SRI LANKA: Pressure mounts on accountability process

SRI LANKA: Pressure mounts on accountability process

COLOMBO, 14 September 2011 (IRIN) - The failure of a national accountability commission into human rights abuses in the last days of the civil war could add to calls for an international inquiry, a top US diplomat warned on 14 September in Sri Lanka.
“If it [a national inquiry] is not a credible process, there will be pressure for some sort of alternate mechanism,” Robert Blake, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, said at the conclusion of a three-day visit to the island nation.

Blake, who met President Mahinda Rajapaksa and ministers, noted, however, that Washington would wait for the release of the final report of the government's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), appointed by the president in May 2010 to investigate the final days of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), before passing judgment. The report is due in November.    
Tens of thousands lost their lives in the war 
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UN to review its actions during Sri Lanka's war

14 September, 2011

United Nations is to review its actions during the war in Sri Lanka and its aftermath. The Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has appointed Thoraya Obaid, former executive director of the UN population fund to lead this review. The review will be conducted on the recommendation of the Expert Panel appointed by the Secretary General to advice him on possible war crimes in the last months of the war in 2009. In a letter to the president of the Human Rights Council, the UN Secretary General said “on my Expert Panel’s recommendation that I should conduct a review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and its aftermath regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates”. The report released in April 2011 by the Expert Panel, recommended that the Secretary should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the UN system during the war.