‘Had guts to dismiss UN demand for foreign judges’

“I have shown the strength of my backbone,” Sirisena said while addressing the executive committee meeting of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party held here. His comments are being seen as a response to criticism by his own SLFP party.  “Two weeks ago, the UN Human Rights chief had said Sri Lanka must have international judges in the accountability mechanism. 

The following day, I had the guts to dismiss it,” he said. 

Sirisena’s unity government with the SLFP’s arch rival United National Party led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has rejected the United Nations Human Rights Council’s call for a hybrid mechanism with  local and foreign judges to probe the allegations of war crimes during the last phase of the war with the LTTE. 

The Tamil minority, insists on foreign judges, claiming that the local judicial system remains far from trustworthy to deliver justice to the large numbers of Tamil victims of the conflict.