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Sri Lankan ethnic question must be raised at the UN General Assembly - K.S. Ratnavale

2018-03-06

With the commencement of the Geneva session on last 26th, K.S. Ratnavale, Attorney-at-law and the Director of the Center for Human Rights and Development stated that the representatives of the Tamil community must try to seek the support of the UN General Assembly in order to address Sri Lanka’s long standing ethnic question, rather than urging the Council’s intervention.

He pointed out that it would be pointless to approach Geneva given that a two year extension had been already given at the March session in 2017. The government has failed to fulfill its promises since the Resolution 30/1 was co-sponsored by Sri Lanka in September 2015 following the change of government.

He further added that the International Criminal Court alone would pave the way to address the issues of justice and accountability for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the military during the war. Therefore he called on Tamil representatives at the Human Rights Council session in Geneva to take all necessary measures to urge the relevant bodies to bring about this much needed change.