{"id":971,"date":"2015-10-01T01:46:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T01:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=971"},"modified":"2015-10-04T01:55:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T01:55:04","slug":"sri-lankan-war-crimes-un-asks-lanka-to-allow-foreign-judges-in-war-crimes-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=971","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan War Crimes: UN asks Lanka to allow foreign judges in war crimes probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"srilanka<\/a>The UN Human Rights Council today unanimously recommended a credible probe involving foreign judges and prosecutors into the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka’s battle against the LTTE, a resolution on which was surprisingly co-sponsored by Colombo despite its strong reservations.<\/p>\n

The 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) at its ongoing 30th session here approved by consensus a crucial resolution led by the US and the UK, and backed by Sri Lanka itself, in a move hailed by international advocacy groups.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador in Geneva, Ravinatha Aryasinha said that his country stands committed to implement the UN resolution.<\/p>\n

“Sri Lanka is pleased to join as a co-sponsor of this resolution as a further manifestation of Sri Lanka’s commitment to implement the provisions of the resolution. We are eager to commence a wide ranging consultations for this purpose as soon as possible in a manner to expand the ownership of its content by all stakeholders,” Aryasinha said in his address to the Council just before the resolution was adopted without a vote.<\/p>\n

According to a UNHRC spokesperson, there was no voting and there were no last-minute revisions in the text of the draft resolution titled “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka”.<\/p>\n

The resolution calls for establishment of a Sri Lankan Judicial Mechanism with a Special Counsel to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law during the final phase of the nearly three decade-long brutal ethnic conflict that ended in military defeat of the LTTE in 2009.<\/p>\n

The operative paragraph of the resolution sets stage for foreign experts without being prescriptive on international involvement.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka steadfastly held on to the view that any human rights and war crimes abuses should be investigated by a local mechanism. Yet the UN rights chief contended that the process must go beyond a domestic mechanism.<\/p>\n

The resolution adopted today was in sharp contrast to the report of the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein presented at the council session last month.<\/p>\n

He had cited distrust in Sri Lanka’s judicial and criminal procedures prescribed a hybrid court to investigate allegations.<\/p>\n

The proposed mechanism will include Special Counsel’s office, of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers, and authorised prosecutors and investigators.<\/p>\n

Besides asking Sri Lanka to form a credible judicial system for the probe, the resolution – based on a landmark report issued by the UN last month – also calls on Sri Lanka to allow for punishment of “those most responsible for the full range of crimes”.<\/p>\n

The resolution does not bind Sri Lanka to an international investigation into rights groups’ claim that the military killed 40,000 civilians in the final months of the civil war.<\/p>\n

Source: PTI,<\/p>\n

Not a scene from a movie. Photo credits: salem-news, candobetter.net<\/b>, Tamil Eelam News Services<\/b>, Sri Lanka War Crimes<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UN Human Rights Council today unanimously recommended a credible probe involving foreign judges and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[17,5,9,10,30,6,19,33,25,2],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes-300x249.jpg",300,249,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"enternews-featured":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"enternews-medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false],"enternews-thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/srilanka-war-crimes.jpg",350,291,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}