Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party TNA on Friday called for allowing foreign judges and prosecutors to probe the alleged war crimes, a day after the UN Human Rights Council gave Colombo two more years to set up a credible investigation into the country’s brutal civil war.
Sri Lankan troops are accused of killing at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians during former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime that brought an end to the three-decade long civil war with the LTTE in 2009, according to the UN.
According to the government figures, around 20,000 people are missing due to various conflicts including the civil war with Lankan Tamils in the north and east which claimed at least 100,000 lives.
The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday approved giving two more years to the Sri Lankan government to set up a credible war crimes investigation into the civil war.
MA Sumanthiran, the senior Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spokesman, said that they would urge for “a tribunal which is entirely international”.
“We will take the case to the International Criminal Court,” he said while addressing Parliament.
Sumanthiran said the official position taken by Foreign Minister Thilak Marapana on Wednesday in Geneva that foreign judges cannot constitutionally operate in Sri Lanka was false.