Sri Lanka Hopes for Trump's Support to Drop War Crime Charges  

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Sri Lanka's leader attempts to gain support of President-elect Donald Trump to free Sri Lankan troops from war crime allegations from the country's decades-long civil war. President Maithripala Sirisena said that he has already sent a message to Trump.

The statement indicated a withdraw by Sirisena's government from its earlier promise to the UN Human Rights Council to investigate allegations of war crimes against government troops and the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels in the country's civil war, which ended in 2009.

The UN high commissioner for human rights had called last year for the appointment of a hybrid court comprising local and international judges. But Sri Lanka, in a resolution co-sponsored with the US at the council, had agreed to investigate allegations through its own judicial system with international technical support.

Sirisena told a party meeting over the weekend that he would discuss the Human Rights Council's resolution with Trump and send "special representatives to request [Trump] to free our country from this situation and help us to build a society where we could live freely."

Sirisena said he would also make a similar appeal to incoming UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The statement comes in the wake of rising pressure by hard-line groups from the ethnic majority Sinhalese that accuse Sirisena's government of betraying the military at the behest of Western nations.

Sirisena's predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the military campaign to crush the rebels and rejected calls for investigations during his tenure, has been trying to woo the public back to him on the issue.

A UN report says there are strong indications that both government soldiers and Tamil rebels committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 25-year separatist war.

AP