Colombo/Vavuniya: Sri Lanka's president on Saturday approved the dishonourable discharge of his former army chief and political rival, a day after a military court convicted the general of involvement in politics while in service.
President Mahinda Rajapakse confirmed that General Sarath Fonseka would be stripped of his rank, medals and other military honours, a government statement said.
Fonseka led Sri Lanka's army in its victory last year against ethnic Tamil rebels, ending a quarter-century civil war that killed 80,000 to 100,000 people.
One-time allies, the president and army chief were both considered heroes by the Sinhalese majority for crushing the Tamil rebels. However, their relationship deteriorated after the hostilities ended and Fonseka challenged Rajapakse in a presidential election.
Breaching regulations
Fonseka lost the election to Rajapakse in January and was arrested weeks later. He was accused of planning his political career while still in uniform and breaching regulations for purchasing military hardware.
Fonseka has been detained since then. His supporters have called the charges baseless, and accuse Rajapakse of persecuting the general for daring to challenge him at the polls.
Sri Lanka's minority Tamils yesterday testified before a government-appointed war commission alleging rights violations during the final stages of the army's offensive against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
Witnesses told the commission of loved ones taken away by unidentified gangs, and sometimes by the military as it pressed on against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a 25-year war that ended last year.
"My husband was abducted in a white van on September 4, 2008 by an unidentified gang," Umakanthan Naguleshwari told the commission with tears in her eyes. "There is no information about him."
Rajapakse set up the panel, called the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, to look into the last seven years of the war, after turning down Western requests for an independent investigation into widespread allegations of abuse by the military during the war.
The United States and rights groups have questioned the credibility of the commission which began hearings this week in the northern town of Vavuniya where tens of thousands of minority Tamils displaced by the fighting were kept in camps.
