The former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa accused the current government of betraying Sri Lanka and its military to what he described as the pro LTTE Tamil diaspora.
Criticising a proposed bill which looks to incorporate provisions of the 'International Convention for the Protection of All Persons From Enforced Disappearances', Mr Rajapaksa said "all Members of Parliament should be mindful that passing this Bill into law will be a clear case of betraying our country to the pro-LTTE Diaspora and the interested foreign parties backing them."
"The proposed law is an attempt to subject our armed forces to international war crimes prosecutions without using the term ‘war crimes’ and rephrasing it as ‘disappearances’," he was quoted by Adaderana as saying.
"The use of the word ‘disappearances’ makes this look like an innocuous attempt to trace missing persons. However the purpose of this proposed legislation is not to trace missing persons but to hunt down and prosecute those who won the war against terrorism."
"Articles 10 and 11 of the International Convention against Enforced Disappearances empowers any member State to arrest anybody, even a foreigner present within its jurisdiction on suspicion of having been involved in enforced disappearances in any other country. The State that carries out such an arrest can prosecute the suspect without extraditing him to his own country. Most significantly, a suspect arrested in that manner, can be handed over to an international criminal tribunal even if the suspect’s own country does not come under the jurisdiction of that international tribunal."
