Sri Lanka should ‘prosecute troops’

Sri Lanka should ensure government troops who committed war crimes towards the end of its war against Tamil rebels are brought to justice, the UN Human Rights Council has said.

The Geneva-based forum yesterday adopted a resolution brought by the United States urging the government of president Mahinda Rajapaksa to implement the findings of an official probe. That commission called for the prosecution of soldiers guilty of misconduct.

Twenty-four members of the 47-member forum backed the resolution, including India, but 15 opposed it, including Cuba, Russia and China. Eight countries abstained.

Sri Lanka, which sent 70 officials to the Swiss city for weeks to lobby to defeat the initiative, dismissed it as a bid by “powerful countries” to meddle in its internal affairs.

“This is a highly selective and arbitrary process not governed by objective norms or criteria of any kind,” foreign minister G.L. Peiris said in a statement issued in Colombo.

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in 2009 in the final months of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, a United Nations panel said last year, as government troops advanced on the ever-shrinking northern tip of the island controlled by Tamil forces fighting for an independent homeland.