Make Rajapaksa stand trial for war crimes: Jaya

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AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa has urged the Centre to move the United Nations (UN) for bringing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to trial for war crimes and genocide along with his generals.

She demanded that the Centre spearhead an international movement to mount pressure on Lanka to treat all people in that country as equals and ensure dignity of living.

“If necessary, an economic blockade will have to be resorted to, to bring a recalcitrant Sri Lanka to heel,” she said here on Wednesday reacting to the 214-page document of the UN panel on accountability in Sri Lanka.

With the report, which made “mincemeat of the Lankan government’s claim that it had conducted a “humanitarian rescue operation” with a “zero civilian casualties policy,” practically confirming human rights violations and brutal repression, Indian should now move the UN to initiate necessary steps to bring Rajapaksa to stand trial for war crimes and genocide along with his generals, senior ministers and all others party to the brutal excesses, she said.

Ms Jayalalithaa said India could no longer remain a “silent spectator” but has to “act now” as the Tamils of Sri Lanka shared “an umblical relationship with the people of Tamil Nadu, speaking same language and sharing same religious and cultural heritage.”

“It causes intense pain when we are told that our brothers and sisters, hardly 30 km across the sea, are being subjected to untold sufferings in their country for the sole reason that they are Tamils,” she added.