Colombo – An international human rights group Wednesday accused the Sri Lanka government of blocking independent investigations of alleged abuses in the recently ended war with Tamil rebels. US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) was reacting to a government offer to conduct its own probe into the allegations contained in a US State Department report published on October 22.
"The government is once again creating a smokescreen inquiry to avoid accountability for abuses," HRW Asia director Brad Adams said.
"The government's committee is merely an effort to buy time and hope the world will forget the bloodbath that civilians suffered at the end of the war," he said.
HRW said that only an independent international investigation could "uncover the truth about this brutal war and ensure justice for the victims. The UN and US should not play along with the government's pretense that it will conduct its own investigation."
The report said according to conservative UN estimates, 7,000 civilians were killed and more than 13,000 injured during the final months of fighting earlier this year.
Military operations against the rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ended on May 18, after senior insurgent commanders including Velupillai Prabhakaran were killed in the north-eastern part of the country.
As many as 280,000 people were displaced by the war, and nearly 250,000 are still in refugee camps in the northern zone.
Sri Lanka has been under international pressure to probe reports of human rights violations during the final phase of the war.
The government has repeatedly denied that any abuses occurred.
"Soldiers fought with a gun in one hand and human rights in the other," President Mahinda Rajapaksa told a public ceremony on Tuesday.
