UN rights chief lashes back at Sri Lanka discrediting her

September 23, 2013 - The United Nations' top human rights official lashed back Friday at the Sri Lankan government, accusing some of its most senior officials of waging a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting her and her office. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in a statement that's unusual for a top U.N. official to direct at a U.N.-member country, took aim at Sri Lanka's powerful Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and other government officials, on the heels of her visit to the South Asian island nation last month. During the visit at least three government ministers ``joined in an extraordinary array of distortion and abuse'' which is continuing now, Pillay's spokesman, Rupert Colville, told reporters in Geneva. ``We consider it deeply regrettable that government officials and other commentators continue what appears to be a coordinated campaign of disinformation in an attempt to discredit the high commissioner or to distract from the core messages of her visit.'' At the end of her visit, Pillay issued a hard-hitting statement that democracy was being undermined and the rule of law eroded in Sri Lanka, with the country increasingly becoming an authoritarian state, despite the end of its civil war four years ago.
Meanwhile Sri Lanka's main ethnic Tamil party earned a convincing victory in the country's northern provincial elections, according to results released Sunday, in what is seen as a resounding call for wider regional autonomy in areas ravaged by a quarter century of civil war. The Tamil National Alliance will form the first functioning provincial government in the northern Tamil heartland after securing 30 out of 38 seats in Saturday's polls, Sri Lanka's elections commission said. President Mahinda Rajapaksa's coalition won the rest of the seats. (Source: AP)