[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 72 (Friday, May 18, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E850-E851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 REMEMBERING THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SRI 
                                 LANKA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JEAN SCHMIDT

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 18, 2012

  Mrs. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember the third 
anniversary of the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka.
  Although the war ended on May 19, 2009, 90,000 Tamil war widows in 
the north and east continue to struggle to resume their lives without 
their husbands.
  Many have not been able to return to their original homes and must 
cope with disabilities, both their own and their children's, caused by 
shelling and the lack of medicine and intentional starvation at the end 
of the war.
  They have returned to a devastated land in which there is little 
remaining infrastructure and few jobs and which is occupied by a 
military force whose soldiers do not speak their language.
  Making a return to normal life even more difficult is the lack of 
accountability for their husbands' deaths and the horrors these women 
and their children underwent at the end of the war, including physical, 
sexual, and gender-based violence.
  Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission did not 
adequately deal with accountability by its armed forces.
  At its March, 2012 session, the U.N. Human Rights Council called on 
Sri Lanka to ``take all necessary additional steps to fulfill its 
relevant legal obligations and commitment to initiate credible and 
independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and 
reconciliation for all Sri Lankans.''
  If Sri Lanka does not take up this task immediately, there must be 
international action to provide accountability.
  This is why, Mr. Speaker, I am a co-sponsor of H. Res. 177, which 
calls for an international investigation into what occurred in Sri 
Lanka at the end of its civil war.
  I urge all my colleagues to support this resolution.

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