Security Council on Sri Lanka 'war crimes' and detained doctors

As the UN Security Council assembled in the basement for what they say will probably be their last meeting on Sri Lanka.
...European Council sources told Inner City Press is was hard even getting this "unofficial" briefing. "The conflict is over," one said. But other say, the dirty war continues, now funded by the UN. Watch this site.

The briefing came as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated calls for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes committed by both sides and pledged the UN’s support for such an inquiry.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, angrily rejected allegations of wrongdoing after last week’s revelations in The Times that more than 20,000 civilians were believed to have died in the island’s so-called no-fire zone, most of them from Sri Lankan army shelling.

The doctors were arrested as they fled the zone with thousands of Tamil civilians in the last day of the offensive and have been in detention since. The United States has said that they “helped save many lives” while the UN called them “heroic”.

Mahinda Samarasinghe, the country’s Human Rights Minister, told the BBC the doctors would be brought to trial next year. “I don’t know what the investigations would reveal but maybe they were even part of that whole conspiracy to put forward this notion that government forces were shelling and targeting hospitals and indiscriminately targeting civilians,” he said.

Mr Holmes said that the Government’s aggressive posture raised legitimate fears about their commitment to reconciliation with the Tamil community.