Reuters
Geneva
Victims and activists back special court for alleged war crimes, including mass killings of civilians, by a special court with international judges.
Sandya Eknaligoda, wife of Sri Lankan journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda who disappeared near Colombo in January 2010, was among victims’ families who came to Geneva to lobby for support for justice.
“I am very certain it was the (President Mahinda) Rajapakse government that made him disappear. It is clear from information unearthed more recently that it was the army that took him,” she said. “I can’t trust the domestic system so an international investigation is very important.”
Eknaligoda is among the “emblematic cases” in the UN report which said several military personnel had been arrested last month in connection with his disappearance.
There was no immediate comment by Mahinda Rajapakse, who crushed the Tamil insurgency, or his brother, former defence minister Gotabaya
Rajapakse.
The nearly 300-page report quotes the latter as saying in a 2009 television interview that the PTK Hospital, one of the most heavily-hit medical facilities in the north just outside the “No Fire Zone”, was a “legitimate target”.
On the northern Jaffna peninsula, where government forces staged their final assault against Tamil Tiger rebels, those who lost loved ones had little faith in the government’s promises.
“I am not sure if we will see justice,” said T Dushiyanthan, whose two sisters-in-law disappeared after they came by army bus to a no-fire zone in the last days of the war.
“The government might punish two or three top military commanders who are not in their good books,” the teacher said. “I have no confidence in this process.”
Fred Carver, campaign director for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, said that the report left no doubt that “many of the tens of thousands of civilians who died in the early months of 2009 were murdered by their own government”.
Tamil Tigers also committed atrocities, he said, noting that “very few members of the LTTE’s senior leadership survive”.