(LTTE child solider)
(Press Release)
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) welcomes the report of the investigation conducted by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OISL) and its recommendations. The most important recommendation of the report calls on Sri Lanka to establish a special hybrid court to try perpetrators of international crimes during a nine year period with the participation of international judges, prosecutors and investigators; and incorporating into domestic law war crimes and crimes against humanity so that these prosecutions can take place. The TNA has consistently called for these steps to be taken and welcomes the inclusion of these critical recommendations in the OISL report. We further welcome the entire gamut of recommendations of the OISL report, including those that relate to broader Transitional Justice and human rights concerns.
We appeal to all parties, and particularly to the Government of Sri Lanka to accept this report. The Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka assured the Human Rights Council on Monday that there is a new Sri Lanka and that things will henceforth be different. He admitted Sri Lanka’s history of broken promises and pledged to enter a new era. As an expression of this change, the Government of Sri Lanka must now be willing to have the courage to accept this report and work with the world community. To this end, we ask the member states of the Human Rights Council to adopt all the recommendations in the OISL report in the resolution to be presented later at this session. We ask the Government of Sri Lanka to cooperate fully with the TNA and the international community in dealing with the past in a manner that will assuage the feelings of the victims of all communities, and to move forward to establish a brighter future for all of Sri Lanka’s peoples..
We also accept and undertake to carry out our responsibility to lead the Tamil people in reflecting on the past, and use this moment as a moment of introspection into our own community’s failures and the unspeakable crimes committed in our name, so as to create an enabling culture and atmosphere in which we could live with dignity and self-respect, as equal citizens of Sri Lanka.