Three cases around the world reflect a new trend in international justice – while Sri Lanka shows no intention of properly dealing with accusations its military committed atrocities in the closing months of the civil war in 2009, cases have opened in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. against both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military.
By Richard Walker in The Hague
On Monday two ethnic Tamils filed a case in New York against a Sri Lankan general now serving as a UN diplomat. They claim Major General Shavendra Silva was commanding officer of the army’s 58th Division which helped crush the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009 – and claim in so doing killed thousands of civilians through the shelling of no-fire zones and hospitals. The case is using the US’s universal jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes outside of its territory.
Last week in Switzerland, prosecutors took the unprecedented step of declaring that if the Sri Lankan diplomat and former army General Jagath Dias returns to the country they will have him arrested and prosecuted for alleged war crimes, also relating to the end of the civil war in 2009. Mr Dias had been in Switzerland serving as a Deputy Ambassador until recently and is now believed to have left the country.
And currently in the Netherlands, five alleged supporters of the LTTE or Tamil Tigers rebel group are on trial for supporting a terrorist organization. Their case raises the question: what makes an organization terrorist in nature under Dutch criminal law? The hearing will continue until the end of next week.
DIY justice
All lawyers and experts agree, where a state’s judicial structure is strong enough it should prosecute its own war crimes cases. In Sri Lanka there is little international credibility given to the state’s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, which has been criticised widely for not addressing questions of justice and for brushing claims of military atrocities under the carpet.
Mounting pressure from the UN and international media this year has led many to call for a full and independent investigation into claims of war crimes in 2009, and the establishment of a tribunal to hold major players in the bloody denouement to the conflict accountable. The problem is that this is the last thing the current Sri Lankan government wants as it basks in the popularity it gained by ending the 30 year conflict.
Who needs international courts?
The fact that there are now three separate prosecutions in motion dealing with war crimes in Sri Lanka, thousands of miles away from the tiny island nation, is a very positive development for International Criminal lawyer Goran Sluiter. “These (international) tribunals are extremely costly, often quite inefficient, slow and bureaucratic. We should be very careful in setting up something new or using the ICC. So if at the national level you have all these cases there’s even less need to go to the ICC to set up a new tribunal - it’s only when at the national level nothing is happening that it’s important to go the ICC,” he said.
Does this mean that national courts stepping in and using their own Universal jurisdiction to pursue war criminals from other countries is the way forward? “Yes of course that’s wonderful, but maybe not as much as one would hope, and national courts are dependent on the accused happening to be on their territory - and the big fish may not be on their territory, so then (prosecutions) may be fragmented”.
Courts like the International Criminal Court are keen to stress they are courts of last resort and wherever possible will try to help national prosecutors achieve high standards of justice. These principles are widely held to be sound, but in the absence of a nation’s political will to pursue justice there is perhaps an ever expanding moral imperative for other states to pursue war criminals through their own courts.
Read more stories on Sri Lanka by the International Justice Desk











DEMALA HUTHTHA is para sinhala balla, born to a mad dog and a pig, like his forfather Vija, who was out of an incest
Sen is a born Terrorist! Tamil terrorism is a billion times worse than Taliban and AL Qaeda! Tamils are the smelliest of stinking rats the world ever saw!
Just talk like parrots...
2007 - Eelaam, Eelaam, Eelaam, Eelaam ...
2009 - Genocide, Genocide, Genocide, Genocide, Genocide, Genocide, Genocide....
2010 - War Crime, War Crime, War Crime, War Crime, War Crime, ....
Typical rajinican's pagal-jokes!
Please punish all LTTE terror remnants in the EU for the genocidal atrocities LTTE committed on innocent Sinhalese! SINHALESE NEED JUSTICE AND NOT LTTE TERRORISTS!
This is nothing but punishing Sri Lanka for defeating LTTE terrorist genocidal barbarians! Wonder if NATO will be punished for defeating Taliban and Al Qaeda?
Pls note DEVONECO is talking about MR regime. he has got little confused about things
war crimes will be pursued for the genocide of the tamils
LTTE TERRORISTS MUST BE PUNISHED FOR COMMITTING GENOCIDE OF SINHALESE!
Do you know the meaning of Genocide? If not you will not display your ignorance in public. Your name reveals your real self!
Do you know the meaning of Genocide? If not you will not display your ignorance in public. Your name reveals your real self!
war crimes will be pursued for the genocide of the tamils
After the embarrassing and crushing defeat of their terrorist thug group known ads the LTTE - or Tamil Tigers, at the hands of the gallant Sri Lankan military, the Tamil diaspora - or better identified as the Global Tamil Terrorist front organizations - don't know what to do with the millions of monies they have in their coffers which they have acquired through human trafficking, drug trafficking, prostitution, bank robberies, burglary, etc. - and are now spending it on "buying" the Western media to keep on pushing their terrorist agenda. The corrupt media in the Western countries who are suckers to these bribes, shamelessly publish totally inaccurate and false information about Sri Lanka provided by these so-called Tamil diaspora in order to embarrass the Sri Lankan government. Now they seem to have even bribed the so-called International Courts! This is utter ridicule of the International Justice system!
You forgot to mention credit card scams these hate mongers have been commiting all around the world. These were at a scale it was never been seen before.
Spot on 100% right! Cant agree with you more!
The bumptious bureaucrat Blake of the American State Department is reported to have made various comments and observations about the internal administration of this Country. He has, for example, actually had the arrogance and impertinence to announce with apparent glee, the alleged forthcoming resumption of `Talks’ between the Government and those erstwhile lackeys of the LTTE who call themselves the TNA, expressed dismay about what he terms the paramilitary activities of Douglas Devananda’s EPDP, and expressed the view that there is a need for Tamil policemen in Jaffna.
With which party, person or group in our Country our Government holds `talks’ is none of Blake’s business. He is evidently suffering from a severe attack of amnesia about the proven and unbelievable stupidity of his Country’s insistence on our Government holding `talks’ with the then patrons of the TNA, the LTTE.
While I hold no brief of whatever nature for Devananda or his party, which, like that other mockery of a party, the SLMC, has been jumping from side to side in search of jobs in the form of Ministerial portfolios etc. throughout its existence, the character and the conduct of the EPDP are entirely matters for Sri Lankans and not a matters for any foreigner whomsoever. The fact that Blake is a paid functionary of a Government Department of a foreign Country [the USA] does not and cannot vest him with any semblance of a right in that regard that is over and above the `right’ enjoyed by any other foreigner, which is NONE .
It is more than passing strange that that while the United States has not paramilitary forces but its armed forces terrorizing and murdering Afghans in Afghanistan and Pakistanis in Pakistan, among others, Blake ignores all that and has the impertinence to comment about Devananda and his paramilitaries.
As regards Blake’s unsolicited views about the need for Tamil policemen in the North, how many members of the American forces in Afghanistan are Afghans or are even able to speak the language of the Afghans ? These, are matters that do not appear to trouble Blake in his unbearable arrogance.
What I cannot understand is why do we, both the Government and the Opposition, tolerate clowns like Blake coming here and singing for their supper – perhaps to impress his boss, the Ugly American at the helm of the State Department.
What, one wonders, would the reaction of the United States have been had one of the Assistant Secretaries of our Ministry of External Affairs or even the Secretary to that Ministry gone to the United States and made observations about the internal administration of that Country and the proved violations of “International Humanitarian Law” [to which Blake pompously refers] by the American government in respect even of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay ? Has Blake expressed any kind of dismay or made any of his suggestions about such breaches ? Surely he would have cast his `pearls’ before the Americans by now had he had an iota of sincere concern for fairplay, justice or . “International Humanitarian Law”.
All this goes to show the looming danger of the United States assuming to itself the role of the global policeman; the global arbiter of what is `right’ and what is `wrong’; and how other Countries should be governed; and, in short becoming the global ruler, dictating to independent and sovereign countries like Sri Lanka which are small and impoverished about how we should run our affairs.
If the USA has the right to dictate to us how we should run our affairs because it is richer and more powerful than we, it must follow of necessity that if China which is already richer than the USA becomes more powerful as well, China should have the right to dictate to the USA how it should rum its internal affairs and the USA would have the duty to obey. Would Blake and his superiors agree ???
Unless all small countries such as Sri Lanka unite to oppose this kind of arrogant meddling in their internal affairs by the minions of Obama and his elderly subordinate in the State Department, we the small and independent countries are in real danger of being submerged by American imperialism.
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