United Nations to issue Sri Lanka war crimes report on Wednesday

High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said that the report was not “earth-shattering in terms of revelations” but provides “focus and clarity” along with a “good foundation for criminal investigations to proceed”.

GENEVA (AP) – The U.N.’s top human rights official is urging the creation of a special court to look into atrocities committed during Sri Lanka’s long civil war, which left tens of thousands dead.

“This report is being presented in a new political context in Sri Lanka, which offers grounds for hope”, he continued.

President Maithripala Sirisena, who defeated Mr Rajapaksa’s bid for a third term in January, has made tentative steps towards reconciliation at the head of a broad reform coalition.

Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils today rejected government plans for a truth commission to promote reconciliation after decades of ethnic war, insisting on an global inquiry.

The Human Rights Council will on Wednesday release a long-awaited report on Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes during the war against the Tamil Tiger guerillas in which at least 100,000 people died.

The mistrust between the two communities goes beyond to the riots in 1983, when a faction of the majority Sinhalese killed more than 3,000 innocent Tamil civilians across the country.

One shocking finding of the investigation was the extent to which sexual violence was committed against detainees, often extremely brutally, by the Sri Lankan security forces.

“The United Nations human rights chief has rightly concluded that Sri Lanka’s domestic courts are ill-equipped to prosecute the heinous worldwide crimes exposed by the United Nations investigation”, said Sonya Sceats, director of advocacy and policy at Freedom from Torture, in a statement.

It found that children were often abducted by the separatists from their homes, schools, temples and checkpoints and sent to the front lines as soldiers, while a group linked to the government had also recruited children.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe held talks in New Delhi on Tuesday. Among the reasons given were the absence of “reliable” victim and witness protection systems, and the degree to which Sri Lanka’s security sector and justice system “have been distorted and corrupted by decades of emergency, conflict and impunity”.

Zeid’s office also published on its website a response from the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry that said the government will make sure the report and recommendations “receive due attention” of authorities.

“The Tamil Nadu Assembly requests the Government of India that if America takes a stand supportive of Sri Lanka (at the UNHRC), then India must take diplomatic efforts to change that”, the resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the House, said.

The “organisation and planning” was obvious in most of the crimes documented within the report, Zeid stated with out elaboration.