Sri Lanka slams U.S. rights report

Sri Lanka dismissed a U.S. State Department report accusing it of violating citizens' rights, saying the allegations were unsubstantiated and based on reports by unnamed sources.

The State Department's annual human rights survey faulted both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers in the island's 25-year-civil war which ended last year.

"The document is a conflation of historical background, repetition of statements in earlier reports, unverified assertions of facts and broad generalizations," said a statement released on Monday, March 15, by the Sri Lanka's Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights.

The ministry said the allegations were based on "reports that are mainly attributed to anonymous NGO's, international sources, human rights groups, observers and other unnamed sources."

Wimal Weerawansa, the leader of the National Freedom Front, a member party of the ruling alliance told reporters that the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka had provided wrong and distorted facts to the State Department.

"This was part of a sinister campaign to destabilize the country and pave the way for U.S. intervention here," Weerawansa said.

He said the main opposition United National Party and the leftist party JVP or the People's Liberation Front would benefit from the U.S. strategy in the forthcoming parliamentary election.

Referring to the annual Human Rights Report 2009 released by the U.S. State Department, Weerawansa said the United States had depicted Sri Lanka as a country run by the Rajapaksa brothers.

He said earlier a section of the international community had portrayed Sri Lanka as a Sinhala majority country but now they referred to the island as the Rajapaksa brothers' country.

Weerawansa said the United States had turned a blind eye to the atrocities of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam before it was defeated by the government troops in May 2009.

He alleged that defeated opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka had been fully backed by the United States and other interested parties aimed at changing the government in Sri Lanka.

A spokesperson from the U.S. Embassy in Colombo had denied Weerawansa's allegations, saying the embassy would reply the accusation later.

Rights groups and Western governments are pressing for some kind of accountability for thousands of civilian deaths in the last months of the war against the Tamil Tigers.

The government has denied charges of deliberately targeting civilians and other human rights breaches.