WikiLeaks cables: ‘Sri Lankan president responsible for massacre of Tamils”
Click Here - The cable, released yesterday by whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks
American diplomats believed that the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, bore responsibility for a massacre last year that is the subject of a UN war crimes inquiry, according to a leaked US cable.
Lawyers for Tamil activists in Britain are seeking an arrest warrant against President Rajapaksa for alleged war crimes committed last year at the bloody end of the long-running civil war against Tamil separatists. Rajapaksa, who is in the UK, is due to meet the defence secretary, Liam Fox, tomorrow and had an address to the Oxford Union scheduled for Friday cancelled due to security concerns.
Thousands of Tamils are thought to have died in a few days in May 2009, when a large concentration of Tamil Tiger guerrillas and civilians, crammed in a small coastal strip, came under heavy bombardment from Sri Lankan government forces.
In a cable sent on 15 January this year, the US ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butenis, said one of the reasons there was such little progress towards a genuine Sri Lankan inquiry into the killings was that the president and the former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, were largely responsible. “There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power,” Butenis noted.
“In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka.” Fonseka was convicted of corruption by a court martial this year.
In her cable to Washington, Butenis seeks to explain why there is so little momentum towards the formation of a “truth and reconciliation” commission, or any other form of accountability.
President Rajapaksa had meanwhile fought an election campaign promising to resist any international efforts to prosecute “war heroes” in the nation’s army.
Not only was the Colombo government not interested in investigating itself, but Tamils in Sri Lanka – unlike those abroad – were also nervous about the issue as it might make them targets for reprisals.
Butenis wrote: “While they wanted to keep the issue alive for possible future action, Tamil leaders with whom we spoke in Colombo, Jaffna and elsewhere said now was not time and that pushing hard on the issue would make them ‘vulnerable’.
“Accountability is clearly an issue of importance for the ultimate political and moral health of Sri Lankan society,” the ambassador concluded, but she did not think it would happen any time soon.
WikiLeaks renews accusations over Sri Lanka war crimes - (Reuters)
The United States believes there is little prospect Sri Lanka will hold anyone accountable for the bloody end of the war with the Tamil Tigers because war crimes allegations involve top government figures, leaked U.S. documents say.
The January 15 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis is among thousands of classified documents released by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Another cable from the U.S. embassy in London reveals an admission by a British diplomat that former Foreign Secretary David Miliband pressured Sri Lanka's government for a ceasefire to help secure Labour party votes from Britain's Tamil diaspora.
The release of the documents revisits accusations against the government made around the time of Sri Lanka's May 2009 crushing of the Tamil Tiger separatists in a quarter-century civil war.
Entitled "Sri Lanka War-Crimes Accountability: The Tamil Perspective," the cable from the Colombo embassy was written 11 days before the poll that saw President Mahinda Rajapaksa defeat General Sarath Fonseka, his erstwhile war ally now in jail.
"While regrettable, the lack of attention to accountability is not surprising. There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power," Butenis wrote.
"In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country's senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka."
A spokesman for the U.S. embassy had no immediate comment.
Sri Lanka's Construction Minister Wimal Weerawansa, a firebrand nationalist who held rowdy protests against a U.N. inquiry into the war, was measured in his response.
"Those revelations are nothing new for us and nothing exclusive. The important thing is the US officials are silent over those," he told a press conference.
ELECTION PRESSURE
Human rights groups, Tamil pressure groups overseas and some Western governments accused the government of responsibility for what they say are thousands of civilian deaths or other atrocities that could constitute war crimes. They have demanded an international probe.
Colombo says its troops committed no war crimes and has acknowledged some civilians died, but says the numbers given by rights groups are vastly inflated for propaganda purposes. Rajapaksa so far has made good on his vow to stand up against any external probe including a U.N. attempt.
Miliband visited Sri Lanka with French Foreign Secretary Bernard Kouchner just three weeks prior to the war's end, where he leveled stiff criticism at the government. The Rajapaksa administration accused him then of playing election politics.
The cable from the U.S. embassy in London described a meeting with Britain's Foreign Office Sri Lanka team leader, Tim Waite: "He said that with U.K. elections on the horizon and many Tamils living in Labour constituencies with slim majorities, the government is paying particular attention to Sri Lanka."
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