State-run TV is targeting Sri Lanka NGOs, say activists

March 12,2014: Nongovernmental organizations in Sri Lanka say they are being unfairly targeted by state media for filing complaints in a memo to the UN Human Rights Council, for what they say are ongoing human rights violations.
State-run Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corp, in a March 6 broadcast, said that by complaining to the United Nations, the 24 NGOs that signed the complaint could “damage the peace and reconciliation” among Sri Lanka’s various ethnic groups and regions. Ruki Fernando of the Inform Human Rights Documentation Center, said “I think it would have been good if Rupavahini pointed out what has been said in the civil society memo, and pointed out what exactly was false, instead of making sweeping and vague allegations about false information.” In their complaint to the United Nations, the NGOs called for a war crimes investigation and said that religious extremism was increasing. The military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam both stand accused of a wide range of war crimes. According to the UN statistics, as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed during the final stages of the war.
Member countries of the UN Human Rights Council are scheduled to vote March 28 on a US-sponsored resolution that could call for an investigation into alleged war crimes that occurred during the final phases of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
Source: AsiaNews