Sri Lanka has sought the support of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations to ward off the U.S. sponsored rights resolution against it at the next U.N. Human Rights Council meet in Geneva.
The UNHRC is to vote a U.S. sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka which is widely expected to advocate an international probe into alleged war crimes in the country during the final phase of military battle with the LTTE which ended in 2009.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s human rights envoy Mahinda Samarasinghe had urged the NAM nations in the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council to stand in solidarity with the island, a government statement said on Friday.
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“What is happening in Sri Lanka today could happen to any other NAM country tomorrow,” Mr. Samarasinghe told in Geneva while addressing the Asia-Pacific regional group of member and observer states and the Latin American group.
At least 33 in the 47 member UNHRC are either NAM members or nations with observer states.
India was a leading NAM member who had voted in favour of the U.S. resolutions in 2012 and 2013 against Sri Lanka.
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In his brief to convince NAM nations, Mr. Samarasinghe had said that Sri Lanka had adequately cared for the welfare of some 3,00,000 people displaced by the conflict, rehabilitated some 12,000 ex-members of the LTTE in addition to resettlement of the rest.
“Despite such rapid progress within 5 years since the conflict ended, Sri Lanka has been unfairly singled out for drastic action,” he said. “The island has its own mechanisms to achieve reconciliation and has shown continued progress.”
The previous resolutions urged expeditious action from Colombo to achieve reconciliation with the Tamil minority through the implementation of Sri Lanka’s own reconciliation commission recommendations.