EXCLUSIVE: UN Expert Panel has overstepped its mark

The UN expert panel has clearly overstep the mark with its report as it deals with political advocacy instead of advising the UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon on issues of accountability as it was intended to do, MP Rajiva Wijesinha told Ada Derana in an exclusive interview.

“They are trying to tell us how to run our country. They talk about retributive justice, which means taking revenge”, he stated. “Those people are now telling us that a democratic government that defeated terrorism should have revenge taken on it”.

He added that the Sri Lanka has an elected government which is doing its best for the Tamil people who suffered during the war under the LTTE while the government’s resettlement programme has been amongst the best in the world.

Prof. Wijesinha also accuses the panel of having a clear political agenda as it harps on the issues brought up for debate at the 2009 session at the Human Rights Council in Geneva in which he stated that Sri Lanka managed to conclusively defeat the various allegations brought against them by some countries.

“Now they want to open up this question again. In 2009 some countries wanted to charge us with war crimes. There were academics who wrote to the Canadian government asking it to appoint them to the war crimes panel. So we know what they wanted to do. Now they have suddenly decided to open the back door and attack us like that”, he said.

He also stated that the panel had some people who obviously had a political agenda while adding that Sri Lanka must go ahead with its own process of making things better for all its people.