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As the Syrian government agrees
to allow UN inspectors to visit the site of a suspected chemical weapons
attack, the organisation’s human
rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, has arrived in Sri Lanka for a fact-finding
mission in areas scarred by that country’s long and bloody civil war.
The UN has said that at least
40,000 civilians, mainly Tamils, died in the final months of the conflict in
2009 as the Tamil Tigers were finally defeated. The government was accused of
shelling hospitals and refugee camps, but it has resisted international calls
for the allegations to be investigated.
Over the last two years, the UN
Human Rights Council has passed two resolutions demanding that Sri Lanka
launch an independent investigation, while Canada has called for a boycott of
a Commonwealth summit scheduled to take place in Colombo in November.
Ms Pillay is expected to hold
meetings with members of the Tamil community as well as with the Sri Lankan
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, before reporting back to the UN.
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