Sri Lanka’s president once more reiterated that he would not allow any foreign judges to participate in an accountability mechanism to deal with mass atrocities, as he spoke with the heads of media institutions at the President’s House in Colombo on Friday.
Mr Sirisena has repeated several times that his government would not allow any foreign judges to take part in such a mechanism, since Sri Lanka agreed to set up a “credible justice process” with “Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers and authorized prosecutors and investigators” in a 2015 UN Human Rights Council Resolution.
Sri Lanka argued for an extension to the resolution and has until 2019 to set up a judicial mechanism, yet there has been no such move thus far.
The Sri Lankan president told reporters that “Sri Lanka’s position was well explained by the Ministers Tilak Marapana, Dr Sarath Amunugama and Faizer Mustapha”.
He also went on to add that with regards to demands made by the Tamil National Alliance “whatever the solution, it will have to be implemented with the consensus of the majority Sinhalese”.
See more from the President’s Media Division here.
