Responding to war crimes allegations will not work, confronting them will only work, seems to be the orientation of Rajapaksa regime as implied by a comment of SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who reacted to Tuesday’s The Hindu editorial, saying "it seemed fresh charges would be levelled as soon as we responded to existing allegations". Addressing a symposium on ‘post-war’ challenges at BMICH, Colombo the SL defence secretary said that he would stand by what he had said on rejecting the rape allegations on the SL Army, citing the safe treatment of a UK national “so attractive” in the custody of the SL Army, The island reported Thursday. The Hindu in its editorial said that for this statement alone Gotabhaya should be taken to task.
Commenting on his interview to Headlines Today, the presidential sibling said: "I didn’t want to be interviewed by the correspondent for Headlines Today television, though I agreed reluctantly. See where it had landed me. The Hindu now wanted my brother to get away from me."
"In fact, the Indian journalist assured me of ‘a good coverage’ and promised to build my image. At the end of the day, Headlines Today television did a lot of damage," Gotabhaya conceded.
The defence secretary cited by The Island reconfirmed what he had told The Headlines Today: he believed now that as the LTTE had been eradicated the situation had changed on the issue of political devolution and that if the TN chief minister was really concerned about the northern Tamils she should take action against poaching into the northern waters.
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