Norway Backs UN Resolution Against Sri Lanka

The UN is expected to demand a long-term plan for how Tamils and Singhalese can live in peace on the island nation.

The aftermath of a Genocide. Photo: nowpublic.com

(OSLO, Norway) - Norway has joined other nations in calling for an investigation into civilian deaths in the country’s long and bloody civil war. The UN resolution wants answers to questions about, among other things, what happened to the thousands killed in the last months of the war.

When it finally ended in 2009, after 27 years, most of the leadership of the guerilla movement LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers, was killed. So were as many as 40,000 civilians, and now the US, Norway and several other countries want Sri Lankan authorities to account for them.

“There are many who wonder what happened to their loved ones,” Erik Solheim, Norway’s government minister for foreign aid, told newspaper Aftenposten last week. Solheim also served as a UN special envoy to Sri Lanka while the civil war was still going on.

Solheim said the new Sri Lankan government won the war “but now needs to win the peace.” The UN is expected to demand a long-term plan for how Tamils and Singhalese can live in peace on the island nation.

Special thanks to the Norway Labour Journal

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/02/23/norway-backs-un-resolution-against-sri-lanka/