Justice Sachar goes to Dublin to probe Lankan ‘war crimes’
Retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court Rajinder Sachar has agreed to serve on a “People’s Permanent Tribunal” meeting in Dublin to investigate allegations that the Sri Lankan government and Army are guilty of war crimes against the Tamil community.
Individual witnesses, as well as legal and human rights groups from Sri Lanka, India, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations have been invited to testify before the tribunal which will convene on January 14 and 15 . Its provisional findings will be announced on January 16.
The announcement comes days after the Sri Lankan government announced it was “opening up” special detention camps in the north of the country where tens of thousands of Tamil civilians have been interned for the past six months without any access to the outside world.
Sri Lankan officials have denounced the tribunal and say its timing just days before before the country’s forthcoming general election is suspect.
Sachar, who chaired the 2006 report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in India and who will be traveling to Dublin next month, told The Indian Express, “We have to find out the actual matter, including why the Norwegian Peace Initiative failed. There have been complaints about human rights violations. People will present their facts before us. When we have the facts before us, then only can we make conclusions.
One of the movers and shakers behind the setting up of the tribunal is an ethnic Sinhalese academic, Jude Lal Fernando, who boasts he does not have a drop of Tamil blood in his veins, but has been horrified by the persistent hu man rights violations tolerated by successive governments in Colombo.
© 2009 The Indian Express Limited. All rights reserved
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