Lanka's north council demands int'l probe into Tamil genocide

Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated Northern Provincial Council today adopted a motion, demanding international probe into genocide of Tamils during the brutal civil war in the country.
Council member M K Shivajilingam proposed the motion which was adopted with Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran in the chair.
The resolution demanded the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to subject Tamil genocide to an investigation.
The resolution came in the backdrop of the new Sri Lankan government's policy of replacing an international investigation with a local mechanism to probe the alleged war crimes committed during the military operations that crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009.

The Tamil National Alliance, which rules the north, oppose the domestic investigation and demands for a full-fledged international probe.
The resolution adopted by the Northern Provincial Council notes that the obligation to prevent and punish genocide under the Genocide Convention should not be a political choice but one of binding international law.

Sri Lankan government has denied the Tamil genocide claims put forward by the pro-LTTE diaspora.
The report on Sri Lanka by the investigation team of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will be taken up for discussion at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March.

The former Mahinda Rajapaksa government had opposed the investigation and did not allow the UN investigators entry.
The new government led by Maithripala Sirisena has also pledged to continue with the same policy of non-cooperation but would engage UNHCR to set up a domestic investigation.