The Sri Lankan army has formed a special unit to defend itself against allegations of grave human rights abuses at the end of the island's decades-long ethnic war. Army chief Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake said the group would collate local and international reports, and establish the truth to clear the military's name.
International rights groups accuse the military of killing 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the war which ended in May 2009. The government of the time said not one civilian was killed. "Different people have been saying different things, but our voice has not been heard," Senanayake told Colombo-based foreign correspondents.
"That is why I set up the special directorate of overseas operations to prepare our position." Senanayake distanced the military from the previous claims that no civilians died, and acknowledged there may have been individual excesses.
"If someone says they know of specific instances (of rights violations) we are ready to investigate," Senanayake said. "I am not going to look the other way. I want to clear the name of the army." He said there were conflicting claims of casualties from the 37-year-old Tamil separatist war.
"Different units of the army involved in the final offensive maintained figures of casualties. I want to collate all that.
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