Sri Lankan army record clean
– SCOPP Secretary-General  

[Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 6.00 GMT]

Giving a strong rebuttal to the statement in the recent Human Rights Watch (HWR) titled Sri Lanka: Return to War. Human Rights under Seige that “the Sri Lankan government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use 'dirty war' tactics,” the Secretary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha states that the Sri Lankan Army has a clean record.
  
He faults the HRW for failing to substantiate its allegation with evidence. Even in the lone incident it refers to, viz., the attack on the Kathiravelli School which was an IDP camp, the SCOPP Secretary General explains that it is necessary, however, to examine all the facts, before responsibility is decided upon.
  
Explaining the circumstances of the attack the SCOPP Secretary General says: “On the morning of November 8th the LTTE had fired at the Sri Lankan army from the Kathiravelli area, and, according to D B S Jeyaraj, five soldiers and a civilian were wounded and one soldier killed. The army fired back in the late morning, hitting the school though under the impression, because of ‘mortar locating radar’ that it was hitting LTTE gun positions.”
  
“This does not in any way justify the killing of civilians but, combined with the initiation of an artillery attack, and what would probably have been the radar discovery of weapons, the shelling of the camp is understandable,” he adds.
  
“The Sri Lankan forces have been far more careful about civilians than many governments which HRW does not seem inclined to criticize with the same personal intensity,” the SCOPP Secretary General reminds the HRW.
  
He also states that no similar incident has happened since then. “The fact that it is only the Kathiravelli incident that HRW can cite in its blanket personal attack on the conduct of military operations seems a tribute to the Sri Lankan forces,” he concludes.

 

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Last Updated Date: August 09, 2007 - 6.00 GMT