Tamil group protests against UN proposed hybrid court for investigation of war crimes

Reuters: Members of a Tamil group, May 17 Movement, protested outside the office of UNICEF in Chennai city of India’s southern Tamil Nadu state on Monday (21 September) against the United Nations’ proposal of a “hybrid” court to prosecute perpetrators of mass killings of civilians during the prolonged conflict in Sri Lanka.

The 220-page, two volume report was unveiled by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, on 16 September.

It says that Sri Lanka should set up a “hybrid special court integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators” to try war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by both sides.

Protesters surrounded the office of UNICEF and raised slogans while they held placards and banners.

“The UN report has recently recommended that a hybrid court will be set up to investigate the genocide. They have not referred (to) the word genocide, they have only referred to war crimes. But what Tamils are demanding is that we want an investigation from the period of 1948 to 2009, for the period of 60 years in which the genocide was committed on the Tamils,” said a protester, Tyson.

The protesters were later detained by police and taken away from the spot.

The UN report says that despite pledges by the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena to pursue accountability domestically, the criminal justice system is not up to the huge task alone, said the report by the UN human rights office.

It calls on Colombo to remove from office military and security force personnel and any other officials “where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they were involved in human rights violations” in the 26-year war that ended in 2009.

According to the report, Government security forces are implicated in “unlawful killings carried out in a widespread manner against civilians” including ethnic minority Tamil politicians, aid workers and journalists, it said. They allegedly executed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres on 18 May 2009, “some of whom were known to have surrendered”.

The report said the security forces used brutal torture, including rape, especially when former LTTE members and civilians were detained after fighting ended.

The LTTE assassinated public officials and dissenting Tamil political figures, and killed civilians in suicide bombings and mine attacks, the report said, adding that they had used child soldiers extensively - a war crime.

According to a UN panel report in 2011, at least 40,000 Tamils were killed in a final offensive ordered by then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who crushed the insurgency.

The latest report said it was “likely tens of thousands lost their lives” in the final stages. The UN report, delayed from March to give the new Government time to address concerns, found “patterns of grave violations” between 2002 and 2011.