Published On: Wed, Oct 5th, 2011

By eelamaran

LLRC for whitewash to hide Sri Lankan inaction: Kirkpatrick

“Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” was screened at Georgetown University on Monday. “Thinking Beyond the Beltway” and Amnesty International sponsored the screening. Tamils for Obama then passed out DVDs of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.” The program was followed by a panel discussion of this program conducted by two women associated with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Among the estimated 50 attendees were a number of diplomats, American and foreign, who are pursuing advanced studies at Georgetown University.

Spokesmen from the Sri Lankan Embassy in DC claimed during the panel discussion that members of the Sri Lankan armed forces are being court-martialed for the kind of atrocities documented in the program. They also claimed that a reconciliation program started by the Colombo government is proceeding successfully. A Tamil member of the audience stood to refute these claims, stating that no soldiers have yet been prosecuted and that the reconciliation program has been announced to the world but so far no part of it has been seen. Numerous commissions have been formed by the Sri Lankan government in the past (Valerie Richards Kirkpatrick of Human Rights Watch says there have been nine.) The current commission is called the LLRC, for Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, and is considered (Ms. Kirkpatrick says) a whitewash to hide Sri Lankan inaction from the world.

The Georgetown professor with personal experience in Sri Lanka, along with one of the panelists, disputed all of the claims made by the Sri Lankan diplomats.

Tamils for Obama gave out about 65 copies of the DVD at the screening. Some of the attendees asked for (and were given) multiple copies of the DVD so that they could pass them out to other interested people.

Valerie Richards Kirkpatrick from Human Rights Watch and Juliette Rousselot from Amnesty International led the panel discussion. The Georgetown professor who spoke in the panel discussion urged the two to prod their organizations to bring these matters before international courts. He called the Sri Lankan actions “clear-cut war crimes” and stated that if these crimes go unpunished they will be repeated in other countries.

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