COLOMBO, Mar 8: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said he has nothing to fear as his country faces a US-moved human rights resolution at the UN rights body.
Addressing a televised question and answer session last night, the president said, “We have nothing to be worried of, I am not worried”.
He said a handful of powerful countries are being backed by local elements to undermine him and his Government.
“The opposition who can never be victorious in the country and certain NGOs are carrying tales to the international community. They try to win this way,” Rajapaksa quipped.
The US-moved resolution is to back UN rights chief Navi Pillay’s proposal to subject Sri Lanka to an international investigation over its alleged human rights abuses.
“This commissioner (Pillay) came here and stayed for 4 days gathering incorrect information. Now they are tyring to base those wrong information. We have rejected it. We have said we will not accept it,” he said.
Rajapaksa said Cuba and Israel have also faced similar action by the UN Human Rights Council against their countries.
“So it is not only us. There are more countries”.
Rajapaksa said he had guaranteed the right to live of all Sri Lankan communities by ending the separatist armed campaign of the LTTE.
“What greater human rights than being allowed to live?”, he asked.
Stating that by taking steps such as the appointment of a panel to probe disappearances in the island, Rajapaksa said, the Government had already addressed rights concerns.
The resolution to be put to vote at the UNHRC session in Geneva at end of this month will be the third in as many years censuring Sri Lanka on its lack of progress on human rights accountability and reconciliation with its Tamil minority after the civil war ended with the defeat of the LTTE in 2009.
India had backed the previous two resolutions. (AGENCIES)
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