The empty findings of Sri Lanka’s Military Court of Inquiry
The empty findings of Sri Lanka’s Military Court of Inquiry
Yasmin Sooka-11 Apr, 2013
While I have not had access to the full report and to the evidence presented to the Military Court of Inquiry, I am shocked by the Court of Inquiry’s findings. I was a member of the The Panel of Experts appointed by the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, to look into accountabilty for the final stages of the war. The Panel rejected with utter certainty the notion that the Sri Lankan Military mounted a “humanitarian rescue” and that the war was conducted with “zero civilian casualties”. The Panel’s work revealed “a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka“. The panel found “credible allegations” which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers). The Panel concluded that “the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace”. It also found that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war, most as a result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military. The Panel’s work was further vindicated by the report of Charles Petrie, the UN official appointed by the UN Secretary General to look into the role played by the UN agencies on the ground during the conflict. Charles Petrie suggested in his report that the number of civilian casualties is probably closer to 70,000. This figure is staggering and points to an enormous loss of life. The Catholic Bishop of Manner has suggested that more than 147 000 people remain unaccounted for.
The Panel rejected the notion that in any war there are casualties which are inevitable. The Geneva Conventions exist for a purpose to ensure that the lives of innocent civilians are protected at all time.
The findings of the Military Court of Inquiry exonerate the military of any responsibility and attest to the fact that the Government of Sri Lanka and the Military cannot be trusted to investigate the crimes committed during the final phases of the conflict.
That is why an independent international inquiry is needed.
TNA rejects army report
April 11, 2013
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has rejected the report by the army court of inquiry, the first part of which was presented to Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa yesterday.
TNA MP Suresh Premachandran said that it is a “joke” for the army court to conclude that army had not killed a single civilian during the war.
He says the government must accept the truth, investigate the allegations and publicly accept its mistakes for there to be real reconciliation.
The army said that evidence before the army court had conclusively established that the war was conducted strictly in accordance with the “Zero Civilian Casualty” directive made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and commanders at all times obeyed the said directive and even where the LTTE allegedly fired from No Fire Zones, commanders refrained from firing at such No Fire Zones. It has also been revealed that as an additional measure of safety, artillery commanders had added 500 meters more to the boundaries of No Fire Zoness given by higher headquarters.
The army court also noted that the International community had failed in their duty to stop war crimes committed by the LTTE.
Suresh Premachandran meanwhile dismissed claims by the government that India was responsible for the war.
He said that if successive governments had addressed the core issues faced by the Tamils then Tamil militant groups would not have formed in Sri Lanka in the first place.
“It’s absurd to blame India. All the mistakes are those made by the successive governments in Sri Lanka,” he said.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had blamed the former Indian administration for the war in Sri Lanka which dragged for 30 years.
The government information department had quoted Rajapaksa as telling the local media that India could never absolve itself of the responsibility for creating terrorism in Sri Lanka, though some of those directly involved in subverting Sri Lanka were blaming the Rajapaksa administration for the plight of Tamil speaking people in the country. (Colombo Gazette)
Report by Easwaran Rutnam
