Sri Lanka whitewashes military abuses

For the first time, Sri Lanka acknowledged that its final push to end its decades-long conflict with Tamil rebels resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties — but it claimed all the civilian deaths were at the hands of the Tamil Tigers, despite documentary evidence to the contrary.

According to Human Rights Watch, the report, “Humanitarian Operation – Factual Analysis,” issued on August 1, 2011, claims that government forces did not use artillery against populated areas despite considerable evidence to the contrary and ignores compelling evidence of summary executions by its soldiers.

The report states that government forces “adher[ed] to a ‘Zero Civilian casualty’ policy” in the final months of the war, which ended in May 2009. But it says that, “[I]t was impossible in a battle of this magnitude, against a ruthless opponent actively endangering civilians, for civilian casualties to be avoided,” the rights watchdog said in a press release.

Here's HRW:

The report says nothing about Sri Lankan forces’ frequent indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, causing thousands of civilian casualties. Nor is there any mention of the repeated shelling of hospitals by government forces. These attacks, over several weeks, were described comprehensively in the 2011 report of the United Nations Panel of Experts, the 2009 US State Department Report to Congress on Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka, and reports by nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch.
….

No mention is made of allegations that government soldiers summarily executed captured Tamil Tiger fighters in the final days of the fighting, though the killings were captured on video. And while the report describes the military operations around the town of Mutur in Trincomalee district in August 2006, it says nothing about the execution-style killing of 17 humanitarian aid workers in Mutur at the time, allegedly by Sri Lankan security forces.