Tamil Diaspora unhappy with US resolution

4 March 2014 05:38 pm Views - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}} 28 Bookmark

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A pro-Tamil nationalist Diaspora group on Tuesday slammed a US-sponsored draft resolution at the UNHRC that called for an international probe into Sri Lanka's alleged rights abuses during the war with Tamil rebels.

The British Tamils Forum (BTF) said the resolution fell short of Tamil expectations.

It said the resolution requests another update by the Human Rights Commissioner in a year's time and makes another call on Sri Lanka to launch a credible domestic inquiry, despite the Human Rights Commissioner herself declaring that Sri Lanka has no political will to investigate itself.

Five years on from the terrible massacres of 2009, the Tamil people have been told to put up with another year of lost land, lost people, further curtailment of rights, physical and sexual abuse, the group said.

A state that is moving in an increasingly authoritarian direction, according to the Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay, has inexplicably been given yet more time and space, BTF said.

The Sri Lankan government sees BTF as a pro-LTTE hardline group which has influence over the UK's political system in their bid to force action against the island nation.

The group claimed Sri Lanka now has even more time to complete its programme of destroying evidence and eliminating witnesses to the crimes committed during the final months of nearly a quarter-century civil war that ended in 2009 when the military crushed the LTTE fighting for a separate homeland.

The draft resolution tabled in Geneva yesterday has endorsed Pillay's recommendation for a credible international inquiry into the alleged war crimes.

Up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed at the end of the separatist war in 2009, rights groups and experts have said. (PTI)