Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has called for mass protests against a UN report which urged a probe into alleged war crimes committed during the fight against Tamil Tiger rebels, his office said yesterday.
Rajapakse said in an address to officials of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party that this year’s May Day rally should be turned into a “show of our strength” against international calls for war crimes investigations.
“All these days we did not demonstrate our strength, but now on May Day we will show our strength,” the president said on Saturday.
An audio tape of the speech was released by his office yesterday.
His remarks came after a leaked UN report called for an independent inquiry into “credible” allegations that Sri Lanka committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its final 2009 offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels.
Rajapakse said that a section of the international community was leading a campaign against Sri Lanka and harboring a “grudge” because he did not allow the country to be divided, as demanded by the Tamil Tigers.
He said the world had also benefited from the crushing of the rebels, who had mastered the use of “suicide jackets” in their trademark bombings.
Rajapakse said allegations of war crimes, contained in a UN expert panel report, were not new, but that there were increasing suggestions that those who led the military campaign should be taken before a war crimes tribunal.
“On behalf of the country, if they ask me to sit on the electric chair, I will happily do it,” he said.
The leaked report detailed “credible allegations” which, if proven, indicate a wide range of violations by both the government and the rebels, “some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Labeling a government commission set up to study the handling of the conflict “deeply flawed,” the report urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to immediately set up “an independent international mechanism” of inquiry.
The leaked excerpts were published in the pro-government Island newspaper on Saturday, with observers suggesting Colombo might have engineered the leak to prepare a full rebuttal that would pre-empt its official publication.
Sri Lanka’s external affairs minister will brief diplomats on Colombo’s opposition to the UN report this week.
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