TNA criticises Reconciliation Commission report

Monday, 19 December 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The major Tamil political party of Sri Lanka, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) says the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), appointed to probe Sri Lanka’s decades long war, has severely contradicted itself in its report and has a shortcoming as well.

TNA Parliamentarian and Attorney M.A Sumanthiran says the party is to give an official response to the report after closely studying it. However, he has said that a severe contradiction of the Commission has been noticed at the first glance of the report.

He has explained that the Commission has severely contradicted itself by concluding that civilians had not been deliberately targeted by the security forces in the final stages of the war and has commended the conduct of the armed forces after claiming the LLRC did not have a mandate to investigate into any incident.

The LLRC in fact has recommended independent investigations into certain issues, but had concluded that civilians had not been deliberately targeted and has commended the conduct of the armed forces.

“How can the LLRC come to such a conclusion without investigating into the matter?” Sumanthiran has queried.

He has also noted another crucial factor in the LLRC report.

“The Government has announced that there were only 70,000 civilians in the conflict zone during the final stages of the war when official statistics at the time stated there was a population of over 400,000 civilians in the conflict zone at the time,” he has noted. According to Sumanthiran, it is an important issue that has not been dealt with in the LLRC report.