Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Raja announced that his government is withdrawing from co-sponsoring a UN Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for war crimes.Statement came days after the U.S. imposed travel restrictions on Army chief Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva and his immediate family members.
“Our government has decided to withdraw from the process of co-sponsorship in relation to resolution 30/1,” the Prime Minister said.
Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council along with 11 other countries calling for the investigation of allegations of wartime atrocities by both government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels, who were fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority. The U.S., Britain, Australia and Germany were also among the co-sponsors.
As Sri Lanka’s president, Rajapaksa oversaw a military campaign that crushed the Tamil Tigers in May 2009 to end the 26-year civil war. According to conservative U.N. estimates, some 100,000 people were killed in the war.
The government of Rajapaksa’s successor, Maithripala Siri Sena, co-sponsored the resolution in 2015, but current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a younger brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa, promised to withdraw from the resolution ahead of the presidential election last November.
Mr. Rajapaksa accused his predecessor of betraying the island’s security forces by co-sponsoring the resolution.“It is because of the historic betrayal that other countries are able to name members of our armed forces as violators of human rights,” said Mr. Rajapaksa, who was President and commander-in-chief when Sri Lanka launched the offensive to crush the LTTE in 2009.
The 2015 resolution was based on the UNHRC report which had accused the Lankan troops of violating human rights, Mr. Rajapaksa’s statement said.
Sri Lanka’s ruling and Opposition parties have strongly opposed the U.S. move to impose the travel ban on Lt.Gen. Silva, saying America’s decision was based on independently unverified information.
Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena last week said that Lt.Gen. Silva was only conducting a war against a designated terrorist group which was the LTTE.
Lt.Gen. Silva was appointed as the Sri Lankan Army Commander last year and previously headed the Army’s 58th Division in the final battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels of the civil war in 2009.
The UN rights body resolution had blamed Mr. Silva’s brigade of committing rights abuses during the final phase of the battle which ended in May 2009.Both government troops and the LTTE were accused of rights violations. The Sri Lanka Army has denied the alleged rights abuses.
