Zeenews Bureau
Chennai: Terming the coldblooded killing of slain LTTE chief V Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son Balachandran as a war crime of the gravest nature, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday sought active intervention from the government of India to ensure that the guilty are punished.
“It (Balachandran’s execution) reveals the mindset of the present government in Sri Lanka. These systemic, methodological, coldblooded killings remind us of Nazi rule in Germany, were Jews were killed only because they were Jews,” Jayalalithaa said at a press conference.
“…killing of Balachandran is a war crime of the gravest nature, therefore unforgivable,” she said.
Fresh questions were raised over Sri Lanka`s armed forces conduct during the final stages of the operation against Tamil Tiger rebels after new photographs emerged claiming that Balachandran was summarily executed.
According to the Independent, one of the photos shows the boy sitting in a bunker, alive and unharmed, apparently in the custody of Sri Lankan troops.
Another picture which was taken a few hours later shows the boy`s body lying on the ground, his chest pierced by bullets.
The images were taken in May 2009 at the end of the Sri Lankan Government`s operation to crush the LTTE, which had launched a bloody, decades-long insurgency against the state that led to the deaths of perhaps 70,000 people
“I call upon government of India to hold discussions with United States and other like minded nations to prepare a resolution and get it passed in the UN and also work in tandem with other nations to see to it that all those guilty of war crimes are made to stand trial in the international court,” Jayalalithaa said.
“India should also strive to impose an economic embargo in Sri Lanka until the Tamils displaced there and confined in camps are allowed to return to thier own places and allowed to live with equal rights with Sinhalas… until Tamils are allowed to live a life of dignity,” she added.
Earlier, the US said that it plans to introduce its own resolution on the issue at the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.
At the corresponding session last year the India-backed US sponsored resolution urged the Sri Lankan government to show progress on reconciliation.
Sri Lanka while formulating an action plan for implementation maintained that most of the recommendations were already put in to effect.
