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Sri Lanka: Military Conference to Whitewash War Crimes

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Invited Countries Should Stay Home, Press for Accountability

This conference is nothing more than a public relations exercise to whitewash abuses. No professional, law-abiding military should take part in this farce.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch

(New York) - Governments should decline the invitation to attend a Sri Lankan military conference that seeks to legitimize the unlawful killing of thousands of civilians during the armed conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Human Rights Watch said today.

The Sri Lankan government has invited 54 countries to its "Seminar on Defeating Terrorism: The Sri Lankan Experience" from May 31 to June 2, 2011 in Colombo, the capital. The conference website says Sri Lankan military officials and panelists will "share their knowledge on Counter Insurgency and enumerate contributory factors in militarily defeating the LTTE."

"Sri Lanka's self-proclaimed ‘model' of counterinsurgency included repeatedly shelling civilians, targeting hospitals, and trying to prevent the world from finding out about it," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "This conference is nothing more than a public relations exercise to whitewash abuses. No professional, law-abiding military should take part in this farce."

In April, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a report by a panel of experts that concluded that both government forces and the LTTE conducted military operations "with flagrant disregard for the protection, rights, welfare and lives of civilians and failed to respect the norms of international law." The panel found that the conduct of the war represented a "grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace." It said that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the conflict, which ended in May 2009.

The Sri Lankan government contends that it pursued a "humanitarian rescue operation" with a policy of "zero civilian casualties" during the final months of the conflict, in which more than 300,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were trapped in the fighting. Shortly after the war ended, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said there was "no violation of human rights. There were no civilian casualties." The army chief, Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, said recently that all allegations of violations are "unfounded and baseless."

Sri Lankan government officials have touted the Sri Lankan "model" of counterinsurgency to other countries. However, the expert panel, confirming earlier findings by Human Rights Watch, other national and international organizations, and the US State Department, concluded that government forces killed civilians through widespread and indiscriminate shelling, attacked known hospitals and medical clinics, and deprived civilians in the war zone of humanitarian aid. The panel also found that government forces summarily executed detainees, raped women in custody, and forcibly disappeared others.

The panel also corroborated findings that the LTTE used civilians as "human shields," killed civilians as they tried to flee LTTE control, deployed military equipment close to civilians, recruited children, used forced labor, and conducted suicide attacks against civilians.

The panel called on the Sri Lankan government to carry out genuine investigations and recommended that the UN create an independent international mechanism to monitor the government's implementation of the panel recommendations, conduct an independent investigation, and collect and safeguard evidence. Instead of acting on the report's findings, the Sri Lankan government called the report "illegal, ... biased, baseless and unilateral," and began a diplomatic campaign to block international action on the report's recommendations.

Rather than seeking accountability for abuses, the Sri Lankan government has called for a "re-evaluation of the rule of military engagement" in fighting terrorist groups, presumably to allow governments to ignore longstanding laws of war in counterinsurgency operations.

Human Rights Watch said that the first step toward learning lessons from Sri Lanka's war should be for UN member states to set up an independent international mechanism to conduct investigations in accordance with the panel's recommendations.

"There are important lessons to be learned from the defeat of the LTTE, a cruel and brutal insurgency," Adams said. "But these lessons will not be learned as long as the Sri Lankan government distorts the truth and tries to keep its atrocities hidden."

List of Countries Invited to the Seminar

The Sri Lankan government has listed the 54 countries invited on the conference's website. A list of 30 countries that the government expected to attend was published on the website in April and is provided below. Australian and Sweden, both on the list, have said that they will not attend. This list was later removed from the website, and Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm with the listed countries whether the information is accurate.

Australia

Botswana

Canada

China

Czech Republic

Ghana

Hungary

Indonesia

Israel

Italy

Japan

Kenya

Malaysia

Maldives

Mozambique

Nepal

Nigeria

Oman

Philippines

Republic of Korea

Romania

Singapore

South Africa

Sweden

Switzerland

Tanzania

Turkey

Ukraine

Zambia

Zimbabwe

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/23/sri-lanka-military-conference-whitewash-war-crimes

இந்த அறிக்கையை ( http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/23/sri-lanka-military-conference-whitewash-war-crimes ) ஐ.நா. பிரதிநிதிகள், இலங்கைக்கான தூதுவர்கள், அரசியல்வாதிகள், ஊடகவிலாளர்கள் என முடிந்தால் அவுப்பி வையுங்கள்.

நீங்கள் இந்த மனித உரிமைகள் காப்பகத்தின் தளத்திற்கு சென்று, அனுப்பட்ட வேண்டியவரின் மின்னஞ்ச்சலை இணைத்து 'அனுப்பு' (send) என்ற பொத்தனை சொடுக்கி அனுப்பலாம்.

வெளிநாட்டு அமைச்சர்கள்/பிரதிநிகள் ...

john.baird@parl.gc.ca , SweeneyPJ@state.gov , consularcolombo@state.gov , post@mfa.no , ca28ima@mail.house.gov , erik.solheim@mfa.no , rusun@un.int , info@europeangreens.org , alexey.kozlov@europeangreens.org , monica.frassoni@europeangreens.org , catherine.ashton@ec.europa.eu , Andrew.Patrick@fco.gov.uk , Michelle.john@fco.gov.uk , colombo.general@fco.gov.uk , geneva_un@fco.gov.uk ,

ஐ.நா. மனித அமைப்பு பிரதிநிகள் ..

sg@un.org, ngochr@ohchr.org, brussels@crisisgroup.org , walter.kaelin@oefre.unibe.ch , fjansonius@ohchr.org , gmagazzeni@ohchr.org ,

Sri Lanka anti-terror seminar faces boycott call

A leading human rights group urged governments on Tuesday to boycott a conference on fighting insurgents organised by Sri Lanka, which wants to share its experience of defeating separatist militants.

Sri Lanka will host the three-day meeting "Defeating Terrorism - Sri Lanka Experience" in the capital Colombo next Tuesday and has invited 54 countries of which 42 have agreed to attend.

China, Russia and South Asian nations Bangladesh, India, Maldives and Pakistan are among those who will send military delegations, while Western nations have decided to stay away, Sri Lanka's army chief said on Monday.

"This conference is nothing more than a public relations exercise to whitewash abuses," Human Rights Watch's Asia Director Brad Adams said in a statement.

"No professional, law-abiding military should take part in this farce," he added.

International rights groups have accused Sri Lankan forces of killing thousands of civilians and blocking humanitarian access to the affected population during the climax of its battle with Tamil separatists in 2009.

The outlawed Tamil Tiger group fought for 37 years for a homeland for ethnic Tamils before being crushed in a giant government offensive that has since been dogged by war crimes allegations.

Among those who declined to send military delegations were the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Switzerland -- all of whom have criticised Colombo over alleged rights abuses.

Sri Lanka's top arms supplier, China, is co-sponsoring the conference and two Chinese companies will also exhibit military hardware on the sidelines.

The meeting is being held amid mounting pressure for a war crimes investigation after a panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said last month that there were "credible allegations" against Sri Lankan troops.

The UN estimates up to 100,000 people were killed in fighting between 1972 and 2009 while at least 7,000 civilians perished in the final months of the war.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5joJe-gKjUAV3dgGK9RiAO2KAaaQw?docId=CNG.bff3a61b54b0cfb8836bd8ec4e35c6f1.721

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