Sri Lanka should act on the call by a deputy minister to investigate war crimes by examining his own role in serious abuses, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Deputy Minister V. Muralitharan, known as Col. Karuna, called for war crimes investigations into the Tamil National Alliance, an opposition coalition of Tamil political parties, presumably because some of its members had links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Karuna was effectively the second-in-command of the LTTE and the head of its eastern province forces until he split from its leader V. Prabhakaran in March 2004.

“Karuna’s call for war crimes investigations should not allow him to airbrush out his own role in atrocities,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“His LTTE forces were implicated in some of Sri Lanka’s most horrific abuses, so the government’s long-stalled war crimes investigations might as well begin with him.”

LTTE forces under Karuna’s command were directly involved in some of the worst crimes of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long armed conflict, which ended in May 2009, Human Rights Watch said.

The Karuna group eventually joined forces with the Sri Lankan security forces and helped push back the LTTE’s stronghold in the east. After that, Karuna entered politics.

He has been a MP since 2008. His party is part of the coalition of the governing United People’s Freedom Alliance. He is currently the deputy minister for resettlement.

“His threat to initiate investigations against a political party is a cynical gesture aimed at silencing the opposition while denying his own responsibility for war crimes.” (IANS)