UN-Sri Lanka

By S.L. GunasekaraIF Mahinda Rajapaksa had heeded the ‘demands’ (couched as requests) made by Moon, Clinton, Miliband and Kouchner etc and declared a ceasefire while we were on the point of victory, the terrorist Prabhakaran would still have been alive and terrorism would have thrived in the country. IF Mahinda Rajapaksa had heeded those demands:- […]

Former Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala on behalf of ‘Friday Forum’, a collective of concerned citizens calls upon all parties to act with restraint in responding to the Secretary General of the United Nations over the UN advisory committee report. Full text of the statement: The Friday Forum is deeply concerned over the initial reactions to the […]

Suraj A Bandara Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) expressed its disapproval on the allegations made against the Government in the three-member experts panel report of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on civilian casualties during the last stages of the humanitarian offensive against the LTTE. SLFP General Secretary Minister Susil Premajayantha rejected the findings of the […]

The Island newspaper continues to publish leaks from the report produced by the Panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to look into post-war accountability in Sri Lanka. Groundviews has covered in detail the Executive Summary and Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the leaks. The Island published today Part 4, which focusses on the […]

The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) said that the report compiled by the panel of experts appointed by the UN Secretary General, is his personal diplomatic terrorist operation. The JHU expressed this view at a media briefing convened yesterday. “The opinions voiced against Sri Lanka were defeated at the United Nations General Assembly. At such a […]

The report on Sri Lanka which was submitted by the UN Expert Panel appointed by the General Secretary Ban Ki Moon was prepared under the influence of bribes by LTTE sympathizers according to the National Freedom Front Leader, Minister Wimal Weerawansa.  He claimed that according to information that has been received, the LTTE supporting Tamil […]

By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, April 19 — The scanned portion of the UN Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka war crimes leaked, presumptively by the government, to The Island newspaper has been obtained by Inner City Press and is being put online here. It shows that the Panel’s three members signed off […]

Finally, who ever has heard of Rain, the South Korean songster who takes precedence over our great leader in the Time Poll of the 100 most influential personalities in the world? An official government release on this stresses that the president is the leading politician in the poll. Now at number 2, he has seen […]

The UNP said today that the government should turn the UN report into a  favorable one by implementing some of the recommendations made by the panel  in their report. UNP Deputy Chairman Lakshman Kiriella told a news conference today that  the government should follow Israel which adopted a similar approach when  they were charged of […]

  The handing over on 12 April, 2011, of the report on presumptive war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war in the Vanni, by the 03 member advisory panel of the United Nation’s Secretary General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon, with no official public disclosures, compels us as the Centre for Social […]

Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) announced that it will take steps to counter Sri Lankan government’s plans to organize several activities against the UN Panel Report on Sri Lanka. TGTE will create an Expert Panel to counter Sri Lanka’s anti-UN report and will meet different governments to counter Sri Lanka’s propaganda against UN report. […]

By LYDIA POLGREEN  A United Nations panel investigating allegations of war crimes by Sri Lankan troops at the end of the bloody battle against Tamil rebels in May 2009 found credible evidence that government soldiers made civilians a target, shelled hospitals and attacked aid workers, according to an unauthorized copy of the panel’s report. Sri […]

by Zacki Jabbar A united stand was required if the UN report, on the conduct of Sri Lanka’s security forces during the war against the LTTE, affected the country’s sovereignty, the UNP said yesterday. Harin Fernando MP, addressing a news conference in Colombo said that the UNP was yet to make a detailed study of […]

Groundviews  The Island newspaper continues to publish leaks from the report produced by the Panel appointed by the UN Secretary General to look into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka. Groundviews flagged key points and placed in context what is widely acknowledged to be the executive summary of the report, published in The Island […]

“On that basis, the UN report may be important to global level investors in the issues of racial equality and war crimes which are naturally connected in the case of Sri Lanka. It is the duty of such Global participants to ensure that it does not cause further damage to the little that is left […]

“Just as Russia opposed any Council discussion of Sri Lanka during the final, bloody stages of the conflict in 2009, on April 18, 2011 in the Council Russia raised a number of “procedural” objections, sources told Inner City Press afterward.“ By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, April 19 — Sri Lanka and the UN Panel […]

18 April 2011 Question:  A couple of questions.  Number one, on this Sri Lankan report, this report is now available all over in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan newspapers, who are reporting it.  The Secretary-General had made a position that he will wait for the reply from the Sri Lankan Government on the report […]

by Rajasingham Jayadevan Why ‘The Island’ newspaper best source to leak? The report was published with typographical errors causing embarrassment for the UN panel and the UN media Inner City Press has highlighted these errors in its news. Some of them are so material, distorting the very meaning of the comments. In a country where […]

By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, April 18 — Three full days after portions of the Sri Lanka war crimes report was leaked, presumptively by the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, to The Island newspaper, the UN still at its Monday noon briefing did not release the full report. Inner City Press asked acting Deputy Spokesman […]

In an interview with Radio Australia, Gordon Weiss, a former UN spokesperson who accused Sri Lankan Government earlier of killing 10,000 to 40,000 Tamil civilians by discriminate shelling during the final stages of war, said that the real impact of the UN-panel’s report “really in its absolute clarity that grave crimes were committed and that […]

R. Sampanthan, the parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), in his response to the leaked recommendations of the UN Panel, on Monday said that the TNA urged the Rajapaksa regime not to miss the opportunity to “constructively engage in a process which would result in all the Peoples of Sri Lanka being […]

Sri Lanka’s main Tamil political party on Monday hailed a leaked UN report which called for an international war crimes probe into the island’s political and military leadership. The moderate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said the report, commissioned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, amounted to “irrefutable confirmation” of atrocities during the final stages of […]

The former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka Gordon Weiss tells Channel 4 News that a leaked UN report into “credible allegations” of war crimes represent Sri Lanka’s “Srebrenica moment”. Weiss told Channel 4 News they were at the “hard edge of humanitarian work” and were prevented from reaching the area by the Sri Lankan government. […]

The report of the ‘Panel of Experts’ of the Secretary General is an attempt to intervene in internal affairs of Sri Lanka for various political interests states the JVP and emphasizes that the imperialist intervention against Sri Lanka should be defeated. In a communiqué issued by its Political Bureau the JVP further states the anti-social […]

Government should face UN and international community taking the Tamil people on its side. Choosing the line of triumphalism based on the victory against LTTE to counter UN censure on accountability will be a political error. It is time to leave the war victory to history and start addressing the political aspirations of the Tamil […]

The three-member UN panel rejected Sri Lanka’s two-pronged notion of accountability that focussed on the responsibility of past Governments and of the LTTE, saying that the approach “does not envisage a serious examination of the Government’s decisions and conduct in prosecuting the final stages of the war or the aftermath, nor of the violations of […]

Groundviews The Island newspaper published today sections of what appears to be a large excerpt from the report of the UN Panel of Experts looking into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka. Inner City Press followed up with a report suggesting that the text was authentic, and that the UN […]

Reacting to the contents of the UN expert panel’s report on Sri Lanka’s war-crimes, Professor Boyle, expert in International Law, and Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, told TamilNet, “there is absolutely no way the GOSL [Government of Sri L anka] is going to implement any of them [panel’s recommendations], and the […]

“During the final stages of the war, the United Nations political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have protected civilians,” said the United Nations Panel on Sri Lanka in its final report to Secretary General Ban-ki Moon. The report has also admitted that the UN system knowingly failed to release the casualty […]

Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday lashed out at the UN experts panel report on the conduct of the Sri Lanka government and armed forces during the last stages of the war against the LTTE in 2009, saying there was an agenda behind the report and if the United Nations cannot protect one of its member […]