Sri Lanka celebrates end of war

MATARA, May 18, 2014 (AFP) - President Mahinda Rajapakse led celebrations at a major victory parade Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist war, after banning commemorations for its victims.



As the envoys of Western nations stayed away from the parade, a defiant Rajapakse insisted he would not bow to pressure from foreign critics who are pushing him to investigate claims that tens of thousands of people died in the final stages of the conflict.

"Some governments are blind, deaf and dumb.

They are opposed to our celebrating this victory," Rajapakse said in a televised speech from Matara, his birthplace in the Sinhalese heartland of the island's south.

"We are not celebrating victory in a war, we are celebrating peace.

Irrespective of who opposes this, or who stays away, we will always commemorate this day," he added.

The 37-year conflict effectively ended on May 18, 2009, when troops killed the Tamil Tiger rebels' supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in a brutal assault on the northern town of Mullaittivu.

The UN has estimated that at least 100,000 people died in the entire conflict, about 40,000 of them in the final months of fighting.

Rajapakse however has denied any civi