The International Human Rights Association – Bremen and the Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka are the organisers of each of the three sessions of the PTSL. The Berlin Tribunal has been convened as a continuation of the two previous Peoples’ Tribunals on SL.
Almost a decade later, the organisers called for a third session of the PTSL because of the continuing trauma of Eelam Tamils facing occupation at home and the criminalisation of their main historical resistance abroad. They have presented evidence that the condition of genocide persists, as does international impunity and, in particular, also the condition of criminalisation of legitimate resistance to genocide, both domestically and internationally.
The organisers have argued that while the findings of the PPT in the previous two sessions have been important, the findings that war crimes were committed in SL have been manipulated by the US to promote its own interests in the island, especially through the UNHRC, which has been used to deny the fundamental collective rights of the Eelam Tamils by protecting the SL state structure.
Despite raising ‘human rights’ concerns about SL, through US-led resolutions at the UNHRC, and even publicly announcing a travel ban on SL army chief Shavendra Silva in February 2020 for his conduct in the 2009 war, in reality the US has steadily strengthened its ties with the SL State and its armed forces.
