Sri Lanka says it needs more time to fulfill promises given to the U.N. human rights body to investigate war crime allegations, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera told foreign correspondents that the government will seek more time at the next U.N. human rights session, starting Feb. 27 in Geneva.
Samaraweera was quoted by AP as saying that Sri Lanka will commit itself to going ahead as planned even though it has not been able to achieve all that it wanted.
In a joint resolution in 2015 at the U.N. Human Rights Council, Sri Lanka promised to work toward ethnic reconciliation, including investigating alleged wartime abuses.
It had promised the U.N., among other things, a truth-seeking mechanism, a judicial mechanism to prosecute those who are accused of human rights abuses and a new constitution that takes into account the island nation's varied ethnicities and religions. However, little progress has been made.
The U.N. human rights chief had called for a hybrid court with local and international judges. Samaraweera, said that Sri Lanka had agreed only to foreign participation at different levels in the judicial process, but not to have foreign judges hearing the cases.
A British national had been arrested over attempting to smuggle in the largest haul of kush( drugs) from Thailand, customs said.
Popular grade five tuition teacher, Hayeshika Fernando wanted over assaulting a 21 year old youth was granted bail today after she surrendered to courts.
The Government of Sri Lanka maintains that the allegation of genocide during the final phase of the conflict in Sri Lanka is unsubstantiated by any credible authority, either nationally or internationally, and is based on misleading information. Sri Lanka firmly rejects this false narrative and believes it has been propagated primarily for electoral gains within Canada.
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