In November a British delegation including the Queen is set to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka, hosted and chaired by the accused government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. If Britain wants to live up to its self-proclaimed commitment to human rights, then it should move quickly to cancel its delegation to Colombo.
Emanuel Stoakes is a freelance journalist based in New Zealand
Four years ago some of the worst war crimes in recent history allegedly occurred in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka as the island nation’s decades-long civil war entered its final stages.
Investigations by authoritative sources point to a series of wartime abuses from that period which cumulatively amounted to, in the assessment of a UN panel of experts, “a grave assault on the entire regime of international law”.
A compelling body of evidence indicates that hospitals were repeatedly and systematically shelled by the Sri Lankan army, according to one account, 35 times; that extra-judicial killings, rapes, horrific mutilations and torture occurred.
The most disturbing and well-established allegation is that the Sri Lankan army ferociously shelled Government-declared “no fire zones” where non-combatants were told to take refuge, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
These claims are supported by material detailed in the reports of leading human rights groups, the UN and the international media.
To this day, however, the accused Rajapaksa administration and its representatives have angrily denied all allegations of wrongdoing, often making unsubstantiated claims of an international conspiracy against their country.
Despite the seriousness of the charges outlined above, in November a British delegation including the Queen is set to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka, hosted and chaired by the accused government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
In recent days the Queen has made the news as she signed the new charter of the Commonwealth, which affirmed the intergovernmental organisation’s commitment to human rights and democracy in a ceremony that was attended by the Sri Lankan High Commissioner.
Granting Sri Lanka the legitimacy of playing host to the CHOGM later this year- especially given the provisions of the charter- is a move that has been described by Amnesty International as “absurd”, and by David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary at the time of the violence, as “grotesque”.
These are certainly fair assessments.
No member of the Sri Lankan political or military elite has been made accountable for their role in the alleged crimes of 2009. The only high-ranking figure to be prosecuted for war-related offences under Sri Lankan law has been former general Sarath Fonseka, whose “crime” was to tell a newspaper that he had been informed that the defence secretary had ordered atrocities.
Mr Fonseka was sentenced to three years in jail in 2011 for “spreading rumours and causing public disorder”.
Meanwhile, Colombo continues to resist calls for an independent international investigation and appears as utterly reluctant as ever to deal meaningfully with the extremely serious charges it faces.
If Britain wants to live up to its self-proclaimed commitment to human rights, then it should move quickly to cancel its delegation to Colombo and alter several aspects of its policies toward Sri Lanka.
Arms sales to the Rajapaksa government, recently revealed to be permitted once again after a brief hiatus, should be immediately halted and the UK’s policy toward asylum seekers, many of whom appear to have been returned to Sri Lanka to face torture and rape, should be immediately reviewed.
Ultimately, the UK and the international community as a whole should pressure Colombo to accept an international investigation into the events of 2009.
If this does not occur, the prospects for accountability, reconciliation or peace between the ethnic communities divided by the civil war looks set to remain ominously grim.
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10 Responses to “Granting the Sri Lankan government legitimacy like this is grotesque”
WT
Sure. Atrocities of LTTE should not go un punished . TheKaruna , Pilliyan and KP
Mylvaganam Mahendran
LTTE TOOK ARMS IN THEIR ARMS BECAUSE ALL PEACEFUL NEGOTIATIONS FAILED. (1) CHELVA DUDLEY PACT (2) CHELVA BANDARANAIKE PACT (3) PEACEFUL SATYAGARA AT GALLE FACE. ETC……………………………………THIS IS DRAGING FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS. FINELY INDOCELON PACT WAS NOT IMPLEMENTED. MAHINDA PROMISSED THAT 13TH AMENDMENT WILL BE ENDORSED IN PARLIAMENT WHEN HE VISITED INDIA AND MET MANMOHANSINGH. RECENTLY WHAT HE SAID AT THE INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBERATION HELD IN TRINCO WORLD KNOWS. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SRI LANKA WILL NOT SOLVE ANY PROBLEMS. THEY WILL DRAG THE ISSUE FOR MANY MORE YEARS, UNTIL THEY COMPLETE SINGALA COLONISATION IN NORTH AND EAST, AND ALSO ERECTING BUDHA STATUES IN ALL CORNERS.
Romesh Hettiarachchi
I’ll bite.
1. The Panel of Experts Report was never billed as evidence even by the authors. its always been “credible allegations of war crimes”. See comments by Steve Ratner here: http://nathanson.osgoode.yorku.ca/programs/conferences-workshops/2012-2013/sri-lanka-challenges-panel-february-2013/. The Panel of Experts was not a commission of inquiry and did not have the mandate to engage in formal fact finding. What they did was sift through the various allegations to figure out which ones were credible to figure out what required further investigation. There were no findings of fact.
2. You should also be aware that there are “credible allegations” that the Tigers positioned weaponry in hospitals – hence the bombing. If these allegations are in fact proved, then the bombing of hospitals and medical services may not be war crimes.
3. You have also conveniently forgotten to mention the LTTE’s role in the violence. Specifically that there are credible allegations against the LTTE: using civilians as human buffers, killing civilians attempting to flee, positioning military equipment in proximity of civilians etc.
While I am not going to defend the GoSL’s actions, it would be nice to have some balance in your piece.
As for your question (do you accept that no matter how bad the LTTE were bombing hospitals, food distribution lines, no fire zones and so on, killing tens of thousands of people, as SL are credibly accused of doing, are disgusting criminal actions and worthy of criticism? Do the means justify the end?) you are mixing causation with correlation. The reasons why SL are facing credible allegations are inextricably linked to the reasons why the LTTE are facing the very same credible allegations. There can be no justification for either.
That being said, why is it that your piece does not mention the Tigers?
jb
Man, I don’t know where you got your facts if you were born after 1983. I am sure you have been paid by those tamils who funnelled money or something. Just try to find a girl friend and learn how to fly kites instead of putting hands on other peoples shit you imperialist. you are the kind of journalist who creates problems all over the world instead of trying to help. if you don’t know how to fly kites, learn how to surf!!!
noname
Who is this guy????? Are you a journalist or some new kid on the block ” a wanna be”