Off the wire
• 2nd LD: Yemeni president returns to Aden after months in exile  • French police detain 2 leaders of Basque separatist group ETA  • Chinese navy fleet concludes visit to Denmark  • EU home affairs ministers gather to seek refugee relocation deal  • Thailand to grant multiple-entry tourist visa  • Palestinian woman dies of sustained wounds in Hebron  • Oerlikon Balzers factory opens in Slovakia  • China's ICBC bank offers 500 mln USD in loan to Indonesian Eximbank  • 1st LD: Yemeni president returns to Aden after months in exile  • AU fighters conduct air raids on Al-Shabaab militants in S. Somalia: official  
You are here: 　 Home

Sri Lanka's former president calls on gov't to reject UN report

Xinhua, September 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday defended his government's decision to reject an investigation into alleged war crimes during the country 's civil war which ended in May 2009.

Rajapakse said in a statement that his government did not cooperate with the foreign investigation for many reasons, especially because it was instituted outside the established procedure of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

"The usual procedure was for the President of the UNHRC to appoint a three-member independent panel to carry out the investigation after the relevant resolution is passed in the Council. However the investigation on Sri Lanka was not carried out by an independent Commission of Inquiry but for the very first time, by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights ( OHCHR)," he said.

A UN report on Sri Lanka's civil war, released last week by the OHCHR, called upon the Sri Lankan government to establish a hybrid court, which would include international judges, prosecutors and lawyers, to investigate wartime abuses.

The report, released in Geneva by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, said war crimes and crimes against humanity were most likely committed by both sides during the 30-year war between the government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday expressed his confidence that countries would support a UNHRC resolution which would favor Sri Lanka when it was taken up for vote in Geneva later this week.

The prime minister also agreed to debate the UN report on Sri Lanka in the parliament as well as the draft resolution once it was adopted by the UNHRC. Endi