Lanka needs more time to probe war crimes: Samaraweera

Sri Lanka needs more time to probe the alleged war crimes committed during the civil war, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has said, even as he asserted that the proposed mechanism to deliver justice to the victims would be homegrown and not a copy of the South African model.
South Africa, which confronted its own apartheid-era crimes through such a body, had set up a The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which is a court-like restorative justice body assembled after the abolition of apartheid in 1994.
In 2015, Samaraweera had said that the government will set up a South Africa-style truth and reconciliation commission to look into atrocities during its civil war.

However, yesterday, while talking about a possible mechanism to deliver justice to victims of the conflict, Samaraweera said the mechanism would not be a Truth Commission modeled after South African example.
"We owe it to our people to come up with a credible mechanism," Samaraweera said while speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association.
Samaraweera also said that the government will seek more time at the next UN Human Rights Commission, starting February 27 in Geneva.

According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to nearly three-decades long civil war in Sri Lanka with the defeat of LTTE in 2009.

Talking about the new constitution, Samaraweera said the process is moving forward despite its seemingly stalled state currently.
A parliamentary debate on the six sub-committee report which should have happened last month did not take place apparently due to differences within the ruling coalition.
"We are confident we can obtain two thirds majority required in parliament (to adopt the draft constitution). With the right sort of campaign we are confident that we will win the referendum also," Samaraweera said.
The government seems to face stiff resistance from the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Sinhala nationalist majority backers who have vowed to oppose the new constitution.

They claim the new constitution would be a betrayal of the government forces' victory over the LTTE when they ended their three-decade-long separatist campaign in 2009.
Samaraweera said Sri Lanka needs to come to terms with its tragic past of ethnic conflicts.