US envoy in Sri Lanka to discuss war crime charges
January 06, 2014 - A United States diplomat arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday to discuss
issues relating to alleged war crimes stemming from the Indian ocean island nation's
quarter-century civil war which ended four years ago. Stephen J. Rapp, an ambassador-at-large
in the Office of Global Criminal Justice, will be in Sri Lanka until Saturday to meet
government officials, and political and civil society leaders to discuss issues focusing
on Sri Lanka's justice, accountability and reconciliation processes, the U.S. state
department said. His visit comes two months ahead of a United Nations Human Rights
Council review of Sri Lanka's progress in probing alleged war crimes. The U.S. has
successfully carried two resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council urging
Sri Lanka to initiate a credible investigation. U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay has
said she would recommend that the council establish its own probe if Sri Lanka fails
to show progress by March. Western nations have been pressing Sri Lanka to account
for thousands of civilians who are suspected of being killed in the final months of
the quarter- century war that ended in May, 2009 when the government forces crushed
the Tamil Tiger rebels who were fighting for a homeland for ethnic minority Tamils.
According to a U.N. report, as many as 40,000 civilians may have died in the last
few months of the fighting, which the government disputes. For two years after the
war, Sri Lanka's government insisted that not a single civilian was killed. But later
in 2011 it acknowledged some civilian deaths and announced a census of the war dead
but its results were vague. Government troops were accused of deliberately shelling
civilians, hospitals and blocking food and medical aid to hundreds of thousands of
people boxed inside a tiny strip of land as the rebels mounted their last stand. The
government denies the charges. The rebels were accused of holding civilians as human
shields, killing those who escaped their control and recruiting child soldiers. (Source:
AP)