April 20, 2011 09:50 am
Following allegations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan government, a top human rights expert has said that India needs to make public its position on the issue.
“India will have to take a public position,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, told PTI. Ganguly added that if India wanted to emerge as a leader on the global stage then the country’s leadership would have to show its intention of “protecting the rights of people over government.”
An independent panel of experts, which submitted its report to the UN, has found “credible allegations” of crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Sri Lankan government and the rebel Tamil Tigers.
The excerpts leaked to Sri Lanka’s ‘Island’ newspaper, said that “the panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
The Sri Lankan government has rejected the report as “fundamentally flawed” and “based on patently biased material, which is presented without any verification”.
