Tamil National Alliance (TNA) member of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC), M K Shivajilingam, has written to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, urging him to ensure the investigations on on the war is purely an international judicial process.
In his letter, Shivajilingam noted that the UN’s failure to protect the Tamil people in 2009 was termed as “systemic failure” of the UN by the UN’s own “Report of the UN Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on UN Action in Sri Lanka” released in November 2012 by the head of the Panel Charles Petrie.
He says the Tamil people sincerely hope that the UN System will not victimize the Tamils again and hope the UN will accommodate their request to adequately and properly conduct the judicial process and offer them justice and future protection.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is scheduled to formally release a report investigating the war in Sri Lanka, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next month.
“As you prepare to release the Report by the OISL, I would like to request you to consider the pattern of historic failures of Sri Lanka against the Tamil people. Sri Lanka had conducted numerous commissions and inquiries against the killing of Tamils, without any meaningful results. To manage the International pressure it even conducted “Inquiry” with International Independent Group of Eminent persons from eleven countries as monitors, but they all resigned in protest against Sri Lanka in 2008 pointing to the lack of cooperation, transparency and political will from Sri Lanka to support the search for truth towards justice.
Shivajilingam says the Tamil people do not believe that anything short of an international judicial process will be seen as justice to the victimized Tamil population.
He also called on the High Commissioner to take measures to judicially address the Genocide against the Tamil people as called upon by the unanimous resolution adopted by the Northern Provincial Council of Sri Lanka in February 2015. (Colombo Gazette)