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Sri Lanka marks Independence Day with Tamil anthem

Sri Lankan schoolchildren sang their national anthem in the island’s minority Tamil language at Independence Day celebrations for the first time in 67 years on Thursday, in a highly symbolic gesture a

Sri Lankan schoolchildren sang their national anthem in the island’s minority Tamil language at Independence Day celebrations for the first time in 67 years on Thursday, in a highly symbolic gesture after decades of civil war.

Every year since 1949, the first anniversary of independence from Britain, the anthem Sri Lanka Matha (Mother Sri Lanka) had been sung at the festivities only in Sinhala, spoken by the island’s ethnic Sinhalese majority.

On Thursday, pupils sang in both languages at a televised military parade that also saw Army tanks, gunships and fighter jets travel down Colombo’s seafront promenade in front of thousands of flag-waving spectators.

Reconciliation-minded President Maithripala Sirisena marked the island republic’s 68th independence anniversary with a call for unity after the 37-year war with Tamil separatists that claimed 1,00,000 lives.

In a speech, Mr Sirisena reiterated his pledge to allow a UN-mandated investigation into wartime human rights abuses following a UN Human Rights Council resolution late last year.

“By implementing the resolution we safeguard the dignity of the nation, the people and the armed forces... and it helps us to be accepted as a respected member of the international community,” the President said.

Mr Sirisena’s new government has pledged to set up special war crimes courts in 2016 to investigate allegations that troops killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the conflict that ended in 2009. However, Mr Sirisena did not explicitly agree that foreign judges and prosecutors could take part in such an investigation.

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