NO RECONCILIATION WITHOUT FULL RECKONING, SAYS UNHR CHIEF...!!!

NO RECONCILIATION WITHOUT FULL RECKONING, SAYS UNHR CHIEF



GENEVA, Friday (Reuters) - The United Nations stands ready to support an inquiry into abuses in Sri Lanka's civil war, UN Human Rights Chief Navaneetham Pillay said yesterday.
In an address to the UN Human Rights Council -- which last week avoided launching an investigation into the Sri Lankan conflict – Ms. Pillay a former war crimes judge stressed that reconciliation would be impossible without a full reckoning of transgressions.

"I believe that accountability is a prerequisite for the attainment of justice and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans and thus a foundation for lasting peace," she said.

Ms. Pillay, who is an ethnic Tamil from South Africa, said the LTTE and the military both ought to be held responsible for killing and mistreating civilians in the last phase of their 25-year conflict.

Her remarks sought to keep up pressure on Sri Lanka in spite of the Human Rights Council's failed attempt to scrutinize the conduct of both sides during and after the separatist war which the government declared over last month.

Sri Lanka's allies including China, India and Russia backed its resolution to the UN body's special session stressing Sri Lanka’s right to act without outside interference, and blocked discussion on a Western text expressing concerns about humanitarian conditions in the country.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International have been calling for an outside inquiry as recommended by Ms. Pillay.

In yesterday’s remarks, the High Commissioner also urged Colombo to allow free movement in and out of the camps holding hundreds of thousands of war-displaced people in Sri Lanka's northeast, where the LTTE had been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland in the country with a Sinhala majority.

"Unfettered humanitarian access to, as well as freedom of movement for, the large number of displaced people held in closed camps are of the utmost importance," she said, using the acronym IDP for "internally-displaced people" or refugees within the country.

The Sri Lankan ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva responded strongly, calling it unacceptable "to equate the two sides involved in the armed conflict in Sri Lanka" and saying there was "absolutely no problem" with humanitarian access.

"Sri Lanka as a sovereign country will decide on the degree of access that it grants anyone from outside. But that access will be broad and wide as it has always been," Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka said.

He said his country would be happy to accept the offer of assistance as soon as Ms. Pillay's office was "regionally a far more representative and transparent body," he said of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In her speech to the Human Rights Council, Ms. Pillay also raised concerns about bystanders to other conflicts, including those in Afghanistan and Pakistan where she said international forces needed to do more to protect civilians and investigate non-combatant casualties.

Civilians also need more protection from fighting in Colombia, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, she said, stressing the particular need to shield women and girls from sexual attacks by armed groups.

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