“Is the Sri Lanka resolution at the UNHRC part of the problem or part of the solution?”

with

Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam
Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), former MP

Ananthy Sasitharan
Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Elected Representative of the Northern Provincial Council

Kumaravadivel Guruparan
Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF)

Professor Sri Ranjan
Co-Chair ICET

Dr. Jude Lal Fernando
Irish Forum for peace in Sri Lanka (IFPSL)

Dr. Andrew Higginbottom
Prosecutor at the ‘People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka’, Principal lecturer in international politics and human rights at Kingston University London

Representatives of the Eelam Tamils and their supporters speak out. “The current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is seen by most Tamils as the last chance for the UN to take their plight seriously”, they affirm. “Navi Pillay’s declared willingness to set into motion an International Independent Inquiry, raised hope, that at last, the UNHRC would put human rights over and above big power politics. But these hopes were dashed when the leaked UK/US authored resolution appears to give yet another year for the Sri Lankan state to carry out its plans to further intensify the colonisation and Sinhalisation. As Kumaravadivel Guruparan from the Tamil Civil Society Forum pointed out ‘the Sri Lankan state, on April 26th, emboldened by the 2013 March resolution, seized more than 6,000 acres of land in Valikaamam North’.”