I will talk to Tamils, says Gotabaya in policy u-turn
SRI LANKA PRESIDENT CHANGES DECISION AS UN REVEALS ‘PROOF OF ARMY ABUSE’
SRI LANKA’S president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has said he will engage with the country’s Tamil diaspora for reconciliation talks in a major policy shift.
Rajapaksa is in the US for the United Nations General Assembly session where he had a “fruitful discussion” with UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on ways to jointly promote “reconciliation” in the country as the only way to move towards a prosperous future.
The president also said he would not hesitate to grant a pardon to Tamil youth in judicial custody for their association with the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Last week the UN Human Rights Council said in Geneva they were in possession of 120,000 items of evidence on alleged abuses by Sri Lankan troops during the conflict.
When he was elected president in November 2019, Rajapaksa, now 72, said he had been elected by the Sinhala majority and would serve their interests.
Until this week, he had adopted a stance of not negotiating with Tamil groups. However, in a statement by the president’s office in Colombo during his first overseas visit to address the UN General Assembly sessions, Rajapaksa said the Tamil diaspora would be invited for discussions on Sri Lanka’s internal issues.
In March, the UNHRC adopted a resolution against Sri Lanka’s rights record, giving the UN body a mandate to collect evidence of crimes committed during the country’s threedecade-long civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group.
Reacting to the UNHRC resolution – ‘Promotion of Reconciliation Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka’ – Rajapaksa blamed “foreign and local forces” for a lack of progress by the government.
The resolution called upon the Sri Lankan government to ensure a prompt and impartial investigation, if warranted, and prosecution of all alleged crimes relating to human rights violations and serious violations of international human rights law during the civil war.
The Tamil minority has welcomed the resolution.
As the top defence bureaucrat when his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was the president between 2005 and 2015, Rajapaksa led the LTTE’s defeat, ending their bloody separatist campaign in 2009.
He survived an assassination attempt carried out by the LTTE suicide bombers in 2006.
In May 2020, Rajapaksa said if any international body continued to “target” Sri Lankan government troops over “baseless allegations”, he would “not hesitate to withdraw Sri Lanka from such bodies or organisations”.
According to Sri Lanka’s government figures, more than 20,000 people are missing due to various conflicts.
The Tamils alleged that thousands were massacred during the final stages of the war that ended in 2009 when the government forces killed LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The Sri Lankan Army denies the charge, claiming it was a “humanitarian operation” to rid the Tamils of LTTE’s control.