Sydney: The Sri Lankan government has slammed a United Nations report on the country’s civil war, saying the allegations against the government are ‘unsubstantiated and erroneous’.
The country’ External Affairs Ministry said that the report ‘appears to be another attempt at castigating Sri Lanka for militarily defeating’ the Tamil Tigers.
According to News.com.au, the UN in its report said the world body`s own inadequate efforts to protect civilians in 2009 during the bloody final months of the civil war marked a ‘grave failure’ that led to suffering for hundreds of thousands of people.
The report also accused UN staff in Sri Lanka`s capital, Colombo, of not perceiving that preventing civilian deaths was their responsibility and accused their bosses at UN headquarters of not telling them otherwise.
A separate UN report released last year said up to 40,000 ethnic minority Tamil civilians may have been killed in the war`s final months.
The report accused the government of working to intimidate UN staff, of withholding visas of those critical of the government and of planting false allegations against them in the media.
According to the report, those accusations against the government drew Friday`s rebuke from the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry.
The ministry said the UN report did not mention the ‘intransigence of the LTTE, which held the people as a human shield, and even shot in cold blood those who tried to escape to gain their freedom.’
ANI
