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UN Human Rights Council To Vote On Sri Lanka Rights Record
BBC NEWS, ASIA
March 21, 2013: Member states of the UN's Human Rights Council are set to vote on a draft resolution highly critical of Sri Lanka's human rights record. The draft is also expected to call for Sri Lanka to hold a credible probe into alleged war crimes, particularly in the final phase of the conflict in 2009. But correspondents say the US-sponsored resolution appears to have been watered down compared with earlier drafts.
Sri Lanka's army defeated separatist Tamil rebels after a 26-year war. Both sides were accused of human rights abuses throughout the conflict with much focus on what happened in its final stages, when thousands of civilians were trapped in a thin strip of land in the north of Sri Lanka as fighting raged around them.
The entire conflict left at least 100,000 people dead, but there are still no confirmed figures for tens of thousands of civilian deaths in the last months of battle. One UN investigation said it was possible up to 40,000 people had been killed in the final five months alone. Other rights groups suggest the number of deaths could be even higher.
A 2011 report commissioned by the UN said that most of the civilian deaths were caused by government shelling. But the government released its own estimate last year, concluding that about 9,000 people perished in those few months.
Videos have also emerged to dog the Sri Lankan authorities since the war ended, suggesting that government forces committed serious war crimes in that final phase. These allegations are persistently denied by Colombo, which has said such evidence is fabricated.
Milder draft?
In its strongest passages this draft resolution voices concern at reports of violations continuing to this day - allegations of political disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture, threats to the rule of law and religious discrimination, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo reports. This reflects the recent sacking of the top judge in a process the domestic courts deemed illegal and a wave of hard-line Buddhist attacks on Muslims and Christians.
But, our correspondent reports, this latest draft is much milder than an earlier one - among other things "encouraging" Sri Lanka to take actions rather than "urging" it, and deleting an earlier assertion that Colombo had broken its own commitments on political devolution to Tamil areas.
Last year Sri Lanka's powerful neighbor India backed a similar, briefer motion. Analysts believe that India may vote with Washington again. Delhi has denied speculation that its diplomats have been working with the US to weaken the resolution.
On Tuesday a Tamil party from south India pulled out of India's governing coalition, accusing it of not taking a hard enough line against the Sri Lankan government. The move comes amid protests in Tamil Nadu state denouncing the prospect of a resolution that is not tough enough.
Meanwhile pro-government demonstrators have been protesting outside the US embassy in Colombo, hours before the vote is to take place in Geneva. The Sri Lankan government commissioned its own investigation into the war in 2011. Its Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) cleared the military of allegations that it deliberately attacked civilians. It said that there had been some violations by troops, although only at an individual level.
The government has been criticized by some for failing to implement the recommendations of the commission. In November 2012 an internal UN report said that the UN had failed in its mandate to protect civilians in those final months of the civil war.
