Sri Lanka Slams U.N. Rights Chief over 'Interference'

Sri Lanka Tuesday accused the U.N. rights chief of "unwarranted interference" by calling for an international inquiry into allegations troops killed thousands of civilians at the end of the civil war.

The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse formally rejected the demand by rights chief Navi Pillay for an external investigation into what she had called "credible allegations" that 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed by Sri Lankan forces in 2009.

Pillay's recommendation to a U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva next month "reflects bias and is tantamount to an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state", Colombo said in a statement.

The United States has already said it will move a third censure motion against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, buttressing the recommendations of Pillay who visited Sri Lanka on a week-long fact-finding mission last August.

Shortly before leaving, she launched a scathing attack on Sri Lanka's failure to honor promises to ensure accountability and accused the Rajapakse regime of becoming "increasingly authoritarian".

In her latest report, Pillay said the UNHRC could not have any faith in Sri Lanka to deliver justice internally and local courts had been "compromised by politicization and interference by the executive".

In the U.N. document leaked 10 days ago but published officially on Monday, Pillay asked the UNHRC to set up an independent probe and said Colombo had "consistently failed to establish the truth".

She also recommended Sri Lanka repeal its draconian anti-terror legislation, demilitarize the former war zone and "arrest, prosecute and punish perpetrators of attacks on minority communities, media and human rights defenders".

Pillay's report noted fresh evidence of what took place during the final stages of the ethnic war that ended in May 2009 when an army onslaught crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist guerrillas.

The U.N. has said up to 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed during the final months of fighting and blamed many of the deaths on government forces, a charge Colombo vehemently denies.

Colombo hit back in a 23-page statement, accusing her of having a "preconceived, politicized and prejudicial agenda which she has relentlessly pursued with regard to Sri Lanka".

Pillay is South African of Tamil origin.

Even as Colombo locked horns with Pillay, local forensic experts found more bodies in an unmarked mass grave in the island's former battle zone of Mannar, taking the total from 36 to 80.

Judicial medical officer Dhananjaya Waidyaratne said excavations resumed on Monday after a short break at the grave site discovered by construction workers in December.

The government sought to head off concerns that Sri Lankan soldiers could have been involved in the grave, saying the Mannar area had long been a Tamil rebel stronghold.

Rights group Amnesty International said Pillay's findings put pressure on the international community to support a probe at the UNHRC meeting.

"It's utterly shameful that five years after Sri Lanka's armed conflict ended, the victims and family members have yet to see justice," Amnesty deputy Asia-Pacific director Polly Truscott said in a statement Tuesday.

Sri Lanka has previously said it needs more time to address issues of accountability and reconciliation after ending the 37-year-old conflict, which according to U.N. estimates claimed at least 100,000 lives.

Last week the government sent a top-level delegation to South Africa to study its reconciliation process, but Colombo is yet to announce if it would follow the example of the rainbow nation.