A few days after the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, addressed the World Tamil Forum in London and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, talked to the same Forum delegates, on Friday the 5th March, the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, telephoned the Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to tell that he intends to appoint an expert committee to ‘advice him on and/or probe the alleged war crimes’ committed ostensibly by all parties at the last stages of the Eelam war to “ensure accountability on the part of Sri Lanka on human rights.”
The connection between the Sri Lanka’s former colonial master, the British Government, and the UN pressure on Sri Lanka became more obvious when “a British High Commission official told The Sunday Island [7 March 2010] that Britain consistently supported the UN Secretary General’s call for an ‘accountability process.” It appears that the present move to probe war crimes is primarily a demand by the World Tamil Forum. It was a major facet discussed at the Forum in London as reported by The Times (24 February 2010).
Accountability
The claim for the so-called ‘accountability process’ is something that the UN and other anti-Sri Lankan forces have been twisting and turning overtime with the connivance of certain local personalities to suit their political agendas since the defeat of the LTTE terrorism decisively from the Sri Lankan soil in May 2009. The retired Army General and defeated presidential candidate, Sarath Fonseka, has been the key personality who was provoking ‘war crime charges’ against the Sri Lankan government and its armed forces to suit a personal ambition for political power quite contrary to what he stood against the LTTE during the Eelam War IV.
There are certain accountability processes on human rights that Sri Lanka has formerly agreed upon by virtue of its sovereign rights as a member state of the UN and those are the various Treaty Bodies in addition to its obligations under the UN Charter. While there are around seven key treaty bodies that Sri Lanka regularly report on various substantive aspects of human rights, the country also actively participates at least at three key Charter Based Bodies, the Human Rights Council now in session being the most key among them.
Sri Lanka or any other ‘third world’ country should not allow the UN or any other such body to investigate human rights situations in its own country for the simple reason that it is an obvious abdication of its sovereign rights. If this principle was not so clear in the past, believing that the UN has been always working on good faith for the interests of all countries on an equal and a fair basis, the experiences since 1990s has proved that our assumptions were utterly wrong and the UN is mostly working on the interests of the big bullies in the world arena.
The UN has no unilateral legal mandate whatsoever to intervene in domestic affairs of a country unless there is a great threat to international peace and security as a result of that particular domestic situation. Yet a decision has to be taken by the UN Security Council. This is what appears in Chapter VII of the UN Charter. If such a domestic situation arises then it would wholly mean the complete breakdown of state affairs, not to speak of sovereignty. Therefore, the question of abdication of sovereignty does not arise.
Even under those circumstances the UN interventions have not proved very successful (i.e. Angola, Mozambique or Somalia) because of the vested interests of those countries that mostly engineer such interventions completely in contradiction to the national interests of the respective countries. The most reliable would be the assistance from friendly neighboring countries perhaps with some sort of mandate from the UN. After all, the UN is still the only international umbrella organization that exists today in the name of peace and security and this ‘some sort of mandate’ would be necessary and desirable on that score and only on that score. There is nothing wrong, on the other hand, if the UN intervenes completely on the request of the country concerned, like what happened in Cambodia in 1991; yet the results or forces behind would be utterly dubious.
Sri Lankan Case
The case of Sri Lanka has been completely different. While the UN should have unconditionally supported Sri Lanka in its struggle against terrorism as a great threat to human rights and also peace and development in the country, the UN role particularly at the Secretariat level and its agencies, including the Colombo Office, has always been dubious from being lukewarm on terrorism to aiding and abetting the LTTE organization in various ways and means quite detrimental to the sovereignty of the country. This is why there is a strong opposition to Ban Ki Moon’s proposition at present.
The above behavior of the UN agencies in Sri Lanka has had no mandate whatsoever from the Charter or any other instrument of the UN, except that the organization happened to be completely or largely infiltrated by the anti-third world elements, INGO supporters and the so-called human rights careerists who do not seem to have an iota of realism on how human rights could be promoted and protected in countries in conflict or transition.
As the President Mahinda Rajapaksa has correctly pointed out “it was both unprecedented and unwarranted as no such action had been taken about other states with continuing armed conflicts on a large scale, involving major humanitarian catastrophes and causing the deaths of large numbers of civilians due to military action.” This is where the hypocrisy and double standards of the UN proposition to appoint a panel of experts on Sri Lanka lies. Ban Ki Moon has been completely silent on Iraq and Afghanistan where thousands of civilians are being killed by military action by foreign forces quite contrary to the very spirit of the UN Charter.
In the case of Sri Lanka, if the UN had been cooperative with the government during the ‘humanitarian war against terrorism,’ without speaking and standing on behalf of the LTTE, obviously many more civilian lives would have been saved. The UN or its Office in Colombo unfortunately did not behave in that manner for several reasons.
Apart from being prejudicial on ethnic and human rights issues in what they term as the ‘third world countries,’ the UN officials have been extremely influenced by the LTTE Diaspora. It is completely incorrect to call them Tamil Diaspora. These prejudices and pressures also coincided with their own self-interests of being human rights troubleshooters who earn their dollars without even proper academic qualifications. It is an undeniable fact that the UN officialdom is dominated by the Westerners. If the UN is a world organization this should not be the case.
UN Culpability
There is so much of circumstantial evidence to reveal that the UN officials who were particularly working in Sri Lanka were aiding and abating the LTTE terrorists. This is something that the government of Sri Lanka should investigate with or without the cooperation of the UN Secretary General. Some of the broad indicators are the following.
• When the Sri Lankan armed forces were closing in on the LTTE in early 2009, the UN Officials were largely responsible for advising the Tamil civilians to move towards Mullativu where the LTTE could take them as human shields.
• When the government of Sri Lanka declared a call for surrender in April 2009, the UN officials refused to support the government call virtually indicating the LTTE to continue to fight.
• The UN officials in Colombo not only blatantly exaggerated the casualty figures but also leaked them to various dubious organizations strengthening the LTTE propaganda machine. They hardly corroborated with the government on the issue.
• The UN from top to bottom tried its best to pressure the government of Sri Lanka to stop the final military action against the LTTE in May 2009 as a last ditch effort to save at least the top LTTE leaders.
It is my concerned opinion that the UN is trying to investigate the so-called war crimes as a result of its failure to save the LTTE from military extinction. If this is not the case the UN should prove it, and prove it by cooperating with the government against the remaining remnants of terrorism. Any investigation by the UN will undoubtedly resurrect the LTTE both politically and militarily as the move towards such an investigation has already given some life to the LTTE Diaspora.
What happened during the last days of the war is ‘essentially within the domestic jurisdiction’ (to use the UN jargon) and outsiders have no business whatsoever in investigating or intervening on the matter. Of course Sri Lanka could have a friendly dialogue with the UN or any other if the intentions are proved to be honorable. So far the UN intentions do not seem to be that honorable and Sri Lanka is completely justified in categorically rejecting such a move.
The countries in our part of the world (to mean Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Latin American and East European) should not succumb to the unjustifiable UN pressures whether on human rights or conflict issues. It appears that the UN seems to be the greatest abuser of human rights by distorting the issues and misusing them for others’ vested interests.
The mandate that the UN has is conditional. It has no mandate to violate sovereignty of nations. The progressive world should expose the current duplicity, hypocrisy and double standards of the UN. It is the officialdom that controls the UN at present. What we should look forward to is a reformed UN and not the one that serves the interests of dubious forces.
- Asian Tribune -
Comments
War Crimes call weakens UNP's electoral chances
According to the standards applied by western powers in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were no ‘war crimes’ whatsoever committed by SL armed forces. A few instances of misadventure in the heat of the battle do not warrant a call for a war crimes investigation; - an internal military inquiry (in the Israeli style) will do. Sri Lankan and non-aligned media must be explicit on this point.
SL armed forces did not go out with the intention of killing civilians. The LTTE used civilians as human shields and put them in direct line of fire. The LTTE has had form in disregarding a basic human right, the right to life for civilians. According to the NATO commander (US General) in Afghanistan, the collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of the enemy who uses civilians for cover. That US General fully well knew the Taliban's disregard for human rights.
The US General also said, he will always rely on air power in order to minimise on the ground casualties suffered by front line NATO soldiers. Civilian deaths occur and customary ‘regrets’ are expressed. None of the western media would cry ‘war crimes’. Rightly so!
During the last stages of the war, SL soldiers were subjected to unacceptable risks (many thousands of soldiers killed or maimed) when the air power was withdrawn under external pressure -from UN and western powers- which also forced reduced use of heavy weaponry. Under the circumstances, the actions of SL forces were humane, in saving over two hundred thousand entrapped humans; however the sacrifices made by the SL forces remain unheralded by the International Community.
In the western media, in Australia for example, the death of a soldier in the battle field is mourned as the "loss of one of the nation's finest". The Sri Lankan media, in particular, the independent English language press, must learn from western media how to express gratitude.
The established and respected western media are never known to call for war crimes investigations over the activities of the western forces. Having fought two world wars and cold war conflicts, the western nations have come to rely on the ‘fourth estate’ for moral support – and the respected western media provide this support with a great deal of patriotism and loyalty. Likewise, SL media must learn to display patriotism and loyalty.
Any average Sri Lankan is offended by the hypocrisies of the western nations (US and UK in particular). Due to the UNP’s association with the west and its so called western values, the failure to denounce these western hypocritical calls for the war crimes investigations makes the election chances of the UNP evermore remote.