The US voiced grave concern on Wednesday about video footage that a Sri Lankan group says shows government soldiers summarily executing Tamil rebels in violation of international law.
“These reports are very disturbing, they are of grave concern,” US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told reporters. “We’d like more information as we formulate our own national response.”
Rice was reacting to video footage aired last week on British television which, according to a Sri Lankan advocacy group, shows government forces executing unarmed, naked, bound and blindfolded Tamils during the army’s final assault to smash Tamil Tiger rebels earlier this year.
The Sri Lankan government has dismissed the video as fake.
Rice, who holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council during this month, said it was not yet clear whether the council would take up the issue.
“I’m not aware of a council member proposing that this be discussed on the council agenda but obviously these reports are very fresh and that could change,” she said.
Previous attempts to formally raise the issue of Sri Lanka’s conduct during the final months of its 25-year war against the Tamil Tiger rebels met resistance from Russia and China, who opposed official council discussion of an issue they said was an internal matter for the Sri Lankan government.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said on Tuesday he hoped the UN would launch an investigation to determine whether Sri Lankan soldiers did in fact summarily execute Tamils, which would be a violation of international law.
Alston acknowledged there was no certainty the video was authentic. Britain’s Channel 4 television said it got the footage from advocacy group Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.
“There’s nothing on the surface to indicate that it is not authentic and, if that’s the case, it would raise very grave concerns,” Alston said in an interview.
A spokeswoman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN took all reports of serious human rights violations and war crimes with the “utmost concern” and that the Channel 4 video was “no exception.”
Sri Lanka’s government has repeatedly denied that its forces were guilty of war crimes or human rights breaches during the last months of its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), whom it defeated in May.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes has said several thousand civilians were killed during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE, when the rebels retreated to a narrow strip of coast in northeastern Sri Lanka.
The rebels brought hundreds of thousands of Tamils with them, whom UN officials said were used as human shields.
UN and Western officials accused Sri Lanka of using heavy artillery to shell areas that it knew were heavily populated with civilians, killing many of them in the process. Colombo denied the allegation.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS