Wed Oct 19 2011The Australian Greens want the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia recalled as the federal police consider a dossier on alleged war crimes.
Fairfax reports the brief of evidence from the Australian arm of the International Commission of Jurists links the high commissioner and former navy Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe to the shelling of unarmed civilians at the end of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war in 2009.
Mr Samarasinghe has told Fairfax that human rights groups and other pro-Tamil campaigners are being manipulated by the Tamil diaspora in Australia.
Greens leader Bob Brown says the government can reject diplomatic nominations on the basis of war crimes.
He wants Prime Minister Julia Gillard to ask the Sri Lankan government to recall Mr Samarasinghe and if they don't, to expel him.
Greens senator Lee Rhiannon says Australia needs to show it won't turn a blind eye to allegations of war crimes.
"There is mounting evidence the High Commissioner was implicated in war crimes when he was naval chief of staff and commander of the Navy's eastern and northern areas in the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war," she said.
"My office is in direct contact with two Australian Tamils who witnessed artillery fire from the sea where the Sri Lankan Navy were patrolling into densely populated civilian areas."
The Greens think there should be an independent investigation into the allegations.
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The Australian
October 19, 2011
Gordon Weiss
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Secrecy and denial are also war crimes
Gordon Weiss
MORE than two years since the end of Sri Lanka's civil war, new evidence alleges that both sides of this brutal conflict committed serious crimes against civilians.
There are implications for Australia's rule of law, and three possible perpetrators with an immediate connection to our shores.
Sri Lanka's 25-year war culminated in 2009. Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were swept up in a final siege as Sri Lankan troops closed in on the Tamil Tigers. The guerillas held women, children and elderly people as human shields. Government assaults killed many thousands.
A brief of evidence handed last week to Australian authorities by the International Commission of Jurists (Australia) reportedly includes eyewitness testimony from those who lost family and friends in those months. A number of witnesses are Australians, or Australian residents.
