UN Experts: Sri Lanka Tamil Genocide Video is Real-UN says Sri Lanka Army (SLA) committed war crimes against the Tamil minority.

Thursday June 2, 2011

(SALEM) - A UN Special Rapporteur confirmed Tuesday that a video allegedly depicting Sri Lanka Army (SLA) forces executing Tamil Tigers was authentic, and that the video was “prima facie evidence of international crimes.”

Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, described the killings shown on the video – whose authenticity has been contested by the Sri Lankan government – as “textbook examples of extrajudicial executions.”

The independent United Nations human rights expert has called on Sri Lankan authorities to thoroughly investigate the apparent execution of several men by Government soldiers, saying a disputed video of the incident seems to be authentic.

The video provided by Britain's Channel 4 News shows naked people with their hands tied behind their backs being executed against a backdrop of corpses of other men and women. Heyns said the new evidence should be investigated in both the domestic and international arena.

At a press conference in Geneva, the UN Rapporteur said the new evidence should be investigated in both the domestic and international arena.

Sri Lanka's army- In bigger barracks -A victorious army keeps busy despite the lack of an enemy

Jun 2nd 2011 | COLOMBO

Let the army make it next time

IN THE run-up to Vesak, the holiest day in the Buddhist calendar, which this year coincided with the second anniversary of its victory against the Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka’s armed forces had plenty to do. The throngs who clogged Colombo’s streets on May 18th for the festival of light marking the Buddha’s birthday were treated to an array of glimmering, white paper lanterns, each meticulously assembled by a soldier, sailor or airman.
The army’s non-martial tasks do not stop at lamp-making. Between 2006 and 2009 Sri Lanka inducted thousands into its army, navy and air force to fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. With the war won, servicemen are being deployed in everything from market gardening to tourism.
The bloody end of the war is still being refought diplomatically. On May 27th Sri Lanka celebrated it with a military parade in Colombo featuring mostly Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian hardware. And on May 31st a three-day seminar opened in Colombo, with the aim of teaching the world how to defeat terrorism the Sri Lankan way. Meanwhile, in Geneva, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, a UN special investigator was showing video of Sri Lankan soldiers in the war’s final days, apparently executing civilians. He called it “trophy footage” and evidence of serious human-rights abuses. However, despite calls for a boycott of the Sri Lankan seminar, 42 countries attended.

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A notable omission from the agenda was any initiative to pare back Sri Lanka’s now bloated armed forces. Instead, the government is finding new things for them to do. Soldiers are taking on the civilian middlemen who control the vegetable trade by selling cheap produce, some of it from military farms. The navy has even opened a vegetable shop near one of its biggest camps in Colombo. The army has an air-ticketing agency. It is building roads and bridges, and houses for the internally displaced. Soldiers built one cricket stadium and renovated another for the World Cup earlier this year. Restaurants along the highway to Jaffna in the north are mostly army-owned or -run. The army will even supervise the private companies that collect the rubbish in Colombo.
On the Jaffna Peninsula the army converted a former officers’ mess into a 22-room luxury resort. It runs two hotels elsewhere. The navy has a canal-boat service in Colombo; it also offers whale-watching tours. In parts of the country the army in effect runs local government. In the Vanni district, for example, an area populated mainly by the Tamil minority, where hundreds remain displaced or resettled in shoddy shelters, many administrative measures need a military stamp of approval. The governors of the Northern and Eastern provinces are both retired military commanders. Other retired officers are now posted overseas as ambassadors.
A controversial post-war task for the army is to conduct “leadership training” for university students. Despite protests by student unions, and advice to the government from the Supreme Court to consider a postponement, a first batch of 10,000 students has started the compulsory course, conducted in army camps.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the defence minister, says the armed forces have tripled in number under his brother, Mahinda, the president. He sees nothing amiss with their deployment in “development work”. The government has a duty, he says, to care for its soldiers, many of whom were recruited in poor, rural areas. Nor is there much public protest against this creeping militarisation.
But NGOs caution against such extensive military involvement in civilian life and question the use of soldiers to fix public-sector failures. Indeed, says the National Peace Council, an NGO, failure to separate military and civilian roles could ultimately lead to “unwanted military rule nursed by a democratically elected government”. When armies get above themselves, nasty things happen.          More »      

Review of a history of oppression: The Tamils of Sri Lanka

Danielle Sabaï

In February 2011, the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, celebrated the 63rd anniversary of the island’s independence. In his speech, he stressed the necessity of “protecting the reconstructed nation”, as well as protecting “one of the oldest democracies in Asia”, its unity and its unitary character.

This speech came nearly two years after the end of the war on 19 May 2009, between the Sri Lankan state and the "Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE). The military command of the LTTE was decimated in the last two months of a merciless war which had led to tens of thousands of deaths since the early 1980s.

Some thirty years of civil war have transformed the Sri Lankan political landscape. Once an island characterised by a developed social policy and high development indicators, Sri Lanka is today ravaged by state violence, the militarisation of society and an authoritarian state.    read article...    

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Silence on Sri Lanka screams of duplicity

smh.com.au   June 3, 2011
This week Sri Lanka celebrated the second anniversary of the end of its 26-year civil war by holding an international ''defeating terrorism'' conference. It is a kind of brag-fest, to talk about the lessons learnt in its brutal victory over the insurgent group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.                  
There's one aspect, however, of the protracted battle that the Sri Lankan government does not like to talk about, how in the final stages - a United Nations ''panel of experts'' says - up to 40,000 civilians may have been massacred.
And the international community is not terribly interested in such a discussion either. But, for the record, here are some of the horrific findings contained in the UN panel's nearly 200-page report, published in April.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/silence-on-sri-lanka-screams-of-duplicity-20110602-1fiqr.html#ixzz1O9Zu7TZK

Sri Lankans protest over killing of co-worker

South Asia  2 June 2011 

By Charles Haviland BBC News, Colombo 

The trouble stems from an unpopular pension scheme

Thousands of Sri Lankan factory workers have demonstrated against the killing of a co-worker during violent clashes with police earlier this week.

The workers, mostly women, chanted slogans against the police and President Rajapaksa opposite the entrance to the international airport.
They waved a large white cloth flag to symbolise the death of Roshen Chanaka.
Eyewitnesses say that the 22-year old man was shot dead in clashes between demonstrators and police on Monday.
The government has apologised, and two ministers have condemned the police tactics.
On Wednesday, in a move very rare in Sri Lankan political life, the police chief resigned as a result of the incident.
Protesters say that while the president had declared that the military were aware of the need to protect human rights, the same could not be said of the police.
Demonstrators on Thursday were hemmed in by soldiers, with the unpopular police nowhere to be seen.
The government is still popular following its victory against the Tamil Tigers two years ago. But economic hardships are growing in Sri Lanka.
The current dispute stems from an unpopular pension scheme, which would have docked an extra 2% from private sector workers' salaries, yet benefited only some of them.
The government has suspended the scheme but says it may yet bring it in again.

Govt's first successful ruthless sacrifice of a young life at the altar of its despotic ambitions: worker at free trade zone murdered !

(Lanka-e-News -01.June.2011, 11.00PM) The Govt. made an official announcement a little while ago that 21 year old youth Roshana Chanaka had died . He was a victim of the shooting by the police at Katunayake on the direct orders issued by defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse, it is learnt.

Might we recall that we published a news item in our website yesterday that a youth had died , and the Govt. is suppressing this by barring the public from seeing him and forcing the Hospital authorities not to reveal it while fixing machines and equipments to the body to make it look that the victim of the Katunayake police shooting has not died . This youth who sustained injuries following the shooting by the police on the 30th was receiving treatment at the Ragama Hospital.

Vasantha Samarasinghe , the secretary of the inter Company workers union speaking to Lanka e news said , the police firing had injured a testicle of this lad ; as a result , one of his legs had to be amputated. Following the surgery , Chanaka died . This Govt. which killed him in cold blood most cruelly took revenge on his relatives by not informing them of his death.
Those behind this wicked murder should be revealed, and the person who gave orders for the shooting shall be exposed, Samarasinghe asserted.

The murdered Roshan Chanaka is from Galoluwa, Minuwangoda and a worker in the S. S. Steel enterprise in the free trade zone. He had started work at this Institution 4 months ago.

Meanwhile the Opposition had stated that the President has appointed a retired judge as a one man commission to inquire into the Katunayake shooting which will serve no purpose to anyone , and therefore a request is to be made to the Speaker to appoint a Parliamentary select Committee to inquire into the true facts regarding this killing , the opposition pointed out , and that they are getting ready to make this request. They also added that this heinous crime committed has been by the defense Secretary and the police , and therefore enlisting the police to inquire into this is ridiculous and meaningless.
According to the police Commands Act, the maximum power the police has is to hit an individual below his knee with a baton , or shoot below the knee. That action can only be resorted to by the police in self defense and only in retaliation to an initial attack by the wrongdoer . In the circumstances , a human rights legal expert speaking to Lanka e news said , this action of the police clearly constitutes a diabolic murder . Hence deterrent and stern action should be taken against those behind this and the person who gave orders to kill human life should be arrested and the laws implemented duly.

U.S. case: Rajapakse ducks service, Court order sought for alternate service

Europe   1 June 2011

 

Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is now in The Hague, where he will go on trial at the international war crimes tribunal. Will justice be delivered?

Judge Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals, believes the court has set important benchmarks. He held the posts from 1994-96, when indictments were drawn up against Gen Mladic and his political boss, Radovan Karadzic.

When in 1994 I started investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia I could not have imagined that the process would be so complex, slow and yet so successful.
 

The court decided to go after 'those most responsible' - the leaders

Mr Karadzic and Gen Mladic had already been indicted when the Srebrenica massacre occurred

Full Story>>>

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War Crimes in Sri Lanka

*War Without Witness in Sri Lanka

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U.S. case: Rajapakse ducks service, Court order sought for alternate service

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 June 2011, 00:04 GMT]
Attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who filed civil action against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda
Rajapakse for monetary damages under US's Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the District Court of District of Columbia, informed the Court Tuesday that defendant, Mahinda Rajapakse, has avoided service of process by not accepting mail sent by recorded delivery to the Sri Lanka embassy and "Temple Trees," and that Plaintiffs are in the process of attempting to serve via Sri Lankan central authority in accordance with the provisions of "The Hague Convention," to which the U.S. and Sri Lanka are signatories. Plaintiffs will seek authorization from the court for alternate means of service, such as notification via a legal publication.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse

Plaintiffs' attorney, Bruce Fein, told TamilNet that the Sri Lanka embassy in the U.S. and the mail handlers at the Temple Trees, the official residence of Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, have refused to accept summons and the complaint sent to the two addresses by recorded delivery.

Mr Fein added that if the defendant fails to accept service through the Hague Convention service of process, then the plaintiffs will file a motion with the Court seeking authority to effectuate service by publication. For this exercise, Fein said that the regulations require that summons and the complaint be translated into the native language of the defendant, Sinhala. The Sinhala translation of the complaint is now available for the benefit of the Sinhala public, Fein said.

• Report to Court on Efforts to effectuate service

Once the Court agrees to service by publication, failure to answer by the defendant will result in a default judgment and a court order for the defendant to pay the plaintiffs the damages. This is a critical step, Fein cautioned, as the Court need to be convinced that it has personal jurisdiction over the defendant before agreeing to a default judgment.     Full Story...

Sri Lankan police chief Mahinda Balasuriya resigns

South Asia  1 June 2011 

By Charles Haviland BBC News, Colombo

The police action provoked angry demonstrations

In an extremely rare move, the chief of police in Sri Lanka has opted for early retirement.

It comes two days after 250 people were injured in clashes between police and factory workers. One man died later.
The police have been widely criticised for opening fire with live bullets and an opposition MP says one injured person is fighting for his life.
The violence happened as workers demonstrated against a new pension scheme, which has now been suspended.
Police Inspector-General Mahinda Balasuriya said that he was resigning from his post because of what happened on Monday at a free trade zone north of the capital.
Factory employees, mainly garment workers, protested angrily about a new pension scheme which they say will hit the poorest people hardest.
They threw stones and the police fired live rounds and teargas.
The government says hundreds were injured including 15 police officers.
An opposition parliamentarian, Ranjan Ramanayake, told the BBC he had visited hospitals and met at least eight people who had been shot.
He said one young man who was on a life-support machine after a bullet went right through his body had died.
Television footage from Monday appeared to show the police storming a factory compound after workers retreated from the teargas, knocking men to the ground and beating them up.
Live bullets The police gave a different account, saying the protesters attacked police stations and tried to steal weapons inside.
In a rare display of public anger, big cardboard cutouts of President Mahinda Rajapaksa were torn down.
The free trade zone has been closed down for the moment and many parents have come to pick up their daughters and sons who work there, fearing for their immediate safety.
Two senior police officers have been arrested in connection with the violence and a retired judge is investigating it.
With concern over the health of the most badly injured people, a private news website says the government has ordered the director of the biggest hospital not to release casualty figures.
A Hong Kong-based campaign group, the Asian Human Rights Commission, says it needs to be established who ordered live bullets to be fired.
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   June 1, 2011 
 SRI LANKA: Who gave the orders to use live bullets on protesters at Katunayake? 

The government of Sri Lanka has announced the appointment of a one-man commission to inquire into the shooting at Katunayake on May 30, where, according to reports over 200 persons were injured when police opened fire against demonstrators using live ammunition. About 20 workers are reported to have been critically wounded and are being treated at hospitals. The protests were part of an Island-wide campaign against a proposed law endangering the provident fund of the workers of the private sector. In the aftermath of the shooting the government announced that the bill will not be presented to the parliament.
The use of live ammunition has come under public condemnation, even from some of the government ministers. The one-man commission of inquiry was appointed in answer to such criticism.
However, the mandate of the one-man commission is not clear. The basic questions that any public inquiry must resolve are:

• Who gave the orders to use live ammunition against the protestors? 
• What is the top most authority that authorized such use? 
• Who was the highest ranking officer on the ground who gave the orders to use live ammunition?
• Were the protestors warned prior to the police opening fire and were warning shots fired before deadly force was used.
• How many rounds of ammunition were expended and by whom?
• Was it the intention of the authorities to use of such deadly force in order to bring the protest to an end and was it pre-planned?As for the top most authority that authorized the use of live ammunition it is most likely that the orders came from the Secretary of the Ministry of Defense or someone working under him. Further, it is also unlikely that such a shooting would take place without the knowledge, if not the tacit consent of the Inspector General of police.

Will the one man commission have the power and the will to investigate this matter in order to meet the requirements of the rule law?
Will there be a forensic inquiry into all aspects of the shooting, for example an examination of all the weapons used during the incident? What are the means available for the one-man commissioner to conduct such an inquiry in terms of the requirements of criminal law?
These are just a few of the questions that need to be answered if the inquiry is to be credible and genuine and not just another white wash.

War-crimes film, Heyns report, drown Colombo theatrics on terror

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 June 2011, 00:22 GMT]
Channel-4's announcement of screening of an hour-long film on Sri Lanka's killing fields at UN on 3rd June, and the presentation of video footage to the UN Human Rights Council by the UN special investigator into extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, spread a gloomy war-crimes cloud over Sri Lanka making the terror-summit in Colombo, a holiday-extravaganza for the military brass of several rogue nations. The terror-summit is widely perceived as an ill-conceived attempt to whitewash the criminal enterprise the Rajapakse brothers took in slaughtering more than 40,000 civilians and incarcerating more than 300,000 Tamils in internment camps in the war to defeat the Tigers.

Heyns report confirming video authenticity

 

"It's very rare that you have actual footage of people being killed," Mr Heyns, a lawyer by training, told The Associated Press. "This is different from CCTV. This is trophy footage," said Heyns, adding, the video showed "definitive war crimes", believed to have taken place in May 2009 - that require both domestic and international proceedings to be launched.

Special Investigator on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Christof Heyns

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay

Ms. Yasmin Sooka

"There is a prima facie case and it should now go to the next level," Heynes said, referring to the need for an independent international investigations.

Spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist organization, said, "its a strange quirk of destiny that three South Africans, concurrently holding key human rights positions, are dragging Sri Lanka's war-crimes to world's center stage. One can surmise that the chequered history of apartheid and the moral authority arising from the witnessed inhumanity to a people by another people are driving Navi Pillay, Christof Heyns, and Yasmin Sooka to stand up for justice. Tamil people are eternally grateful to these South Africans for taking the moral highground."

While UN sessions are taking place in Geneva, many rogue nations and alleged abettor nations of the war-crimes, Pakistan, India, Russia and China are attending the terror-summit being held in Colombo.

U.S., Britain, Japan, Australia and France declined invitation to attend the summit.

Meanwhile, , the announced film scheduled to be screened in Geneva and to air in Channel-4 on June 14th, presented by Channel 4 News journalist Jon Snow, features footage captured on mobile phones, both by Tamil civilians under attack and government soldiers as war trophies. It shows: the extra-judicial executions of prisoners; the aftermath of targeted shelling of civilian camps and dead female Tamil Tiger fighters who appear to have been raped or sexually assaulted, abused and murdered. Also examined in the film are some of the terrible crimes carried out by the Tamil Tigers, including the cynical use of Tamil civilians as human shields, Channel-4 said.

"The film, directed by Callum Macrae, provides powerful evidence - including photographic stills, official Sri Lankan army video footage and satellite imagery - which contradicts the Sri Lankan government's claims of a policy of ‘Zero Civilian Casualties'. The film raises serious questions about the failures of the international community to intervene and prevent the deaths of up to forty thousand people and lends new urgency to the UN-appointed panel of expert's call for an international inquiry to be mounted," Channel-4 said in its news report.

Callum Macrae, Director of Sri Lanka's Killing fields

Macrae said: "The Sri Lankan government wanted a war without witness - deporting journalists and pressurising UN representatives to leave - but it didn't allow for the extraordinary power of mobile phone and satellite technology. We have trawled through hours of painfully raw recordings of the some of the most awful events I have ever seen in many years of war reporting. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields raises serious questions about the consequences if the UN fails to act - not only for Sri Lanka but for future violations of international law," according to Channel-4.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says that with more evidence of alleged atrocities due to be shown in the city later this week, the pressure is growing on the UN Human Rights Council to debate the role of the army in the closing months of the Sri Lankan civil war, BBC reported.
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Spain exercises universal jurisdiction in El Salvador killings
[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 June 2011, 03:13 GMT]
Judge, Eloy Velasco Nuñez of Spain’s National Court, used the doctrine of universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed outside of the country, to issue arrest warrants on Monday for some of the top military leaders of El Salvador’s civil war, accusing them of meticulously planning and carrying out the killings of six Jesuit priests in 1989, New York Times said in its Tuesday edition. The 77-page charging document said that the 20 men named in the warrants never had doubts about “carrying out the most execrable crimes against people merely to impose their strategies and ideas.”
“We wanted to walk the judge every step of the way,” said Almudena Bernabeu, a lawyer with the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco, which brought the case to Spain’s National Court with the support of the victims’ families. “The defense has always argued that it all happened in the chaos of war. But there is no doubt that this was a very carefully planned military operation.”
Among the men named in the indictment: Rafael Humberto Larios, who was the Salvadoran defense minister at the time; Juan Orlando Zepeda, the vice defense minister; René Emilio Ponce, leader of the Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Inocente Orlando Montano, the vice minister of public safety. Mr. Ponce, who is believed to have given the order for the killings, died this month in El Salvador. Mr. Montano is in custody, New York Times said in its report.
Under international pressure, a Salvadoran court tried nine men for the killings and convicted two officers, including Col. Guillermo Benavides Moreno, who witnesses said gave direct orders to the commando who carried out the killings. Both Colonel Moreno and the other officer were freed after serving 15 months under an amnesty declared in 1993. They are both named in the new indictment. Judge Velasco argued that the earlier trial was a sham, the paper said.
In the U.K., British citizens can apply for an arrest warrant under the Magistrates Court Act 1980. Suspect Sri Lankan war criminal, Major General Chagi Gallage, a member of Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapaksa's, entourage to London, escaped arrest in December 2010 by his premature departure from Britain.
Tamil activists in Norway, has similary filed Genocide charges against Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and others in the Norwegian courts. If the Prosecutor determines there is reason to believe war-crimes were committed in Sri Lanka, the defendants will face the danger of being arrested if they happen to travel through Norway.

Channel 4 footage heads to the UN

Posted by Monkey Wednesday 1 June 2011 13.20 BST guardian.co.uk

A refugee camp in Cheddikulam in Sri Lanka. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

A bunch of bananas to Channel 4 for its tireless investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Sri Lanka. Its contribution was recognised on Tuesday by the UN's independent investigator on extrajudicial killing, Christof Heyns, who said previous Channel 4 coverage had exposed "definitive war crimes". As a result, on Friday Channel 4's latest investigation, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, will be exclusively premiered at the UN. It will be screened at an Amnesty International event at the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva. The footage is described by Channel 4's news and current affairs boss, Dorothy Byrne, as "probably the most horrific the channel has ever shown" and will be aired on 14 June. It surely fits in with Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham's ambition for the broadcaster to "stimulate debate, take risks and be brave".
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UN declares Sri Lanka video showing executions authentic

Published On Tue May 31 2011

Frank Jordans Associated Press

GENEVA — A UN investigator called Tuesday for Sri Lanka to investigate and file charges against soldiers shown in a graphic video shooting bound, blindfolded prisoners and abusing corpses in the final days of the 1983-2009 civil war.
The investigator, Christof Heyns, reviewed the 5-minute, 25-second video with a team of technical and forensics experts frame by frame to determine its authenticity, and told the Associated Press that the video suggests there is enough evidence to open a war-crimes case. Sri Lanka has claimed the video is fake.
In the video, several men lie on a muddy track, bound and motionless. The camera cuts and another man is shown being forced to sit upright by a soldier in camouflage carrying a rifle. Another soldier steps up behind the seated prisoner and shoots him in the back of the head, point blank. The prisoner slumps sideways as the camera pans across the road revealing nine bodies, most of them naked, with gunshot wounds clearly visible despite the grainy quality of the footage.
The uniformed men then force another blindfolded prisoner down into the dirt. A gunshot rings out and he, too, jerks and collapses. Later, the camera focuses on a young man, his skull blown open. Soldiers stand over the half-dressed corpse of a woman, gloating.
The Sri Lankan government says the video is staged, an attempt by pro-Tamil Tiger groups to undermine its hard-won victory in the country’s decades-old civil war.
“We have proven beyond any doubt that this is not authentic,” said Lakshman Hulugalla, director general of the government’s Media Center for National Security.
It has categorically rejected calls for an independent international probe into allegations of abuse carried out by Sri Lankan government forces in the north of the country in May 2009. Instead, the government says it has established a national panel to investigate. Human rights groups including Amnesty International say that isn’t enough.
Heyns, a South African law professor who is also the UN’s independent investigator on extrajudicial killings, told the AP the video shows “definitive war crimes.”
“There is a prima facie case and it should now go to the next level,” he said before screening the video for the first time to reporters in Geneva.
The United Nations estimates that between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed in the 26-year war. This includes at least 7,000 ethnic Tamil civilians killed in the last five months of the conflict. Numerous UN-appointed officials have concluded that both sides committed atrocities.
A recent UN report said Sri Lankan government forces deliberately targeted civilians and hospitals, and blocked food and medicine for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone. It also accused the Tamil Tigers of recruiting child soldiers and using civilians as human shields.
The latest footage was obtained by Britain’s Channel 4, which has so far shown only brief excerpts and an earlier, shorter video of the same events. The station plans to screen the new video in its entirety next month. Human rights groups say it adds to existing evidence that crimes were committed that merit an independent international investigation and possible war-crimes prosecutions.
“It’s horrific, hellish scenes of what must surely be murder,” said Ben De Pear, head of foreign affairs for Channel 4 News. He said the station chose to broadcast the footage after the UN experts helped it conclude that it is genuine.

Sri Lanka: UN expert calls on Government to probe executions captured on video

Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions

31 May 2011 –

An independent United Nations human rights expert has called on Sri Lankan authorities to thoroughly investigate the apparent execution of several men by Government soldiers, saying a disputed video of the incident seems to be authentic. Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, described the killings shown on the video – whose authenticity has been contested by the Sri Lankan Government – as “textbook examples of extrajudicial executions.”
In the video, which first appeared on British television, naked men are shown being placed with their hands behind their backs. They are then shot through the head from behind.
“Our findings are that these executions really took place and that has to be investigated further to establish who did it and what was the context,” Mr. Heyns said in an interview yesterday, a day before he presented his findings in Geneva.
“I do think a broader process is necessary to establish whether these are crimes against humanity [or] possibly war crimes that took place,” he said, adding it was important to determine if the killings were part of wider pattern of systematic attacks against civilians or prisoners of war.
In his report to the UN Human Rights Council he said that “what is reflected in the extended video are crimes of the highest order – definitive war crimes,” although he stressed that further investigations need to be carried out.
Mr. Heyns said experts in forensics, medicine, ballistics and video and audio concluded that the executions depicted in the video did take place, reflecting the findings last year of his predecessor, Philip Alston.
Speaking to the Council today, Sri Lanka’s representative Mohan Pieris said the Government had been precluded from making a full assessment of the video because of the blurred quality of the images.
He said it was important not to rush to conclusions, noting that media outlets, human rights defenders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were often quick to report on incidents during conflicts which result in the deaths of civilians without finding out the legal basis for military operations.
Last month a UN human rights panel found there were credible reports that both Government forces and Tamil rebels committed war crimes during the final stages of the civil war that ended in May 2009, and urged that further investigations be carried out.

News Tracker: past stories on this issue

Sri Lanka: UN rights chief urges further probes into reports of war crimes
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UN says Sri Lanka war crimes footage is 'authentic'

South Asia  31 May 2011

The UN special investigator into extrajudicial killings in Sri Lanka says video footage showing soldiers apparently executing civilians is evidence of serious rights abuses.

Christof Heyns presented the video footage to the UN Human Rights Council.
He said that after careful analysis, he had concluded that it was authentic.
The government has angrily denied his claims. It says that the video is a forgery and that the UN should let Sri Lanka hold its own inquiry.  

Both sides in the Sri Lankan war are accused of human rights abuses

  Full Story>>>