More than two years since the end of Sri Lanka's civil war, new evidence alleges that both sides of this brutal conflict committed serious crimes against civilians.
There are implications for Australia's rule of law, and three possible perpetrators with an immediate connection to our shores.
Sri Lanka's 25-year war culminated in 2009. Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were swept up in a final siege as Sri Lankan troops closed in on the Tamil Tigers. The guerillas held women, children and elderly people as human shields. Government assaults killed many thousands.
A brief of evidence handed last week to Australian authorities by the International Commission of Jurists (Australia) reportedly includes eyewitness testimony from those who lost family and friends in those months. A number of witnesses are Australians, or Australian residents.
Compiled by Australian lawyers, this brief apparently triangulates incidents of the killing of civilians. These include attacks on hospitals; targeting civilians with bombardment after directing them to particular areas; striking civilians with cluster and phosphorus weapons; using civilians as human shields; summary executions; torture; disappearance and the denial of food and medicine.
The commission's brief reportedly urges the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and Australian Federal Police to investigate three people in particular.
The first is Sri Lanka's new ambassador to Australia, Thisara Samarasinghe, formerly an admiral whose ships allegedly bombarded civilian "no-fire zones" declared by the government. Similar allegations compelled Sri Lanka to withdraw another of its military envoys from Germany.
The second is Palitha Kohona, a dual Australian-Sri Lankan national, once an Australian foreign affairs functionary and now Sri Lanka's ambassador to the UN in New York. He is accused of having lured a group into surrender who were then summarily executed. Kohona denies that he held any authority that led to these murders.
The last is Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's popular president. As commander-in-chief, he bears responsibility for the alleged wrongdoing of his men. Rajapaksa faces a civil suit in the US over similar allegations. In a fortnight he will arrive in Perth to meet other Commonwealth heads of government, as well as the Queen.
The Tamil Tiger leadership was all but wiped out in 2009. Those left to face allegations of murder are from the victorious army. Sri Lanka now smarts under increasingly detailed allegations it says unfairly targets them. It nominates the commission among a lengthy list of agitators supposedly bent on destroying its hard-won peace.
