BY Ruwan Laknath Jayakody
The report by the Office of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) contains the names of 43 individuals including those in the Army, Air Force and Navy as being allegedly complicit in war crimes, human rights abuses and violations.
It is reliably learned that a report from the United States of America is going to clear Sri Lanka of war crimes by stating that Sri Lankan forces followed the Fourth Protocol of the Geneva Convention, which is relative to the protection of civilian persons in the time of war, stating that innocent people had been used as human shields for four to six months by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and thus the Sri Lankan forces had attempted to save those being held captive and against their will, and thus no war crimes had been committed by the Sri Lankan forces.
Nothing much will happen at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in September, Attorney-at-Law Dr. Prathiba Mahanamahewa remarked.
He outlined that the UN Security Council throwing out the report compiled by Lord Goddard on Israeli forces killing 300 innocent Palestinians was a similar instance.
“The UN must protect the confidentiality of their report or this would throw other reports of alleged war crimes in the wrong light. The UN must make a clarification,” he explained.