« Official Release of the Judgement of the Peoples’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka »

with

Dr Denis Halliday
Former Assistant Secretary-General of United Nations Laureate of the Gandhi International Peace Award

Dr Haluk Gerger
Renowned Turkish academic and Middle East analyst

Dr Gianni Tognoni
Secretary General, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

« According to the UN’s Petrie Report the final weeks of the war in Sri Lanka in early 2009 left an estimated 70.000 Tamils unaccounted for. The thorough investigation by the Tribunal into the history of the Sri Lankan conflict has established that the Sri Lankan military’s conduct during this period constitute not only war crimes but are ‘part of a coordinated plan whose different components aim at the physical destruction’ of the Tamil people ‘in whole or in part.’ Further, it was found that without the substantial political and military assistance by its external accomplices the Sri Lankan State would not have had the capacity to conduct its extermination campaign. The reputed jury of eleven genocide experts, experts on international law and human rights defenders examined several studies and background papers on the charges and heard evidence from more than 30 witnesses and analysts, before reaching the verdict. The text of the judgement will be made available to those attending, and the following representatives of the panel of jurors will be present to answer questions and to elaborate on the points raised by the verdict.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal was founded in June 1979, in Bologna, by a broad spectrum of legal experts, writers, and other cultural and community leaders (including five Nobel Prize laureates) from 31 countries. The PPT is rooted in the historical experiences of the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam (1966-67) and the dictatorships in Latin America (1974-1976). »