War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war
[26][27] On 21 March 2019 Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution made by the UN giving the country a 2-year deadline to establish a judicial mechanism to assess violation of humanitarian international law committed during the civil war.[46] However, human rights groups accuse Lord Naseby of purposely distorting a snapshot of figures gathered by the UN in 2009, which contradict the later and more thorough investigation undertaken by the United Nations panel in 2011 which found that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war.[20][47][48] In 2014, the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator Peter Oborne described Lord Naseby as an apologist for the Sri Lankan government, who had given misleading and inaccurate statements about the war.[17][18][19] The panel found the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) established by the Sri Lankan government to be "deeply flawed" and not up to international standards of independence and impartiality due to the "deep-seated conflicts of interests" of some of its members.[17][18][19] The independence of the Attorney General had been eroded and the continuation of Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act precluded the judiciary from holding the government accountable on human rights issues.Fonseka claimed that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa ordered Brigadier Shavendra Silva, commander of the Sri Lankan Army's 58 Division, not to allow the Tamil Tiger leaders to surrender and directed that "they must all be killed".[92] Two Tamil Tiger leaders, Balasingham Nadesan and Seevaratnam Pulidevan, contacted Norwegian minister Erik Solheim and The Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and stated that they wanted to surrender.Fonseka claimed that the Rajapaksa brothers, via foreign governments, told the Tamil Tigers leaders to "Get a piece of white cloth, put up your hands and walk towards the other side in a non-threatening manner".The government's Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, said General Fonseka's statements were lies that had damaged the image of the country, and characterised them as the biggest betrayal of its kind in Sri Lanka's history.As an apparent consequence of the "Sunday Leader" article, and just twelve days after his evident defeat in the Sri Lankan presidential election, General Fonseka was arrested by military forces on 8 February 2010.[97] Next, in a 7 June 2010 interview with the BBC's Hard Talk programme Defence Secretary Rajapaksa threatened to execute Fonseka if he testified at an independent war crimes investigation, stating "He can't do that..That is a treason.[103] The tribunal's 11-member panel of judges consisted of François Houtart (chair), Daniel Feierstein, Denis Halliday, Eren Keskin, Mary Lawlor, Francesco Martone, Nawal El Saadawi, Rajinder Sachar, Sulak Sivaraksa, Gianni Tognoni and Oystein Tveter.The report collated vast amounts of evidence including numerous reliable eyewitness statements, hundreds of photographs, video, satellite images, electronic communications and documents from multiple credible sources.[112] In August 2011 the Society for Threatened Peoples and TRIAL – Swiss Association against Impunity filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry of Switzerland against Dias for alleged war crimes.The special features films shot during the last stages of the war that appear to show the shelling of areas in the no-fire zone and the aftermath, executions of captured LTTE combatants and dead female Tamil fighters being loaded on to a truck.[135] In July 2011, Channel 4 exclusively revealed two individuals who witnessed the final violent stage in May 2009 who claimed a military commander and Sri Lanka's defence secretary ordered war crimes.[139] The report found that 60 main buildings had been destroyed to date in the Safe Zone but this excluded temporary structures erected by the IDPs as it was not possible to identify damage to these using satellite images.Following a request from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the American Association for the Advancement of Science compared commercial high-resolution satellite images of the Safe Zone taken on 6 May 2009 and 10 May 2009 to evaluate the impact of heavy fighting on 9/10 May.They found evidence of significant removal of IDP shelters, artillery and mortar emplacements, destroyed permanent structures, bomb shell impact craters and 1,346 individual graves.On 25 August 2009 Britain's Channel 4 News broadcast mobile phone video of gunmen alleged to be Sri Lankan soldiers apparently summarily executing eight bound and blindfolded Tamil men at point-blank range in January 2009.It established a four-member panel of Sri Lankan experts (Siri Hewawitharana, Chatura Ranjan de Silva, Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe and Major P. A. Bandara) to investigate the authenticity of the video.[151][152] On 10 November 2010 Al Jazeera broadcast photographs that appeared to show the aftermath of Sri Lankan Army soldiers massacring civilians and executing Tamil Tigers in the final stages of the civil war.In some cases which I know they have taken four to five people from the same family..."[161]On 18 May 2010 Channel 4 News broadcast interviews with two Sri Lankan soldiers who claimed that they had been given orders from "the top" to summarily execute all ethnic Tamils, civilians as well as fighters.However I do believe that the LTTE and its fetish for violence was cultured in the crucible of monstrous, racist, injustice that the Sri Lankan government and to a great extent Sinhala society visited on the Tamil people for decades.[177] In an Op-Ed contribution in The New York Times (12 January 2010), Chris Patten made the comment, ".....After all, both General Fonseka and Mr. Rajapaksa executed the 30-year conflict to its bloody conclusion at the expense of huge numbers of Tamil civilian casualties.By early May, when the war was ending, the United Nations estimated that some 7,000 civilians had died and more than 10,000 had been wounded in 2009 as the army's noose was being drawn tight around the remaining rebels and hundreds of thousands of noncombatants, who could not escape government shelling."[189] The leader of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party J. Jayalalitha issued a statement on 27 April 2011 welcoming the report, stating that it confirmed the "human rights violations and brutal repression that was earlier in the realm of speculation or dismissed as biased or partisan reportage".[190] The statement urged the Indian government to take steps to "bring Mahinda Rajapakshe to stand trial for war crimes and genocide along with his generals, senior ministers and all others who were party to the brutal excesses".[193][194] In an official state visit to Chennai, Hillary Clinton discussed the Tamil situation at length with J. Jayalalitha, contrary to claims beforehand from India's Central Government that the matter would not be broached.At a 2009 United Nations forum on R2P, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine established by the UN in 2005, Noam Chomsky said: ...What happened in Sri Lanka was a major Rwanda-like atrocity, in a different scale, where the West didn't care.
Sri Lankan civil warSri LankaShellingHostage takingForced disappearanceDenial of humanitarian aidSummary executionInternmentUse of underaged soldiersMass shootingsSuicide bombingsSri Lankan TamilSinhalese peopleSoldiersSri Lanka Armed ForcesLiberation Tigers of Tamil EelamSri Lankan GovernmentTamil Eelamwar crimescrimes against humanityenforced disappearancesgovernmentforced laborpanel of expertsUnited Nations Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moonaccountabilityinternational human rightshumanitarian lawinternational lawGeneva ConventionsInternational Criminal CourtRome StatuteUN Security CouncilUnited Nations Human Rights CouncilindependentNorwegianMullaitivu DistrictNanthi KadalIndian OceanMullaitivuUnited Nations panelThe TimesUS State DepartmentLord NasebyPeter OborneKilinochchiWikisourceOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human RightsReport of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri LankaUN Secretary-GeneralMarzuki DarusmanSri Lankan PresidentMahinda RajapaksaThe IslandSri Lankan newspaperRed CrossLessons Learnt and Reconciliation CommissionAttorney GeneralSri Lankan Tamil diasporaGovernment of Sri LankaHuman rights groupsGeneral AssemblyHuman Rights Councilcommission of inquiryCongressCommittees on AppropriationsStephen RappUnited States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes IssuesField MarshalThe Sunday LeaderSarath FonsekaGotabhaya RajapaksaBasil Rajapaksa58 DivisionBalasingham NadesanErik SolheimThe Sunday TimesMarie ColvinMahinda SamarasingheHard Talkcounter-insurgencyNadesanPermanent Peoples' TribunalDublinIrelandFrançois HoutartDenis HallidayEren KeskinMary LawlorNawal El SaadawiRajinder SacharSulak Sivaraksain camerarape and sexual violenceIDP campsgenocidecrimes against the peaceInternational Crisis GroupGreen CardJagath Dias57 DivisionEuropean Center for Constitutional and Human RightsGerman Federal Foreign OfficeGerman governmentpersona non-grataSociety for Threatened PeoplesSri Lanka's Killing FieldsJon SnowChannel 4sexually abusedA. A. GillUNOSATSri Lankan Air ForceAl JazeeraSri Lankan Foreign SecretaryPalitha KohonaPresident RajapaksaAmnesty InternationalHuman Rights WatchAmerican Association for the Advancement of ScienceSri Lankan ArmyNew Delhi TVChannel 4 NewsPhilip AlstonGlobal Tamil Forum