The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked the government to “clarify” its position, while an ally of the ruling Congress party demanded the government vote for a US-led resolution against Sri Lanka at the current UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.
“The government of India should support the US-backed resolution against Sri Lanka,” said T. R. Baalu, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) lawmaker from Tamil-dominated Tamil Nadu state.
Washington has introduced a resolution trying to hold Sri Lanka to its pledge to follow up on recommendations of a local probe into the bloody end of its three-decade civil war.
A vote at the rights council was due sometime around March 23, although the date has not been fixed yet.
“The traditional position of India has all along been ... that we normally do not support any country-specific resolution,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the lower house of parliament. “But what view, on this issue, will be taken ... as and when the time is finalized.”
Since the end of the war, during which it tacitly supported President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s determination to wipe out the Tamil Tigers, India has backed Sri Lanka’s position that it can handle its own internal matters as a sovereign nation.
Three times it has been instrumental in heading off Western pressure for an external probe into war crimes allegations, including two earlier human rights council sessions and at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting last year.
However, Indian diplomats have expressed growing frustration at rival China’s influence with the Rajapaksa administration and of late, Colombo’s refusal to deliver any kind of political reconciliation with Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were on 30 nations’ terrorism lists primarily for their widespread use of suicide bombings and child soldiers.
The Sri Lankan government made little secret of the fact troops killed the majority of the Tigers’ leadership in May 2009, but has denied soldiers executed anyone illegally.
Meanwhile Sri Lanka’s military is preparing its own documentary on its final battle with Tamil rebels as a response to allegations of war crimes, army chief Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya said.
In a speech to troops yesterday — a copy of which was released Tuesday — Jayasuriya said the documentary would include testimony from frontline troops and clarify events leading to the death of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.
“We have nothing to fear. We also want to tell the story of how Prabhakaran was killed,” Jayasuriya said.
In June last year, Britain’s Channel 4 aired a documentary containing footage which it said amounted to evidence of war crimes committed by Sri Lankan troops during their final offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.
Jayasuriya’s speech came ahead of the broadcast Wednesday of a follow-up Channel 4 documentary — “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished” — which its producers say contains “damning new evidence” of abuses against civilians.
“We will face these allegations,” said Jayasuriya who did not give a timeframe for completing the military’s documentary.
The channel 4 sequel also alleges that Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son was executed at close range.
Sri Lanka’s High Commission in London issued a statement condemning the program as based on “a number of highly spurious and uncorroborated allegations.”
Conflicting accounts of how Prabhakaran was killed in May 2009 suggest he was either gunned down in a shoot-out or shot while trying to escape advancing Sri Lankan troops in an ambulance.
The entire top military leadership of his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was wiped out in the final battle, ending a nearly four-decade civil war.
Rights groups have estimated that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final offensive, many as the result of military shelling.
The government has denied its troops were responsible for any non-combatant deaths.
Sri Lanka is currently seeking to head off a US move to censure Colombo at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
