AFTA welcomes UN naming an advisory panel on Sri Lanka war
The Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA), the umbrella body of the peak Tamil associations in Australia and New Zealand is relieved to hear the long awaited announcement made by the UN Secretary General on Tuesday about the formation of a three-member panel to advise him on whether war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka during the final months of brutal military push in to the Tamil held territory.
It is reported that the panel will be chaired by Indonesia's former Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, who was recently named the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea. The other two members of the panel are Yasmin Sooka, a human rights expert from South Africa, and Steven Ratner, a U.S. lawyer who advised the United Nations on how to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.
According to U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky, Ban's panel "will advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka….The panel hopes to cooperate with concerned officials in Sri Lanka,” Nesirky said further. Human Rights groups took advantage of last month's first anniversary of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers to renew pressure for a probe into the end of the war, in which they say tens of thousands of civilians died in the cataclysmic final battles. The Sri Lankan President has categorically denied of any civilian killings by his security forces. But rights groups say that both the government and the LTTE were guilty of human rights violations that resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths.
Last month, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa named an eight-person "Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation" to look into the last seven years of the war. When media at UN asked Stephen Rapp, US ambassador at large for war crimes issues, on the 18th of June, if "Lessons Learned" is enough, he replied that "Obviously, what's been announced to date has not met the standard. They're telling us it does have that capacity, to investigate these cases, to follow up and call witnesses. We're hearing it, but we're not seeing it." There had been several reports from the Tamil homeland in the northeast of the island that the Sri
Lankan security forces were removing any physical evidence of the war crimes committed that included exhuming and destroying skeletons of the victims from the war zone. This raises the need for the appointed panel to move very fast and the UN to have physical presence on the ground to protect hard evidence. Also the terms of reference of the panel should include the right to hold full investigations and a trial into the alleged war crimes and offer full protection to witnesses coming forward from the Tamil homeland and the Tamil Diaspora to provide evidence. Amid heavy Western pressure, Ban has insisted that the panel must go forward despite Sri Lanka's urging against it, and assertion that it is a violation of its sovereignty. Nesirky said that the panel was not a formal investigative body and would be available to the Sri Lankan government, should they choose to take advantage of it. The group will have four months from the time it starts to complete its work.
AFTA calls upon the International Community in general and the Australian and New Zealand governments in particular, to express their desire publicly, for this panel to guide the SG to deliver justice to the innocent victims of the alleged war crimes.
ENDS
No comments:
Post a Comment