A video purportedly showing troops shooting blindfolded, naked Tamils in the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war has revived calls for a war crimes investigation and cast a shadow over the upcoming presidential election.
The controversy heated up after a top UN human rights investigator said the footage — reportedly shot by a soldier with a mobile phone in last January — appeared to be authentic.
Sri Lankan officials said on Friday the video was a fabrication, rejected any war crimes probe and said the UN investigator, Philip Alston, was prejudiced against the country.
“We believe his conclusions are highly subjective and biased,” Sri Lankan Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said. “We believe he is on a crusade of his own to force a war-crime inquiry against Sri Lanka.”
The revived focus on possible abuses could complicate the island nation’s efforts to close the book on its quarter-century civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels and attract the millions of dollars in international aid needed to fund its costly rebuilding plans.
UN reports say more than 7,000 civilians were killed in the months leading up to the government’s victory over the rebels in May. Human rights groups accused the military of shelling hospitals and heavily populated civilian areas during the fighting and the rebels of holding the local population as human shields. A US State Department report has accused both sides of possible war crimes.
The government barred journalists and nearly all aid groups from the northern war zone.
In August, the group Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka released the video footage, which appeared to show soldiers summarily executing unarmed, naked Tamils, including two blindfolded men shot in the head at close range.
On Thursday, Alston, the UN Human Rights Council’s investigator on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, said reports by three US-based independent forensic experts “strongly suggest that the video is authentic.”
Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that Alston’s report added to a series of troubling allegations regarding the conduct of the war.
“We believe a full and impartial investigation is critical if we’re to confront all the very big question marks that hang over this war,” he said. “Obviously if the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Sri Lankan government has done nothing wrong, it will have nothing to fear from an international investigation.”
However, there may not be much international appetite for launching an investigation. The UN Human Rights Council last year rejected such calls and instead praised the government for crushing the rebels.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama also rejected the calls for a war crimes probe and accused Alston of timing his comments to interfere with the upcoming presidential election.
The revived allegations could complicate the hard-fought presidential campaign between the main architects of the war: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his recently retired army chief, General Sarath Fonseka.
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people