Peace Secretariat slams AHRC generalisations

The Peace Secretariat notes with sadness yet another effusion from the so-called Asian Commission for Human Rights, which asserts that ‘With 52 points, Sri Lanka is South Asia’s worst human rights violator.’

This is yet another example of a game that has now become fashionable, to develop lists which show how bad particular countries are, the Peace Secretariat Chief Prof. Rajiv Wijesinghe said yesterday.

Sri Lanka has figured prominently on such lists recently, though it is interesting that it seems to depend on the whim of the list maker how many years are taken into consideration in making the list.

“This does not mean that Sri Lanka does not have problems with regard to the protection of Human Rights. These are exacerbated by the difficulties of dealing with a particularly ruthless and insidious terrorist outfit, but that does not make it any less important to reduce them.

That is why we engage with institutions that can assist us, that is why we have set up Task Forces on the subject, that is why we try to clarify and deal with particular situations.

For this reason, we have no quarrel with AHRC when it draws attention to particular cases, it is then the duty of officials to investigate these and take remedial action as possible,” the SCOPP Chief added.

What is objectionable is blanket generalizations, and these interminable lists. Sadly too there is confusion which takes attention away from the real problems. For instance AHRC renews the canard about indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

If it is talking about problems with regard to abductions, or attacks on journalists, it has a point, but here it suggests that these attacks occur in the course of military operations (a canard first spread by HRW), and that is just plain false, as any analysis of the operations of our forces will show.

Their record is excellent, not only in comparison with that of other forces engaged in struggles against terrorism, but in absolute terms too, and we can challenge anyone to provide any evidence to the contrary.

“AHRC’s extrapolations are quite extraordinary in their fraudulence. They are said to claim that an entire ethnic group is excluded from the nation’s capital, obviously not knowing that minorities constitute over half the population of the capital, and that security checks are of those travelling to Colombo.

Given the number of incidents of terrorist attacks, it is understandable that those unable to give good reasons for their presence are checked carefully, and in any case the Supreme Court ruling when this was not done appropriately makes clear that there is recourse to judicial review when obvious violations of rights occur.”