JDSLanka

PPT to release judgement on Sri Lanka’s genocide probe before tabling it at UNHRC

The Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), which has already ruled Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide against the Eelam Tamils and found several other countries including UK and USA to be guilty of complicity to this crime, is set to release a detailed judgement in Geneva of its probe into the allegations of genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The PPT in a statement said on Friday (Jan 10) that the “reputed jury of eleven genocide experts, experts on international law and human rights defenders examined several studies and background papers on the charges and heard evidence from more than 30 witnesses and analysts, before reaching the verdict” into its probe against the Sri Lankan State and its accomplices on the charge of genocide against the Tamil people.

The detailed judgement is scheduled to be released on January 22 at 10 am at the ‘Geneva Press Club', Club Suisse de la Presse, Route de Ferney 106, La Pastorale, Geneva, where the representatives of the eminent panel of jurors would be present to answer questions and to elaborate on the points raised by the verdict.

Sources close to the PPT told the JDS that the PPT would table its detailed judgement at the forthcoming United Nation’s Human Rights Council sessions in March this year.

The PPT’s detailed judgement is coming at a time when powerful members of the international community and human rights organisations are working on bringing a strong resolution at the UNHRC against the Sri Lankan state, which has been rejecting out right the repeated calls for an independent international probe into the wide-spread but credible allegations of war crime committed during the final phase of the war.  

According to the UN’s Petrie Report the final weeks of the war in Sri Lanka in early 2009 left an estimated 70.000 Tamils unaccounted for, although the actual figure is expected to be much higher.

“The thorough investigation by the Tribunal into the history of the  Sri Lankan conflict has established that the Sri Lankan military’ conduct during this period constitute not only war crimes but are ‘part of a coordinated plan whose different components aim at the physical destruction’ of the Tamil people ‘in whole or in part’,” the PPT statement said.

“Further, it was found that without the substantial political and military assistance by its external accomplices the Sri Lankan State would not have had the capacity to conduct its extermination campaign,” it said.

© JDS