HR groups shy away from Sri Lanka’s challenge
October 15, 2010 09:22 am
When Lankan External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris was at the United Nations last month, he challenged human rights groups to appear before a government-appointed ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC) probing human rights violations during the country’s civil war. However three HR groups shied away from Peiris’s challege and instead called for an international inquiry.
“We have asked international groups such as Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group to come to
Sri Lanka
and share their insights,” he told IPS.
“We are not shutting out anybody. And we have nothing to
sweep under the carpet,” he said.
All three organisations have accused both the Sri Lankan
armed forces and the rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), of
war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law - particularly
during the final stages of the conflict last year.
The two-decade-old conflict ended with the defeat of the
LTTE in one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies.
But on Thursday the three groups declined Peiris’s
invitation and instead called for “an international inquiry into the evidence
of war crimes and other abuses during the civil war”.
Madhu Malhotra, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Asia-
Pacific region, said her organisation would welcome the opportunity to appear
before a “credible commission of inquiry aimed at securing accountability and
reconciliation in Sri Lanka”.
“We believe effective domestic inquiries are essential to
human rights protection and accountability. But the LLRC falls far short of
what is required,” she added.
In an address to the Asia Society of New York, Peiris said
it was wrong to challenge the credibility of the LLRC even before it came out
with its findings.
Answering questions about war crimes charges as reported in
the newspapers, he said the same newspapers had made far, far more serious
allegations against other countries - which he refused to single out by name
although it was an implicit reference to the United States.
“Isn’t all of this very, very horrendously selective? Are
these allegations out there only against Sri Lanka?” he asked.
In relation to other countries, he noted, there were much
more vivid and graphic allegations of human rights abuses and war crimes
charges.
“But why isn’t there the same line of questioning and the
same intensity”?, he asked.
If there are serious allegations, then surely it is part of
the cultural ethos of the United Nations, as reflected in the charter, that
countries be allowed to deal with their own problems.
“You don’t take over somebody’s else’s problems in a sort of
condescending and patronising spirit on the assumption that they cannot handle
their own problems and you must do it for them,” he said.
That is contrary to the spirit of the U.N. charter. “Give
the countries a chance to deal with their own problems,” said Peiris, a former
Rhodes Scholar at Oxford
University.
“If somebody makes an allegation couched in language that is
as vague as anything could conceivably be, and the person making the allegation
is refusing to be absolutely specific - and if that is the basis for triggering
processes of this magnitude, the consequences are going to be profoundly
dangerous not only for little Sri Lanka but also to the rest of the world,” he
declared.
Asked about the protection of witnesses giving evidence,
Peiris said there is no objection to the principle of witness protection. But
he said there is also provision for evidence to be provided in confidence.
In a joint letter Thursday, the three rights organisations
said they would not appear before the commission because “it did not meet
international standards for independent and impartial inquiries”.
Like its predecessor body, which was also appointed by the
Sri Lankan government last year, the LLRC exists against a backdrop of
continuing government failure to address accountability and continuing human
rights abuses, the letter added.
Amnesty’s Malhotra said the LLRC’s mandate, its composition,
its procedures, and the human rights environment in which it is operating all
conspire to make a safe and satisfactory outcome for victims of human rights
violations and their families extremely unlikely.
She said Amnesty is particularly concerned about the lack of
any provisions for witness protection and the fact that former officials who
have publicly defended the Sri Lankan government against allegations of war
crimes serve on the commission.
Meanwhile, a three-member U.N. Panel of Inquiry, currently
in session, is expected to advise Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on what steps
he should take to probe the charges in post-war Sri Lanka.
But Peiris told IPS he was confident the secretary-general
has no plans to ask the U.N. Panel to probe any allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka.
“The secretary-general made it very clear he was not
attempting to do that,” he said.
The three-member Panel, which has a four-month time-frame to
report back to Ban, has no investigative powers nor is it mandated to probe
allegations, he added.
Peiris also expressed confidence that neither the General
Assembly, the Security Council nor the Human Rights Council will authorise any
such action against Sri
Lanka.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
IPS