Sri Lanka: United Nations Says Leaders Must Do More to Investigate War Deaths
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Version 0 of 1. Sri Lanka is failing to investigate atrocities that government forces are accused of committing in defeating a Tamil insurgency, and activists and opposition politicians are still being killed or abducted, the United Nations said Wednesday. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, left, called on the authorities to allow criminal and forensic experts to help resolve accusations of wartime crimes. “The steps taken by the government to investigate allegations of serious violations of human rights further have also been inconclusive and lack the independence and impartiality required to inspire confidence,” the United Nations commissioner said in a report that went to Sri Lanka in September. An expert panel set up by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon whose findings have been rejected by Sri Lanka has said that the army committed large-scale abuses and that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in the last months of the conflict in 2009. Commissioner Pillay said the government has not set up a mechanism to trace adults who went missing during the latter stages of the war, and that investigations of disappearances had not led to arrests or prosecutions. |