms have consistently failed to establish the truth and bring justice.
Apparently doubting the government’s intent of genuine reconciliation, she has said: “This can no longer be explained as a function of time or technical capacity, but it is fundamentally a question of political will.”
In what seemed an indication of Colombo’s strong resistance to international intervention — a U.S.-sponsored resolution, to be tabled in Geneva soon, is likely to call for an international probe — the government criticised her remarks as having scant or no regard for the country’s domestic processes. Ms. Pillay’s report reflected bias and was tantamount to an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
Ms. Pillay’s report — now made public — gets into details of allegations of war crimes, rights abuse, state repression of the media and attack on religious freedom, citing emerging evidence. The government has termed them baseless.
