Report will be ready by November 15 – LLRC

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) will be handing over its report to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 15 November.

“The Commission’s due date is 15 November and that is when we intend on handing in the report as we are duty bound to give it by then. No one can tell us what to do or when we have to do it,” LLRC spokesman Lakshman Wickremasinghe said.

The spokesman said neither the UN nor the government could pressurise the Commission to complete the report immediately in order to present it to the UN General Assembly next month.

LLRC Spokesman responding to reports that certain members of the international community had requested Sri Lanka to produce a report on war crimes allegations against the country before 21 September, the UN General Assembly’s next session, said that the LLRC report would not be completed by next month.

He said the LLRC has never come under pressure from the government and said the government is unlikely to request the Commission to complete its report in a hurry.

In May 2010, President Rajapaksa appointed the eight-member Commission to report on the lessons to be learnt from the events in the period, February 2002 to May 2009, their attendant concerns and to recommend measures to ensure that there will be no recurrence of such a situation.

The Commission is chaired by the former Attorney General Chitta Ranjan de Silva.

The mandate of the LLRC was to expire on 15 November, 2010. In November 2010, President Rajapaksa extended the mandate of the Commission by a period of six months in view of the large number of persons from Sri Lanka and abroad still to give evidence before it.

Since then the Commission had regular public hearings in Colombo and in the conflict affected areas of Vavuniya, Batticaloa and Kilinochchi. This included field visits to meet people directly affected by the conflict.

It has already submitted an interim communication recommending administrative means to resolve some of the pressing grievances of the people affected by the conflict.

The government has appointed an Inter-Advisory Committee to facilitate early in implementation of these recommendations of the LLRC.

The Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group jointly turned down an invitation by the LLRC to place any relevant evidence they have before the Commission.