Geneva-Based Un High Commissioner for Human Rights

Today’s arrival in Sri Lanka of the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) bears testimony to the stark reality that the modern world is framed in such a way that countries that dare stand up to the economically and militarily more powerful Western nations, especially the US, are condemned to be scrutinised down to every minute detail by the so-called ‘international community’. The United Nations is where it is done.
Sri Lanka has fallen into this category. In the 1980s and ’90s, India despite its relative insignificance as an economic entity then, had the muscle to haul Sri Lanka over the coals, especially at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. India then used proxy-nations, like Argentina to do its bidding (because Sri Lanka had voted against Argentina in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas issue).
Since 2009, however, the West has got engaged directly and through surrogates such as the Czech Republic (which provided arms to the Government of Sri Lanka to defeat the LTTE) to keep the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government on tenterhooks.
The Minister of External Affairs recently went on record saying that the hosting of the Commonwealth Summit (CHOGM) was a victory for Sri Lanka’s foreign policy. If so, what is his call on UN Human Rights Commissioner Navy Pillay’s visit as she goes about like a school inspector checking on this Government’s human rights and good governance record – in the 65th year of Sri Lanka’s Independence as a free and sovereign nation.
We have long said that the Government’s skewed foreign and domestic policies are jointly and severally to blame for this ignominy.
Yet, given the imbroglio that the Government has got itself into, the visit of the UNHCHR might still come as a blessing in disguise. Firstly, the Government must not take the South African lady to be a hostile persona. It must surely be familiar with her background as an anti-apartheid activist and jurist whose strong views on abortion and gender issues which she tried to introduce into International Law nearly cost her job with the US opposing her.
Later, addressing the UN Security Council, she questioned the legal basis of the US — without naming that country though — conducting drone strikes over Pakistan, Yemen and other countries. She referred to an “accountability vacuum” and the lack of transparency in the use of drones. As a result, she didn’t get a full extension of her second four-year term.
Nations that support Sri Lanka in Geneva say that they are put in a spot when Sri Lanka goes about slandering her as a “Yankee stooge”. She is portrayed as a ‘witch’ with a personal agenda against Sri Lanka. This is not necessarily the case.
For her part, there is a real need to take a more realistic and holistic view of the recently concluded Northern separatist insurgency in this country. Limiting her scope to the events of the final days of the military assault on the LTTE without looking at the ‘whole picture’ is both futile and unfair, only pandering to the domestic agendas and electoral compulsions of the West.
On the issue of good governance, however, we differ with the Government’s position, because there has been an acute deficiency in this area. The feet-dragging in implementing the basic recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has now come home to haunt the Government.
While there has been some selective targeting by the West using the UNHRC in Geneva as its mechanism to browbeat Sri Lanka to fall in line, a Sri Lankan judge now sitting in the Cambodian Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal warned in a Guest Column in this newspaper (July 7) that Sri Lanka should not underestimate either the UN or the anti-Lanka Diaspora now working overtime. “Sri Lanka would be naïve not to recognise the potential dangers that are looming on an international scale that would eventually threaten its territorial integrity,” he wrote, warning of what happened in the creation of Kosovo by the UN and Western Governments.
In such circumstances, it is good that Ms. Pillay is making a personal visit to this country to make her own assessment of the good, the bad and the ugly rather than having to rely on secondhand reports from third-rate agents.
UNHCHR must take up this issue also
We have long criticised the Government’s inept recent foreign policy handling in general and of India in particular (other than winning that country’s eventual support to defeat the LTTE). But one might give credit to Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs for finding his lost spine and speaking up on behalf of the country and the Northern fishermen this week.
That he did so in the Indian capital of New Delhi makes it even more praiseworthy before the matter had been raised, however briefly, by the Indian Prime Minister no less.
It is difficult to fathom Indian policy on the issue of its fishermen freely intruding into Sri Lankan territorial waters across the Palk Strait and stealing the catch that rightfully belongs to the Northern fishermen of Sri Lanka — other than for the politics involved.
The problem this time though, is that the Government of Sri Lanka is also facing an election in the Northern Province and has to keep its own fishermen happy because they are voters. Either this, or the Government has wised up to the fact that India is playing games over these waters and Sri Lanka has for too long been compromising with Indian nihilism on this subject.
There are reports that the Joint Working Group on Fisheries and an invitation for South Indian fishermen to visit Sri Lanka have been stalled by Tamil Nadu’s political leaders. That in itself tells a tale.
This is also an issue for the UNHCHR to take up when she visits the North of Sri Lanka next week. If her mandate is to check on post-war rehabilitation in Sri Lanka, here’s a matter she cannot ignore reporting on. India after all, even voted for the resolution that condemned Sri Lanka in Geneva for the lack of progress in rehabilitation work in the North.