Singapore urged to arrest Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa by South Africa-based human rights group

The International Truth and Justice Project says former president Rajapaksa should be detained and questioned about his role in nation’s decades-long civil war

ITJP says, based on universal jurisdiction the alleged abuses are subject to prosecution in Singapore, where he fled after months of unrest over economic crisis

2-MIN READ2-MIN

A human rights group wants Singapore’s authorities to arrest Sri Lanka’s ex-president Gotabayer Rajapaksa who entered the city state on a private visit and had not sought or been granted asylum. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:20pm, 24 Jul 2022Updated: 8:52am, 25 Jul 2022

A rights group documenting alleged abuses in Sri Lanka has filed a criminal complaint with Singapore’s attorney general, seeking the arrest of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for his role in the South Asian nation’s decades-long civil war.

The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) said Rajapaksa committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions during the civil war in 2009 when he was country’s defence chief, according to a copy of the complaint seen by Reuters.

The South Africa-based ITJP argued that based on universal jurisdiction the alleged abuses were subject to prosecution in Singapore, where he fled after months of unrest over his country’s economic crisis.

Rajapaksa submitted his resignation in Singapore, a day after fleeing on July 13. Anti-government protesters had stormed the offices and official residences of the president and the prime minister.

“The criminal complaint that has been filed is (based on) verifiable information on both the crimes that have been committed, but also on evidence really linking the individual in question, who is now in Singapore,” Alexandra Lily Kather, one of the lawyers that drafted the complaint, told Reuters by telephone from Berlin.

“Singapore really has a unique opportunity with this complaint, with its own law and with its own policy, to speak truth to power.”