Gerald H Peiris
This brief comment is set against the backdrop of several media reports on Ambassador Stephan J. Rapp’s recent sojourn in Sri Lanka which appears to have achieved a measure of success in generating fresh “credible evidence” of war crimes allegedly committed during the final phase of the Eelam Wars, while instigating yet another wave of inter-group (and even intra-ethnic group) disharmony in the country. The reports I refer to contain references to a call by the bishops of Mannar and Jaffna whom Mr. Rapp is said to have interviewed for an international probe on whether cluster bombs and chemical weapons were used in attacks on civilians entrapped in the LTTE-controlled areas of the Vanni at that time. According to one of the press reports, the Information Officer of the US Embassy has claimed that Mr. Rapp had “the opportunity to listen to eyewitness accounts of serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, including those that occurred at the end of the war”. The report is adorned with an embassy-released photograph captioned “St. Anthany’s Ground – site of January 2009 killing of hundreds of families by army shelling”. There have also been media reports of the Catholic Bishops Conference dissociating itself, in what is a sagacious damage-control move, from the position adopted within the “Mannar, Jaffna Bishops’ War Crimes Charge.” Continue reading
