UN Calls for Accountability And Sri Lanka Wants Time And Space

The human rights situation in Sri Lanka will come under scrutiny before the UNHRC at its 25th session.

(MELBOURNE) - The United Nations (UN) has reiterated there needs to be accountability in Sri Lanka over the alleged incidents which took place during final stages of the war. Farhan Haq, the Acting Deputy Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said ultimately it’s up to different Member States to determine whether there will be an international process on Sri Lanka.

“We have presented information to them and we've made clear what we believe is the need for accountability and we rely on the Member States’ judgement to follow through,” he said. Haq said that the UN has made it clear that there needs to be more done to get at the heart of what happened in Sri Lanka.

“You’ve seen what the Secretary-General’s reports on the situation have said and it’s clear that there continues to be a need for all the facts to be learned and for there to be a study of whether there’s any wrongdoing that’s occurred in the course of the final phases of the Sri Lankan conflict. The Secretary-General has said that repeatedly and we continue to hold by that,” the Acting Deputy Spokesperson said. Please view the tube below.

The Sri Lankan Government continues to deny claims it committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war against the LTTE. Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, said that while there may have been civilian casualties they were never a target of the military. If this was true, why is Sri Lanka against any international investigation? Channel 4 u-tubes and other verified revelations point to Sri Lankan capability, but Samarasinghe insists that they never targeted the civilians.

“Sri Lankan government did not, I repeat, did not (and) I speak with authority because I was a military commander at that time commanding the Navy, did not resort to genocide, did not resort to crimes against humanity. Yes we fought a brutal conflict because civilians were involved there could have been unfortunate, some victims but never, ever they were targeted as a system, so these are absolutely false allegations,” he told World News Australia Radio

Then he came forward with the usual Sri Lankan complain The High Commissioner said that there was a disproportionate focus on the final phases of the war. “Why only the last stage of the conflict? What happened for 30 years? Where were these champions of human rights operating when the innocent children were sliced like a slice of bread while worshipping? Where were (they)? Tell me, how come they kept away from these atrocities?”

The Tamils prefer to have an investigation right from the day of independence from February 1948. The Sinhalese government disfranchised the Indian Tamils, who had been living in the country for 150 years and had contributed immensely to the Sri Lankan economy by clearing the jungles and starting the plantation industry; in the whole process large numbers of them died of malaria and other infections.

Then they went for the Sri Lankan Tamils. They brought the Sinhala Only Act by which the sole language in the country became Sinhalese. This led to a series of riots in which thousands of Tamils were killed. Peaceful demonstrations by the Tamils were crushed brutally. This led to the Tamils picking up arms and fighting for their rights. So, who is the cause of the ethnic problem? Admiral Samarasinghe says a Public Interest Advocacy Centre report released in Australia on Sri Lanka was designed to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government ahead of next month’s UN Human Rights Council meeting.

On Feb 07 despite speculations in legal and diplomatic circles, Sri Lanka may not challenge the legality of the UN Secretary General's Panel of Experts' Report (P of E Report) on which the two US-sponsored resolutions against Sri Lanka were based on, a senior government official said. Speaking to state-run Daily News, the Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga said that it is unlikely that Sri Lanka will question the legality of the UN panel and may take a different course of action on the issue. An earlier research paper published in the Foreign Policy Journal argued that the United Nation's Sri Lanka strategy is flawed and Sri Lanka should petition the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the UN's report on Sri Lanka which was the basis for the two resolutions against the country. Similarly G.L Pieres also stated that SL is not suing Channel 4, as they realise they will make a fool of themselves if they did.

Here again it is not true that the US based its earlier two resolutions in 2012 and 2013 on the P of E Report. Both the resolutions by US were weak as they were based on the the implementation of LLRC on the insistence of India, which diluted the resolutions to the barest minimum. They were keen to give SL time and space to set things right. This time Britain and US had realised that giving SL time had only increased the human rights violations. So the resolution this should be firm on Sri Lanka, especially when the US Assistant Secretary of State, Nisha Desai Biswal, had stated during her last visit that US patience is running thin.

The SL government, anticipating a serious challenge from the international community at the UNHRC session, has launched a diplomatic offensive to enlighten the member states on the measures taken for reconciliation and to address other critical issues. The government has sent envoys to the member countries to enlighten them on Sri Lanka's progress since the end of the three-decade long war in 2009. They had also spent millions of dollars on lobbying and PR firms as you will see below.

The human rights situation in Sri Lanka will come under scrutiny before the UNHRC at its 25th session, which is to be held from 3 to 28 March 2014. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanetham Pillay will present a comprehensive report on the implementation of Human Rights Council resolution 22/1 on Sri Lanka of March 2013 as well as a report on her fact-finding visit to the island in August 2013. She spent one whole week talking to the victims of war, without any SL agents around.

After calling for “time and space”, the Sri Lankan Government is now urging the international community to exercise patience with Sri Lanka on the post war issue. Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to France, Professor Karunaratne Hangawatte says Sri Lanka is a country that not only grappled with terrorism and its effects but also overcame it through resilience and determination. A former member of the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), Hangawatte said that the LLRC made hundreds of recommendations and these are being implemented on a step-by-step process.

“May I allude to the much noted and often quoted expression that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’ We look to our friends across the world to comprehend the magnitude of the task at hand, understand what has been accomplished so far and exercise patience with a country that not only grappled- with terrorism and its effects but also overcame it through resilience and determination,” he said at a Sri Lankan Independence Day ceremony held in Paris.

Ambassador Hangawatte noted that Sri Lanka has striven to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society those who took up arms against the State and its people instead of opting for vindictive and punitive measures. He said that many of these former combatants are provided with secondary and tertiary educational opportunities, job skills and vocational training. They are also provided with job opportunities in the private and public sector including the military and the police.

This is the type of the double talk of a typical Sinhalese politician. SL had the time to build roads and bridges and colonise the north and the east, but wants every one to exercise patients for them to rehabilitate the internally displaced Tamils. He is just asking for time to grab all the lands and colonise the Tamil Homeland.