Sri Lanka pressed ahead yesterday with an international seminar aimed at sharing its experience of defeating terrorism despite a boycott campaign and new claims that its troops committed war crimes.
The seminar entitled “Defeating Terrorism, Sri Lankan Experience” has been co-sponsored by China, but rights groups have called for a boycott and major nations such as the US and Japan have stayed away.
A massive military offensive crushed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) two years ago, bringing peace to the country for the first time in decades, but also sparking allegations of war crimes.
On Monday, a UN envoy confirmed that a video allegedly depicting Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil Tigers was authentic and that the actions constituted “definitive war crimes” that should be investigated.
“I believe that the prima facie case of serious international crimes has been made by the video that I’ve examined,” Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on executions, told the UN Human Rights Council.
His predecessor had also authenticated the video, but Heyns presented his own findings from a probe that examined a longer version of the video and included input from a pathologist, video analysts and a firearms expert.
A panel of UN experts advising UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon concluded last month there were “credible allegations” of government forces shelling civilians, bombing hospitals and killing surrendering rebels.
Sri Lanka has denied that any civilians were killed and believes it is being unfairly targeted after successfully ending a war that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives amid regular suicide bombings of government targets.
Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, told the seminar’s opening session yesterday that mass army recruitment was key to ending the decades-long civil war.
Sri Lanka called the three-day conference saying that other countries could benefit from studying its success in defeating the LTTE in May 2009.
However, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged a boycott of the seminar because of claims that thousands of civilians died in military bombing of so-called no-fire zones.
“Sri Lanka’s self-proclaimed ‘model’ of counter-insurgency included repeatedly shelling civilians, targeting hospitals and trying to prevent the world from finding out about it,” HRW said.
HRW’s Asia director Brad Adams said no rights-respecting nation should take part in the conference and described the three-day gathering as an attempt to whitewash abuses.
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