The UN Human Rights Council called on Sri Lanka on Friday to investigate allegations of killings and disappearances and prosecute those responsible, including members of government security forces.
Western countries and activists also raised concerns about Sri Lanka’s refusal to allow international human rights monitors into the country, which is embroiled in a 25-year-old civil war.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch welcomed the Council’s recommendation calling on Sri Lanka to investigate and prosecute all extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings.
“The rate at which such killings continue is alarming,” Amnesty International’s Yolanda Foster told the talks.
“The government must end the current climate of impunity for human rights violations,” Foster said.
She said that no one had been prosecuted for such atrocities as the 2006 massacre of 17 mostly Tamil aid workers, which Nordic truce monitors believe security forces were responsible for.
Canadian envoy Terry Cormier said evidence given in public hearings of Sri Lanka’s Presidential Commission of Inquiry had implicated security forces in the execution-style murders. Canada urged Sri Lanka to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Rajiva Wijesingha, secretary to Sri Lanka’s ministry of disaster management and human rights, told the Council that his government could only accept 45 of its 80 recommendations.
Sri Lanka was facing “increasingly brutal and vicious atrocities by the LTTE”, he said, using the acronym of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
His government is determined to “defeat the forces of terror” and cannot accept international monitors, but will combat torture and recruitment of child soldiers, he said.
Philip Alston, a UN special investigator on executions, reported last month that Sri Lanka’s government was relying on paramilitary groups to maintain control in the east and that he had evidence showing they were responsible for killings.
Meanwhile, government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels fought battles on the northern fronts, leaving 11 rebels and seven soldiers dead, the military said yesterday.
The new fighting took place in the Mannar, Welioya and Vavuniya regions bordering the rebels’ de facto state in the north on Friday, a defense ministry statement said.
In the Welioya area, separate clashes killed seven rebels and four soldiers, while three confrontations in Vavuniya and Mannar killed four rebels and three soldiers, it said.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not immediately be reached for comment.
It was not possible to independently verify the military’s claims because journalists are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Each side commonly exaggerates its enemy’s casualties while playing down its own.
Fighting has escalated in recent months along the front lines.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not