Canada on Tuesday sanctioned four Sri Lanka state officials, including Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who are former presidents and also brothers, for human rights abuses committed during the island nation’s civil war, Hindustan Times reported.
A statement from Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, said, the four individuals were “responsible for gross and systematic violations of human rights during armed conflict in Sri Lanka, which occurred from 1983 to 2009”, which targeted the country’s minority Tamil population.
The other two people named in the sanctions list are Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake and Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachch.