President Says Sri Lanka Is Being Targeted

September 25, 2014

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa criticized the United Nations Human Rights Council in his address to the UN General Assembly, calling its probe into Sri Lanka's concluded civil war disproportionate and politically motivated.

"Post-conflict Sri Lanka has also become an unfortunate victim of ill-conceived agendas of some in the Human Rights Council," he said in his address on Wednesday (NY time) to the 193-member UN General Assembly, adding that the body was overlooking Sri Lanka's "substantial progress" since the war ended in 2009.

"There is an obvious lack of balance and proportion in the manner in which my country is being targeted today," he said, adding that there were more pressing emergencies elsewhere in the world.

"External intervention without adequate consideration of the structures in a society and cultural traditions of the countries where such intervention takes place, inevitably results in detribalisation," he said.
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“We have gained inspiration from the words of Gautama the Buddha who said that the purpose of all human endeavour. True to these words of wisdom, the Government of Sri Lanka remains committed to its objective of pursuing the processes of reconciliation” Rajapaksa said.

The United Nations estimated in a 2011 report that about 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final weeks of the war, mostly by the army. Sri Lanka has rejected the allegation and said it was conducting its own investigation.

The Human Rights Council, in voting to investigate the deaths of some 100,000 in March, said Sri Lanka had failed to investigate properly. Sri Lanka has refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council's investigation.

President Rajapaksa also focused on matters pertaining to post-2015 development and the htreat of terrorism among other matters.