Lankan FM Alleges Bid To Destabilize Lanka On Rights Abuses

New Delhi, Feb 9, IRNA – In a veiled attack on US-led West, Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G L Peiris Saturday said allegations of rights abuses during war against Liberation LTTE are levelled against country to create internal strife as was the case in Iraq and Libya. ˈThey know that President (Mahinda) Rajapaksa can never be electorally defeated because he has won the confidence of the public. So they try to use different tactics,ˈ Peiris told a political gathering in the southern district of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. ˈThey use human rights as a tool to create problems for Sri Lanka. We are being pursued every year at the UNHRC,ˈ he said. Without naming any country, he said that certain nations want to create internal unrest in Sri Lanka like in Iraq and Libya. ˈThe motives in Iraq and Libya were to usurp the natural resources of those countries,ˈ he alleged, the PTI reported. ˈWe now see that at least 25 people get killed daily in Iraq. They want the same situation to prevail in Sri Lanka,ˈ he said. Peirisˈ comments came even as the government was engaged in hectic lobbying ahead of the UN Human Rights Council session next month in Geneva where Sri Lanka is set to face a third resolution since 2012 on alleged rights abuses. The resolution - widely expected to build on two previous ones - is expected to call for concrete steps to achieve national reconciliation with minority Tamils and accountability for alleged human rights abuses. The Sri Lankan Civil War, beginning in 1983, was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the rebels Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an independent militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island country. After a 26-year military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, bringing the civil war to an end. According to reports for over 26 years, the war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country, with an estimated 80,000–100,000 people killed during its course. The deaths include at least 27,639 LTTE fighters, 23,790 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen, 1,155 Indian soldiers, and tens of thousands of civilians./end