Sinhalese Rowdyism Against UN move to Investigate War Crimes (opinion)

By Dr C P Thiagarajah

Associated Press reported on 6 July Tuesday, 2010 along with many other news papers that hundreds of protesters, led by Sri-Lankan government minister Wimal Weerawanse, laid siege to the U.N. compound in Colombo on Tuesday. They shouted that they would not let the UN workers out until the world body responsible for maintaining peace in the world canceled its Advisory Panel (AP) on Sri-Lanka. The AP would find out if there were good reasons to recommend a war crime and HR violation investigation against Sri-Lanka for alleged abuses committed during Sri Lanka’s civil war. The war between the LTTE and Government of Sri-Lanka (GSL) ended on 19 May 2009 with, according to Gordon Weise former UN resident representative in Sri-Lanka, the genocide of nearly 40000 Tamil civilians in the government declared ‘Safe Zone’. The demonstrators burned effigies of United Nations chief Ban Ki-Mun to show their protest.  

Mr Weerawanse had taken the laws into his hands to disrupt the working of the UN. Vandalism of UN property has been carried on by Mr Weerawanse and his unruly crowd because of the impunity given to government backed law breakers in Sri-Lanka. What Mr Weerawanse had forgotten is that there were official channels to air his or his party’s dissatisfaction of the appointment of the AP. He could complain but he must comply with local and international laws. He cannot be a law unto himself. GSL had in fact made official representations to the UN and diplomatic moves were afoot to get more world countries to its side though with little success. Finding its diplomatic moves ineffective president Mahinda Rajapakse (MR) became apprehensive and nervous as it would be he and his brother Gothabayaa more than anybody else who would be taken before the ICCJ. The siege of the UN office is the ‘desperate acts of a desperate man’ to send the UN back to the drawing boaed.

This incriminating reason apart MR had very foolishly brought down the reputation of Sri-Lanka as a democratic country loosing its credibility in the world. It is a failed state and it is a country most dangerous to journalists who are the corner stones of genuine democracy. Sri-Lanka is the only country that is being ruled under emergency powers/regulations for a long period continuously. It is a hollow democracy. The population that is seriously affected by this draconian regulation is the Tamils. They are subjected to all sorts of searches, arrests, torture, intimidation and imprisonment at all times of day or night etc. Many thousands of Tamils are languishing in jails without charges for many months and some for many years.

Mr Weerawanse, therefore, had taken the laws into his hands to disrupt the working of the UN in an attempt to safe his president’s skin. What we saw in the demonstration was rowdyism. In a country where university education is in its vernacular language spoken only by 17000 Sinhalese people one cannot expect geniuses who could lead Sri-Lanka in a prosperous path. Still one should expect them to at least to take a good leaf from other countries administration of justice to their minorities.

Rajapakse and his elk planned the genocide long ago and got help from reactionaries like Russia, China, Japan, Iran and India to sack the entire Vanni of its population and scorch it beyond recognition. The US satellite images gives a clear picture of the wanton destruction of TH by the Sinhala army, air force and the Navy. Even UN SG, Mr Ban Ki Mun when he flew over Mullivaikal war zone immediately after the war in May 2009, along with journalists including Mr Matthew Russell Lee of the Inner City Press, had said that he had never seen such devastation before. Devastation is what the did in the war. There was no necessity to bomb the whole of Vanni to kill terrorists. According to their own accounts (Mr Fonseka their military captain now a prisoner) there were only 7000 tigers. The Sinhalese went for a military solution for an entirely political problem as more civilian casualties were involved than the Tigers. The Sinhala war criminals were not concerned of civilian genocide as long as they killed the terrorists. This is not how military law works and human rights are preserved. A leopard cannot change its spots. Successive Sinhalese governments were terrorising the Tamils under the privilege of ‘internal affairs of a country’. Scorching the homeland of an ethnic minority is not an internal affair. It is an international affair. Popular view ran counter to the myopic view of the Sinhalese.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights Dr (Ms) Navaneethan Pillai stressed that international human rights law made clear that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever–including a state of war, or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency – may be invoked as justification for enforced disappearances.” While any State has the right to use force to guarantee security and maintain public order, it “should observe certain limits aimed at respecting fundamental rights of individuals and the rule of law, even when responding to unjustified attacks by illegal armed groups”.

Again, Queen Elizabeth II while addressing the United Nations for the first time in more than 50 years on 6 July praised the world body for its many achievements. She appreciated the effort UN put in do the service for which it was founded and urged the UN to continue playing its lead role in the cause of peace and prosperity for all. The Queen further emphasised that while many things in the world changed, the aims and values which inspired the UN Charter viz to promote international peace, security and justice; to relieve and remove the blight of hunger, poverty and disease; and to protect the rights and liberties of every citizen have not. The UN must not falter in their mission due to this brutal pigmy politician’s barricade of the UN’s Colombo office. This type of ruffians must be made to realise that the UN is not for turning and that the UN would not budge an inch from its decision to continue the AP work programme.

The UN follow up action after the Colombo office siege pointed out that the UN is made of sterner stuff than the indigenously educated Sinhala politicians. The United Nations has registered its strong objections to protests organized outside its offices in Colombo today July 6 and the GSL had given assurances for the safety and security of our staff and for their full access to their offices. Nevertheless, UN should make a note of this thuggery and hooliganism of a small country against the UN. The Sri-Lankan War Criminals and HR violators and other culprits should receive due justice at the ICCJ.

UN should see that evidences of war crimes are not destroyed by the Sinhala government using the nearly 200000 massive military maintained at borrowed money from the supporting countries. This is corruption of the worst sort at international level. UN must put a stop to it.

Sri-lankan Sinhala regimes were well known for giving the armed forces that committed offences against the Tamils, impunity. In its fourth periodic report to the UN Human Rights Committee, Sri Lanka HRC stated that over 27,000 persons had disappeared at the hands of the Sri Lankan security forces. Surprisingly, the government has failed to take effective steps against the perpetrators. Again on 25 March 2002, at a Trial-at-Bar of the High Court, the Attorney General’s Office indicted 41 suspects, among whom 10 were policemen: charged with 83 counts including unlawful assembly, committing the murders of 28 persons and attempted murder of 14 others at the Bindunuwewa Rehabilitation Centre. However, from day one, it was evident the prosecutors had little intention to prosecute the culprits and systematically destroyed the evidences to ensure acquittal of the accused. Remember, you can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink. Indirect, state impunity indeed. A failed state is a humanitarian crisis for its people.

I wish to reproduce below the observation of an NGO on how the Tamils in TH were being treated by the Sinhala chauvinist in an inhuman and undemocratic way. Ms Verena Graf of International League for the Rights of Peoples (LIDLIP) in her Opening Speech at a seminar on “Humanitarian Action in the ‘Undeclared’ War in Sri Lanka on September 2007 said that “LIDLIP has been aware of the situation in Sri Lanka, in particular of the Tamil armed struggle, since 1986 and has ever since taken up the issue in human rights fora.

Based on historical and socio-political evidence, LIDLIP and other organizations have always argued that the Sri Lankan Tamils fulfill all the criteria to qualify as a people. Not only a common culture, language and religion but also a typical traditional settlement area, a shared history and democratically expressed will characterize them as a nation. Moreover, they share the experience of a people that has been systematically and collectively discriminated against, even persecuted in independent Sri Lanka.

Still today, and perhaps more than ever, it is important that NGOs take up this issue and spread information in the international field, in the United Nations, in the media, and wherever possible, precisely because there is often a blackout of news from Sri Lanka. When it is not a blackout, it is often misinformation. Press freedom and freedom of expression are in danger in Sri Lanka; journalists are arrested, tortured, abducted, disappeared and killed. Misinformation is massively used internally and internationally by the government to distort the real picture of what is happening in conflict areas. The major news we get here in Europe, are about the LTTE recruiting child soldiers, the harsh rule and warfare of the LTTE. But nobody acknowledges that there is a war, a war which is not recognized. It is not sufficient that the Sri-Lankan governmental delegation overwhelms Room XVII with its luxury colour printed folders to give a picture of the situation reigning in Sri Lanka and this to create opinion. It is not sufficient, because one part is missing; like any coin, there are two sides. Yes, there is a war, a unrecognized war. One of our organization’s specific approaches to situations, is to go to the root causes, to the origin of a conflict. But the topic of today’s seminar is another, therefore I shall not dwell on the deep reason of this ongoing conflict.

The Tamil people, not only suffered the tsunami, they still suffer the lack of aid, because it is the Srilankan Government that received foreign aid and decides on its distribution. It is the gatekeeper that at its discretion determines access and itinerary even of foreign dignitaries to the country, as the former UN Secretary General (Kofi Annan) had to witness when he was prevented from visiting the tsunami affected Northeast of Sri Lanka”.

If the UN took heed of the advice given by NGOs on the precarious political situation of the Tamil minorities in their TH the genocide of 40000 Tamils would have never taken place in May 2009 at Mullivaikal in front of the world. Repentance comes too late. Sinhala deceptiveness had entangled the UN in a predicament. It is time now at least to make amends and deliver justice to the Tamils. The Sinhalese have been riding roughshod over Tamils demand for a homeland with impunity. This time at least UN must set up a war crime tribunal against the Sinhala GSL. “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied".

The Elders are a group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007 as a think tank. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Lakhdar Brahimi are members of it. They in a statement released on the first anniversary of the Sri-Lankan genocide stated “the Elders believe an independent, international inquiry, with the ability to gather evidence within the country, is the best option. We hope this will be the recommendation of the expert panel due to be set up to advice the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon”. The choice of the UN is quite obvious for the above reasons.