Rapper M.I.A. tells Channel 4 News that though she still wants former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa to face a war crimes trial, the priority is getting the country’s Tamils their basic needs.
Maya Arulpragasam, the Sri Lankan Tamil recording artist, spoke to Channel 4 News following the defeat of Rajapaksa, a man accused of presiding over war crimes at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, in Sri Lanka’s election.
Mahinda Rajapaksa was in charge of Sri Lanka at the end of the war against terror group the Tamil Tigers. In the closing weeks of the war in May 2009 the Sri Lankan army is accused of deliberately shelling civilians, and the UN estimates that around 40,000 died.
For their part, the Tamil Tigers were a brutal organisation also accused of war crimes - including the use of child soldiers, human shields and suicide bombings.
The UN is currently investigating alleged war crimes committed at the end of Sri Lankan civil war and in the years following, but it is an inquiry that Rajapaksa had refused to cooperate with.
Rajapaksa has been replaced as Sri Lankan president by Maithripala Sirisena - Rajapaksa’s one-time ally and also the acting defence minister at the end of the civil war. - (channel4)
