Colombo: Sri Lanka has rejected a UN resolution urging it to seek an independent investigation into government atrocities carried out in country’s 26-year civil war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, saying countries were bullied into supporting the resolution against it by the US and other ‘powerful countries’.
The country’s Foreign Minister GL Peiris said the nations, which supported Sri Lanka, were ‘acutely conscious of the danger of setting a precedent which enables ad hoc intervention by powerful countries in the internal affairs of other nations’.
“The government would not bow to international demands for an inquiry,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Peiris, as saying.
The UN’s 47-member Human Rights Council has passed the resolution, which called on Sri Lanka to allow an independent probe into allegations the government committed war crimes against the separatist Tamil Tigers.
According to the paper, any probe could be acutely uncomfortable for the Sri Lankan government, reaching to the very top of the Mahinda Rajapaksa family-dominated administration.
Meanwhile, people launched mass protests in Sri Lanka, condemning the UN, and carrying pictures of Rajapaksa, who, they say, freed their country from terrorism.
ANI
First Published: Saturday, March 24, 2012, 12:37