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Sri Lanka: UN says shelling 'killed civilians'
BBC NEWS, SOUTH ASIA
April 26, 2011: The UN has said widespread shelling by the Sri Lankan government killed most of the tens of thousands of civilians it says died in the final months of the 26-year-long war, in 2009. In a report on possible war crimes during the closing phase of that war, the UN also accuses Tamil Tigers rebels of using civilians as human shields. It is calling for an independent international investigation.
But Sri Lanka has rejected the report's finding as biased and fraudulent. It denies that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the months leading up to the government's victory over Tamil separatists in May 2009.
"The Sri Lankan army is not responsible and [the] Sri Lankan government is not responsible," government spokesman Lakshman Hulugalle told the BBC. "We never shelled or we never bombed. We never targeted innocent civilians. It's a wrong allegation and we can prove it," he said.
Sri Lanka had asked the UN not to publish the report, saying it could damage reconciliation efforts.
'Credible allegations'
The highly controversial document was the result of a 10-month process of gathering evidence by a UN panel that was not allowed into Sri Lanka. The report paints a brutal image of the final offensive on the Tamil enclave in northern Sri Lanka between January and May 2009.
It said that government forces deliberately shelled hospitals, UN centers and ships belonging to international aid group the Red Cross. It describes prisoners being shot in the head and women raped, while the Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE) used 330,000 civilians as human shields, and shot those who tried to escape.
The UN experts said there were "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international rights law was committed both by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".
It urged the government to issue a formal and public recognition of its responsibility for the extensive civilian casualties in the final stages of the conflict.
The panel also recommended that the Sri Lankan government should respond to the serious allegations "by initiating an effective accountability process beginning with genuine investigations" which would meet international standards.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he could not launch an international investigation into war crimes allegations unless the Sri Lankan government agreed, or member states called for it.
But the BBC's Barbara Plett, in New York, says that the country continues to have strong allies on both the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council.
'A matter of transparency'
However, the UN will carry out a review of its own actions during the conflict. The report criticizes UN officials for not pressing the Sri Lankan government hard enough to exercise restraint and for not going public with high casualty figures which, it says, would have put more pressure on the government.
In a statement, the secretary general's spokesperson said: "The decision to release the report was made as a matter of transparency and in the broader public interest."
He said a copy of the report had been made available "in its entirety" to the government of Sri Lanka on 12 April, adding that the government had failed to respond to a repeated offer to publish its response to the panel's finding alongside the report.
Our correspondent says that a divided Security Council was initially reluctant to address Sri Lanka's war and much less call for an inquiry. But the secretary general appointed the panel after mounting evidence of serious human rights abuses and massive civilian casualties in the five-month offensive, which ended the war.
