Navi Pillay visits former war zone
UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has visited Jaffna to meet relatives of people who disappeared at the end of the war. According to the BBC Tamil families complained to her about missing relatives, military land grabs and life without basic facilities.
Ms Pillay is the most senior UN official to visit the north since Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009.
She told survivors that she would raise their complaints with the government.
She is due to meet senior ministers including President Mahinda Rajapaksa later this week.
About 300 people demonstrated in Jaffna to complain that the UN was not doing enough to investigate enforced disappearances and land-grabs.
One of the protesters, Ananthi Sasitharan, is the wife of Velayutham Sasitharan, a top Tamil LTTE leader.
“I am confident that he is alive. He is somewhere in a secret detention centre,” she told the Reuters news agency.
At the same time another demonstration was held by pro-government Buddhist monks in Colombo, calling on Ms Pillay to leave the country and stop criticising its rights record.
She arrived in Sri Lanka on Sunday for a fact-finding mission.
Ms Pillay has told reporters that her job is to ensure that the government is conforming to human rights standards agreed by all nations.
Ms Pilay’s seven-day visit comes after a second US-sponsored UN resolution in March urged Colombo to carry out credible investigations into killings and disappearances during the war, especially in its final stages.
Human rights activists in Jaffna say more than 700 people disappeared between 2006 and 2009.
Ms Pillay on Tuesday also visited the former LTTE stronghold of Killinochi and the eastern town of Trincomalee.
Her visit comes as Canada has called for a boycott of a Commonwealth summit scheduled to take place in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo in November, BBC reports.
(Pix by AP)
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“One of the protesters, Ananthi Sasitharan, is the wife of Velayutham Sasitharan, a top Tamil LTTE leader.”
Nice ! What about the crimes committed by her “top LTTE leader” husband ?
This is a classic example of how this Ms. Pillay being treated like a fool (she really is) by all the other Pillays and Pullays who has links to LTTE terrorist murderers (including TNA).
Pillay will be given a lot of garlands (Rajiv Ghandi had one too) around the neck and “pottu”s on forehead and then feed her with loads of Bull-Dung that she really loves to digest. Does this Pillay really believe that a wife of a “top LTTE leader” will tell the truth? She really does. She is that foolish and a racist Tamil herself, who lovingly lick the back side of any white man. That is why she was really cool about the civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan etc by US drones and soldiers.
I bet she doesn’t have any courage to stand up to USA, or UK, in the same way she does to Sri Lanka. So, when a “judge” is “biased” like that, the world cannot accept that judge’s verdict.
If they can show the missing ones list, why cant we do the same?
Did our families of missing ones, including soldiers, politicians given?
Who is organizing this from other side. Our people not preparing for anything, they just jump before seeing anything.
And finally when they take action we will oppose. No proper leadership.
When Ravana Balaya demonstrated, there was retaliation from our guys.
When Jaffna people demonstrated who push them back?
All nonsense, we dig our own graves.
Leadership is not taking proper actions, only reactions.
What is Ms Pillai doing in Jaffna when she ought to be in Syria with the UN invesigation team into the alleged use of chemical weapons …. in addition there is so much going on with little regard to the UN and Ms Pillai is the last in the pecking order in the UN system ….our government is ever ready to roll out the carpet raise flags and parade the elephants to the beat of tom toms and shout hurrah!!!!