27.02.2012: Walk for Justice today arrived in Biel, Switzerland, after walking 30 km. While Walk for Justice is on the way to Geneva several politicians representing their countries have come together to start the 19^th Human Rights Council.

Regarding Sri Lanka several countries are pushing towards an international independent investigation on war crimes in Sri Lanka. The International Crisis Group says, “Members of the UN Human Rights Council, opening its 19^th session in Geneva today, should be ready to press the Sri Lankan government for real answers. … As member states of the Human Rights Council prepare for the upcoming session, they should ask the government for a full explanation of how this purported census was conducted, what safeguards were in place to ensure independence, who (by name and by civilian or combatant) was killed or went missing and how, and whether UN agencies and independent civil society organisations will be allowed to verify the findings. Equally important, Council members should ask the government to reconcile its “enumeration” with the now-extensive information available suggesting that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the final stages of the war, most as a result of government fire into heavily populated civilian areas.”

While the Sri Lankan Minister of External Affairs, G.L Peiris, is busy with convincing the African countries not to support the resolution against Sri Lanka, the second representative of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Samarasinghe, is delivering the speech for Sri Lanka at the Human Rights Council.  Samarasinghe said there was no need for a resolution, as the government had already taken steps to carry out recommendations made by a national Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that investigated the army’s role.

Now is the time for the HRC to demonstrate its commitment to justice for victims and their families by taking effective action toward establishing an independent international accountability mechanism.

also visit:

http://www.crisisgroupblogs.org/srilanka-lastingpeace/2012/02/27/sri-lanka%E2%80%99s-dead-and-missing-the-need-for-an-accounting/#more-78