Sri Lanka’s leader rejected calls for a war crimes probe at a public protest on Sunday against a UN finding of “credible evidence” government forces committed atrocities when crushing Tamil Tiger guerrillas in 2009.
Last week the UN published the findings of a three-member panel UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed to advise him on “issues of accountability” related to the end of the war, despite Sri Lankan objections.
The report has renewed Western pressure on the Indian Ocean nation to submit to an international probe over allegations that thousands of civilians were killed the end of its 25-year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
PHOTO: EPA
Sri Lanka has since accused the West of applying double standards to Colombo’s military moves to defeat a group that was on the terrorism lists of the US, UN and 30 other countries.
“This government fed the enemy which fought against it, using a human shield of 300,000 people,” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said, alluding to the fact that government agents tried to provide food to hungry civilians in Tiger-held areas, only to end up feeding guerrillas who held them at gunpoint.
“What the government did was protect innocent civilians from the clutch of terrorists,” Rajapaksa told a protest rally of several thousand people in the capital Colombo.
The UN panel, which did not have an investigative mandate, accused victorious Sri Lankan government troops of killing tens of thousands of civilians and said there was “credible evidence” war crimes were committed by both sides.
However, the elimination of the LTTE, which carried out hundreds of suicide bombings and attacks on civilians during the insurgency and held nearly 300,000 people as human shields at the war’s end, means any prosecutions would hit the government only.
“Children who went to school were forcibly taken to fight during those days. Today, they play cricket. Students who wore cyanide capsules around their necks today learn chemistry,” Rajapaksa said. “Are these human rights violations or crimes?”
The release of the UN report before the findings of Sri Lanka’s own Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission was divisive and harmful to the government’s own moves to instil peace and reconciliation, the Sri Lankan foreign ministry has said.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS