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U.N. Approves Investigation of Civil War in Sri Lanka
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEMARCH 27, 2014


GENEVA — Overriding fierce objections from Sri Lanka, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted on Thursday to open an international investigation into possible war crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels in the final stages of a 26-year civil war that ended in 2009.

The council’s 47 members voted 23 to 12 with 12 abstentions in favor of a resolution sponsored by a core group of nations, including the United States, that calls on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a comprehensive investigation into allegations of serious violations and abuses of human rights by both sides.

The high commissioner, Navi Pillay, had urged the creation of an independent inquiry on the grounds that the Sri Lankan authorities had made little progress in investigating possible war crimes during the military operations that crushed the Tamil Tigers’ brutal rebellion to establish a homeland five years ago.

That lack of progress, Ms. Pillay added pointedly in a report to the council in February, is “fundamentally a question of political will.” Sri Lankan investigations of the military’s actions lack independence and credibility, she added.

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Ambassador Zamir Akram of Pakistan said, “This resolution is about politics, not about human rights.” He moved to delay the vote on the grounds that the human rights office lacked the resources to carry out the investigation, and then proposed to delete a reference to an independent investigation.

India, which had supported tamer resolutions on Sri Lanka’s war in the last two years, backed both proposals, but abstained from the vote on Thursday, saying it was concerned about the creation of an external investigation with an open-ended mandate.

The focus of the investigation will be the carnage that unfolded in the military campaign at the end of the war, a time when up to 40,000 civilians are reported to have died, mainly as a result of heavy military bombardment of areas in which the military had encouraged them to assemble.

But the resolution also expresses concern about what the United States has said is the continuing deterioration of human rights in Sri Lanka, including continuing abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings, and it calls on the human rights office to continue monitoring and reporting on Sri Lanka.

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