Lankan nationalists protest US envoy visit over war crimes

Hundreds of Sri Lankan nationalists today marched to the US embassy here to protest a visit by a top American diplomat to discuss alleged war crimes during the last phase of the civil war against the LTTE.
The visit by Stephen J Rapp, US Ambassador-at- Large at the Office of Global Criminal Justice, has come under fire, with activists from the National Organisations Collective protesting it with a banner which said 'Stop making unfair war crimes allegations'.
Rapp is on a week-long visit to the island ahead of the UN Human Rights Council session in March where US is expected to move the third anti-Sri Lanka resolution in as many years.

"We warn US that they must stop their unfair action," said leading activist Wasantha Bandara.
The protest was triggered by Rapp's comments made to the main Tamil party, Tamil National Alliance that the US-moved resolution would press for an international war crimes investigation in Sri Lanka.
The two previous resolutions in 2012 and 2013, both moved by the US and supported by India, had urged Sri Lanka to achieve reconciliation with the Tamils and address outstanding issues of rights accountability through Sri Lanka's own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) which looked back at the separatist armed conflict.
Its recommendations on rights accountability and reconciliation were commended by Sri Lanka's international partners who, however, lamented the slowness of them being put into action.