UN urged to review Sri Lankan civil war

Last year, a United Nations panel of experts found there was credible evidence that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the war. [Reuters]

Last Updated: 19 hours 20 minutes ago

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd says new information about atrocities against Sri Lankan civilians at the end of the civil war is appalling.

A new British television documentary has shown evidence of civilians being killed by government troops.

The 26-year war, which ended in 2009, was waged between Tamils seeking to create their own state and the Sri Lankan government and military.

Last year, a United Nations panel of experts found there was credible evidence that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the war.

Mr Rudd says the UN's Human Rights Council needs to reinvestigate the issue.

"I believe their deliberation on it was inadequate and I would call upon - as does the Australian Government through its mission in Geneva - the Human Rights Council to revisit this matter and to examine once again whether their original findings can any longer be regarded as well founded," he said.
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Sri Lankan situation: the truth must come out

4 July 2011  
                    

Sunili Govinnage 

 

Tonight, ABC's Four Corners will show Killing Fields, the UK Channel 4 documentary that claims to provide evidence of war crimes committed at the end of Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war.
But yesterday, the Sri Lankan High Commission asked the ABC not to broadcast the documentary. The program was shown to the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva last month and has already aired in the UK. The Sri Lankan government claims the documentary contains manipulated videos and is biased. The Sri Lankan government is also claiming it now has the 'original' version of a video that it says has been doctored and sent to the documentary's producers by pro-Tamil groups.
The conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the separatist Tamil Tigers, also known as the 'Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam' (LTTE), left the country in tatters. It also gave the world suicide bombing - the LTTE pioneered the use of suicide belts and introduced female suicide bombers. The LTTE fought for an autonomous homeland in the island's north and reacted with violence against government policies seen to have privileged the dominant Sinhalese population to the detriment of Tamil Sri Lankans.   More  

Posted by Thavam