Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), UPFA member Pradip Jayewardene urged the government to study the report of the second mandate of the Paranagama Commission which was asked to look into the final phase of the war in 2009.
“Regardless of the political situation in the country, we will have to answer to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2019 and we need to be prepared”, he told the Daily News.
The Paranagama Commission appointed in 2013 by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and officially known as the Presidential Commission of Inquiry Into Complaints of Abductions and Dissappearances submitted its report on its second mandate in 2015 and the report was tabled in Parliament in October 2015.
Jayawardene, the grandson of former President J. R. Jayewardene, explained that the Paranagama Commission second report which was handed over to the President’s Office contained valuable inputs from famed international Human Rights lawyers which could help the country face the UNHRC in Geneva.
“As a person who helped with it, I know that it can greatly help us deal with the human rights allegations. I am not sure whether the President read it as it was handed over to the President’s Secretary when he was not in the country”.
Jayawardene added that when the report was first handed over, former Minister Mangala Samaraweera had discredited it and ‘swept it under the carpet’, “This is an extremely valuable report for us to face Geneva”, he said.
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