Leading Sri Lankan bishop calls for accountability

A leading Catholic Bishop in Sri Lanka on Sunday called for accountability over some 140,000 people who he said have not been accounted for during the final stages of the war. Bishop Rayappu Joseph from the Northern town of Mannar said the government must address minority Tamil issues and not shift attention from the core issues. Once seen by the government as being a strong supporter of the Tamil Tiger rebels, the Bishop insisted he was never for a separate state and had even objected to the violence committed by the rebels. "When the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) started they were good. But later they took up arms. They took up arms as a last resort when all our political attempts to recognize Tamil rights were suppressed. But I don't justify violence, I condemn it. I do not accept what the LTTE did by using arms and killing people," he said. Bishop Rayappu Joseph said he was confident the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which won recent elections held in the Tamil dominated North, will be able to address the issues faced by the Tamils and will need to work with the government to achieve that goal. The bishop said there needs to be constitutional amendments which address the issues of the minorities especially the Tamils and advice should be sought from India and other countries when drafting a political solution. The Sri Lankan army defeated the rebels in May 2009 after 30 years of war. The rebels had control over most parts of the North until their defeat.