| Ex-minister accuses Sri Lanka of 'terrorism' - Reality Exposed ! , AFP Report |
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 A former Sri Lankan foreign minister accused the government of failing to investigate extra-judicial killings and using "terrorism" to fight Tamil Tigers rebels. Government lawmaker Mangala Samaraweera said an ongoing visit to the island by the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, underlined the international focus on the island's worsening rights record."Sri Lanka is also being branded a terrorist state because of our policy of fighting terrorism with terrorism," Samaraweera said. "The Arbour visit shows the international concern about what is happening here."
The former minister accused the government of failing to investigate grave human rights abuses, including the massacre of 17 employees of the French charity Action Against Hunger in August last year. He said the international community had condemned the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and branded them "terrorists", but Colombo was also now facing criticism. Sri Lanka is resisting moves by the United Nations to set up a human rights mission despite allegations that violations have increased with the escalation of fighting between troops and Tamil rebels. Rights groups accuse the government and the LTTE of gross rights abuses, summary killings and scores of disappearances of civilians and political activists. Sri Lanka narrowly avoided censure during a UN Human Rights Council meeting last month in Geneva, despite increasing alarm over the situation on the war-torn tropical island. In July, London-based rights group Amnesty International said hundreds of people disappeared in Sri Lanka in the past year and more than 5,700 such cases from the past three decades were under UN review. Tens of thousands of people have died and many more have been displaced since the LTTE launched in 1972 a separatist campaign for an independent homeland for minority Tamils from the majority Sinhalese. |
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