Will not punish anyone accused of human rights violations and war crimes: NPP's Anura

 

Presidential candidate of National People’s Power Anura Kumara Dissanayake addressing a political rally in South. Pix/ Twitter/@anuradisanayake

One of the leading Presidential candidates- Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the National People’s Power alliance announced that his administration will not seek to punish anyone accused of human rights violations and war crimes during Sri Lanka’s brutal 26-year civil war.

In an interview with the Associated Press (AP) news agency published today (August 27), Mr Dissanayake said he would instead focus on investigating alleged human rights violations and seeking an agreement with the victims’ families, he said. Both government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels were accused of grave human rights violations during the war that led to the United Nations Human Rights Council calling for investigations and prosecutions.

“On the question of accountability, it should not be in a way to take revenge, not in a way to accuse someone, but only to find out the truth,” Dissanayake said. “Even the victims do not expect anyone to be punished. They only want to know what happened.”

The People’s Liberation Front — which has waged two bloody insurrections to take over the government in a socialist revolution in 1971 and 1987-89 that killed tens of thousands — backed a military solution to the civil war that ended in 2009.

Addressing political rallies in the South recently, Mr Dissanayake also ruled out any potential power devolving of land and police powers to the provinces- a longstanding demand of Tamil-speaking people in North and Eastern provinces. 

Meanwhile, NPP's Presidential manifesto which was released yesterday in Colombo also did not mention anything related to power devolution or the party's stand on ethnic conflict. The manifesto indicated that a future NPP government will introduce a new Constitution based on the report of the Constitution Making Assembly of the previous Parliament under the " Good Governance" government from 2015-2019 in which all political parties represented in the Parliament took part in the process. (Northeastern Monitor/August 27/2024)