Release All Reports On Last Phase Of War Immediately: A Group Of Sri Lankans Tells Sirisena

September 19, 2015

A concerned group of Sri Lankan foreign policy observers have called upon President Maithripala Sirisena to immediately table “Presidential Commission’s International Advisors Report” on the final phase of the conflict at the ongoing Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva.

We publish below the petition sent by a group of civil society members, retired diplomats, ex Parliamentarians and expatriates requesting the President of Sri Lanka to table the Report on the 2nd Mandate of the Presidential Commission on Missing Persons immediately at Human Rights Council.

His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena,
President of Sri Lanka

Your Excellency,

We the undersigned,  are very concerned about the mechanisms proposed in the Report of the  UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Investigation on Sri Lanka, which was presented to the UN Human Rights Council  in Geneva by Prince Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the 16th of September.

We are particular perturbed that the UNHRC conclusions had no opportunity to consider the rigorous legal & military analysis  conducted  by the international advisory council, that had on the 15th of August 2015 completed its task by issuing a report to the Government on the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka as stipulated in the 2nd Mandate of the Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints regarding Missing Persons, otherwise known as the “Paranagama Commission“.

Thus, we would like to draw your attention to two separate paragraphs in UNHCR report, which itself laments the fact that the UN Human Rights Council members and especially the OHCR team that undertook a comprehensive investigation into alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka during the period covered by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), were not privy to the report on the  2nd Mandate of the Paranagama Commission. The advanced unedited version of the report that was released on the 11th of  September 2015 stated as follows:Read More