As 47 countries meet in Geneva to take stock of the world’s human-rights performance, Sri Lanka finds itself in the dock, haunted by the legacy of a fierce civil war that spanned two and a half decades and came to a violent end three years ago. The Sri Lankan government is under fire for failing to investigate human-rights violations said to have taken place in the final months of the military’s scorched earth offensive — a relentless battle that destroyed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam but left behind a bloody trail of civilian casualties. Ratcheting up the international pressure, the U.S. has introduced a resolution to the Human Rights Council calling on the island nation to take steps for reconciliation recommended by Sri Lanka’s own domestic investigation and, perhaps more crucial, to bring to book those responsible on both sides of the conflict for crimes that activists say killed 40,000 civilians in the final stages of the war in 2008 and ’09. (The government figure stands at 9,000.)Read more:
