Wigneswaran wants SL taken to International Criminal Court

Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootan (TMTK) leader CV Wigneswaran in an interview with Tamil Guardian has stated that Sri Lanka should be referred to the International Criminal Court.Stating that the resolution passed against Sri Lanka at the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council session was weak, Wigneswaran slammed the resolution as “insufficient” noting that the latest draft had been diluted in favour of Sri Lanka.

As evidence, he highlights the removal of paragraph 19 and how paragraph 5 has been amended to draw less emphasis on the continued militarisation of the Sri Lankan state. The latest version of the resolution instead notes the “importance of preserving civilian government functions from militarisation”.

The “government seems to have done its homework rather belatedly to dilute the draft Resolution,” Wigneswaran said.

He also highlighted his disappointment with the resolution’s failure to call for Sri Lanka to be referred to the ICC. Despite this, he remains optimistic stating:

“Each year the resolution is getting closer to bringing justice to our people. Those who committed severe war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are not going to avoid the Sword of Damocles falling on them”.

During the interview, Wigneswaran, while stressing the need for Sri Lanka to be referred to the ICC, noted the difficulties of achieving this:

“Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can only investigate and prosecute the four core international crimes in situations where states are ‘unable’ or ‘unwilling’ to do so themselves; the jurisdiction of the court is complementary to jurisdictions of domestic courts. The court has jurisdiction over crimes only if they are committed in the territory of a state party or if they are committed by a national of a state party; an exception to this rule is that the ICC may also have jurisdiction over crimes if its jurisdiction is authorized by the United Nations Security Council”.

“Ranil Wickremeisnghe was responsible for our not ratifying the Rome Statute,” Wigneswaran said. But he however noted that Wickremesinghe will take steps to ratify the Rome Statute if international aid was made contingent on this.