Up and Coming: UN condemns Sri Lanka war footage

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

UN condemns Sri Lanka war footage

A man walks past a mural depicting fighting during the war in Colombo April 27, 2011

The Sri Lankan army defeated Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009

An international seminar in which Sri Lanka aims to share its experience of defeating "terrorism" has begun despite calls for a boycott by rights groups.

Entitled "Defeating Terrorism - Sri Lankan Experience", the event is being attended by 42 countries.

It comes amid allegations of war crimes by the Sri Lankan government in the closing stages of the war in 2009.

Sri Lanka defeated Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a separate homeland after 26 years of bloody civil war.

Human Rights Watch has said that the three-day event is an attempt at a whitewash. A report commissioned by the UN said there was credible evidence that both sides may have committed war crimes: the Tigers, for instance, by shooting escaping civilians, and the government, for example, by shelling hospitals.

The government has repeatedly denied accusations that thousands of civilians were killed in the latter stages of the war - arguing that it has been unfairly criticised for ending a conflict that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives amid regular suicide bombings of government targets.

The seminar is co-sponsored by China and officials say it is being attended by more than 40 nations, including Russia, India and Pakistan.

The US, Britain, Japan, Australia and France are among nations who have decided to stay away from the event.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, told the seminar's opening session on Tuesday that mass army recruitment was key to ending the decades-long civil war.

"We had a large but essential expansion of the army. It grew from 120,000 to 220,000 (between 2005 to 2009)," he said.

He added that he and the president had displayed a strong will to crush the Tigers. Sri Lanka says that the three-day conference could benefit other countries struggling with insurgencies.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says that the government and military portray their defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels as a source of pride and a model for others to follow.

They say Sri Lanka is the "only country to defeat terrorism" and that the army rescued hundreds of thousands of civilians, inflicting minimum civilian casualties.

On Monday senior UN officialsaid he believes controversial video footage, circulated on the internet and broadcast by the UK-based Channel 4 News, is authentic.

The video appears to show Sri Lankan soldiers killing captured and unarmed Tamil Tiger rebels at close range.

Sri Lanka denies the accusation, insisting the video is fake and that the UN probe into the video is "biased."

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.