India likely to vote against Sri Lanka at key UNHRC vote: Reports

India is likely to back a US resolution against Sri Lanka at an upcoming key vote at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, reported CNN-IBN.

Although no decision has been formally announced, CNN-IBN said that India was likely to vote against its neighboring country for three reasons:

* India is not happy with Sri Lanka’s implementation of the recommendations made by its own Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), which suggested several steps to promote harmony and address Tamil concerns in the aftermath of the end of the civil war.

* India is happy with the language of the resolution, as it will not expect Sri Lanka to accept international monitoring. India is of the position that any solution has to be a Sri Lankan led process

* The government is mindful of regional sentiments and the sensitivity of the issue in Tamil Nadu.

The resolution will ask the Government of Sri Lanka to follow through on its own commitments to its people, including implementing the constructive recommendations from the report by Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, according to US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell.

The US had introduced a similar resolution last year, which India also supported then.

Both the DMK and AIADMK have been insistent that the Indian government take action against Sri Lanka and also impose sanctions against the country in the face of mounting evidence of war crimes and continuing human rights violations.

Outrage was further stoked when BBC’s Channel Four released new footage showing two pictures of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son Balachandran taken two hours apart with the same camera. One showed the child sitting inside an army bunker munching on a snack. The other showed him dead on the floor with five bullet wounds to his chest.

However Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Geneva said that the video would not be part of the official process of the ongoing UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva.

The outrage was compounded with a Human Rights Watch report that established that scores of women and men were sexually abused by the security forces of the Sri Lankan regime – the military, police, intelligence and others – during 2006-2012 and it is still continuing.

There have been continuing demonstrations against Sri Lanka in Tamil Nadu by various political parties, where a 41-year-old man also attempted self immolation in protest.

The issue was also brought up in Parliament, but External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid refused to commit to a stand either way, saying, “If Sri Lanka is able to show it is moving forward we will come to one conclusion, if they cannot, we will come to another conclusion.”

Khurshid was also quick to play down an angry AIADMK MPs assertion that “as far as Tamils are concerned, Sri Lanka is no longer a friendly nation to India. It is an enemy country”.

“We may have distress, anger and pain. But we should not be saying Sri Lanka is an enemy country”, he said.

CNN-IBN quoting sources said however, that the centre was not happy that its foreign policy decisions were being influenced so heavily by regional politics, and was growing deeply uncomfortable in this regard.

Sri Lanka have however been mostly defiant in the face of the increasing international pressure, shooting down a devolution of power to the Tamils and recently impeaching the country’s Chief Justice because she refused to accept a controversial plan involving citizens pension funds as constitutional.

It remains to be seen if this latest resolution will have any impact.