The state-run Daily News said the 24 nations which voted in favour of the resolution urging a credible investigation into alleged war crimes during Sri Lanka’s battle against Tamil rebels in 2009 were being destructive.
The countries that backed the resolution were making “a desperate attempt to disempower and undermine Sri Lanka and they are trying every trick in the bag to further this dark design,” the Daily News said.
Tabling the resolution, the US said Colombo had been given three years to hold its own probe into allegations of war crimes, but “given the lack of action… it is appropriate” that the 47-member UNHRC pushed it to do so.
Rights groups say up to 40,000 civilians died in the final months of Colombo’s military campaign to crush the Tamil Tigers, who waged a bloody decades-long campaign for a separate homeland for minority Tamils.
Colombo has denied its troops were responsible for any non-combatant deaths, but UN-mandated experts have accused the Sri Lankan military of killing most of the civilian victims in their final offensive against the rebels in 2009.
International rights activists welcomed Thursday’s decision as a step in the right direction