UNITED NATIONS: The UN chief lent credence yesterday to the possibility of war crimes in Sri Lanka, saying an international investigation is needed to examine the military actions of the government and defeated Tamil Tiger rebels during the civil war.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, at a closed-door briefing for Security Council members, called for a credible inquiry to be undertaken with international backing and full support from Sri Lanka’s government.
He declined to elaborate on exactly how the inquiry should be done, but he urged an examination of what he said were serious allegations of violations of international humanitarian laws, according to diplomats and UN officials who attended.
“Any inquiry, to be meaningful, should be supported by the members of the United Nations, and also should be very impartial and objective,” Ban told reporters Friday at UN headquarters.
“I would like to ask the Sri Lankan government to recognize the international call for accountability and full transparency,” he said. “And whenever and wherever there are credible allegations of violations of humanitarian law, there should be a proper investigation.”
Sri Lanka has rejected either an international or joint investigation, saying civil war is a domestic issue.
The country’s human rights minister said a domestic fact-finding process would be held as part of reconciliation efforts with ethnic minority Tamils. But the minister said he doubted the UN secretary-general actually meant to call for an international investigation.
Ban said he also told the Council that Sri Lanka must refrain from any victory dance after routing the Tamil rebels last month and ending a quarter century of civil war.
“It is very important at this time to unite and heal the wounds, rather than enjoy all this triumphalism in the wake of the end of conflict,” the UN chief said.
What options the United Nations has for ensuring a credible investigation remains unclear.
Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has denied claims that more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed during the government’s final onslaught against rebels.
Bogollagama told The Times that the London newspaper was wrong to report last week that so many civilians had died in the island’s so-called no-fire zone, most of them from Sri Lankan Army shelling.
“Within the no-fire zone we never returned fire because we would never have taken that degree of chance for inflicting harm on civilians,” the minister told The Times on a visit to London on Friday. “Nothing could have provoked us to fire on civilians,” he stressed.
According to the British daily, Bogollagama blamed all civilian deaths on Tamil Tiger rebels and maintained his government’s line that not one single civilian had died as a result of army action.
