Christians Disappointed by Sri Lanka Government Denials of NGO Killings

|TOP|Christians in Sri Lanka have reacted with disappointment after the country’s government rejected a report by truce monitors which blamed government forces for the massacre of 17 aid workers last month.

Truce monitors called the killings of the French NGO Action Against Hunger aid workers a “gross violation of the ceasefire accord by the security forces”.

They were also “convinced”, they said, that no other armed group could have been behind the killings near Muttar in the north-east of Sri Lanka, the BBC reported.

But the government rejected with anger the allegation by the truce monitors, calling it “pathetic and biased”.

Keheliya Rambukwella told AP news agency: "We deny it and it's a totally baseless statement that the head of the [monitoring mission] has made. |AD|

"They have no right to make such a statement because they are not professionals in autopsy or post-mortem."

Christians in Sri Lanka have decried the governments denial of the truce monitors’ findings.

Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council, which includes churches among its members, told Ecumenical News International: “The government response to the peace monitors' report is totally unacceptable.”

He added: “The atmosphere of immunity is getting worse.”

Perera also accused the government of denial, saying that the report by the peace monitors “seems credible and widely accepted, though the embarrassed government is in denial mode".

Rohan Edrisinha, an Anglican and director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, told ENI, "The government response will not help boost the morale of aid workers" as fighting rages in the Tamil majority areas of the north and the east of Sri Lanka.

According to Edrisinha, most aid workers, except for UN staff, have already abandoned their work in Jaffna and other conflict zones.