Sri Lanka seeks more time and space on human rights issue

Last Updated: Friday, March 15, 2013, 22:02

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Tags: Sri Lanka, UNHRC, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Mahinda Rajapaksa

Colombo: Ahead of a crucial vote in UNHRC over its alleged human rights violations, Sri Lanka on Friday asked the international community to adopt a balanced approach towards its achievements and sought more "time and space" to resolve all outstanding issues.

Making a presentation at the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva today, Human Rights Envoy Mahinda Samarasinghe put forward Sri Lanka's record of achievements since the end to the conflict with the LTTE in 2009.

"Please be balanced. You can bring our attention to any outstanding issues. We need time and space," Samarasinghe said.

"We have never come to this council to tell that everything is fine in Sri Lanka. We have put on record the progress we have made. We have also acknowledged that there are challenges ahead of us. We are only asking for time and space."

Samarasinghe said Sri Lanka received a total of 204 recommendations at last year's UN review. Sri Lanka was supportive of 113 of them and it had set out reasons why Sri Lanka would not be able to agree with 91 of recommendations.

Samarasinghe said that the government had already made budgetary provisions needed to implement the national action plan of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report.

Next week Sri Lanka's accountability and reconciliation progress would come under further scrutiny when US would move a resolution at the UNHRC.

US adopted a similar resolution last year with India's support which bound Sri Lanka to make rapid progress on reconciliation with the Tamils.

Contesting reported deaths of 40,000 civilians during the war with the LTTE as unverified, Samarasinghe said Sri Lanka was in the process of ground verification of facts in the former battle zones to ascertain the real numbers.

PTI

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First Published: Friday, March 15, 2013, 22:02

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Shiva - Canada
The Sri Lankan regime is simply buying time to ethnic cleanse more Tamils and commit more crimes against humanity. At the end of Apartheid, the South African government brought peace, reconciliation, and stability within an year through honest leadership, understanding and tolerance. Whereas at the end of the Sri Lankan war, Tamils were detained in detention Camps, tortured, raped and murdered in hundreds of thousands of innocent Tamils due to hate mentality of the Sinhala Buddhist Apartheid regime towards the Tamils, its forces and the Buddhist Monks. The Sri Lankan regime was actually eliminating and ethnic cleansing the Tamils while pretending that it was fighting the LTTE. It is a democratic right and principle that an independent International transparent human rights abuses investigation must be conducted and bring those responsible for the atrocities to face the law to achieve a meaningful reconciliation. Else, no true reconciliation will take place and war criminals will be at large and no closure to this crisis.

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Shiva - Canada
Sri Lanka buys time to get rid of more Tamils from Tamil areas and continue to commit crimes whereas the South African government brought peace within an year of ending Apartheid with proven leadership and commonsense. Sri Lanka regime continues to deny international community to conduct independent investigation of war crimes, genocide of the Tamils as the regime forces committed one of the worst attrocities of tyhe 21st Century.