SL: UN for intl mechanism to probe rights violation

Colombo, Nov 7: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, today called for ''wider international mechanism'' to probe and prevent the increasing cases of human rights violations in Sri Lanka.

Ms Louise Arbour made this call while making a statement in reference to the establishment of a new ''Inquiry Commission'' by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday to inquire and investigate into the most serious human rights violations since August 2005, which will be headed by former Chief Justice of India P N Bhagwathi.

Welcoming Mr Rajapaksa's move to establish the new Inquiry Commission, the UN High Commissioner has expressed the hope that the move will see the perpetrators of serious human rights violations are brought to book''.

Ms Louise Arbour, however, said ''a broader international mechanism is still needed to monitor, ultimately prevent, human rights violations in the longer term''.

According to the statement, the UN High Commissioner, however, expressed the concern over ''several shortcomings in the national legal system'', that could potentially hamper the effectiveness of the Inquiry Commission, particularly the absence of any legal tradition of establishing command responsibility for human rights violations.

She also noted that many recommendations of past inquiry commissions, including disappearances, had yet not been fully implemented, the statement said, while underlining the significance of this initiative in addressing impunity for human rights violations related to the ongoing conflict in the country.

''It will be critically important for the Commission to establish not only individual responsibility for crimes, but the broader patterns and context in which they occur,'' the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has been quoted as saying in the statement.

Amid allegations of widespread killings, abductions and torture by both the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels, the government yesterday nominated a panel of local experts to probe into grave human rights abuses in the past year and fixied a period of one-year to conclude their findings.

It is the first time that a panel of foreigners have been appointed to ensure that local investigators do their job in keeping with international human rights standards.

UNI

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