Special rapporteurs leap on the bandwagon

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

The Peace Secretariat is not entirely surprised by a recent statement of several United Nations Special Rapporteurs, which is of a piece with a recent campaign to rouse emotions about and against Sri Lanka.

It is however disappointed that the Rapporteurs have not stopped to think that such statements may deprive Sri Lanka of the peace it has long sought, and which now seems so near.

In particular the dramas that are now going on in the offices and drawing rooms of Geneva will send a message to the Tigers that they do not need to surrender.

Though they were long ago asked to do this by the Co-Chairs assisting Sri Lanka in the Peace Process, the recent refusal to request this, when prompted to do so by the BBC, of one of those politicians purportedly concerned about the Sri Lankan people has made clear that different agendas may now be involved.

Though Special Rapporteurs obviously have an obligation to respond to concerns brought to them, this is generally done through cooperation with member states of the United Nations.

Sri Lanka has always cooperated when problems are brought to its attention, and recently has striven to respond promptly to any questions.

It has also sought meetings with Rapporteurs who have seemed especially concerned, and the fruits of its cooperation can be seen in current programs conducted in collaboration with the Office of the High Commissioner as well as with the displaced, though there was intransigence about this earlier on the part of the UN.

It is true that Sri Lanka has not as yet responded to letters of April 29 and 30. As Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights I had intended to do so last weekend, but had to travel to the camps, where indeed those who were working round the clock asked if we could provide someone able to communicate in English the work that is going on as well as the problems that are faced.

Sadly such a person is not easy to find, since those with sufficient command of English to satisfy interlocutors at Special Rapporteur level will not generally work for the Government, and very rarely in the affected areas. That is why, as representatives of what is termed the international community put it, Sri Lanka is losing the propaganda war.

However, as the President put it, this is a propaganda war being fought abroad, whereas his responsibility is to his people, and his concern is to serve their needs as best possible. That he is doing this to the satisfaction of the country at large is clear. What is sad is that this international community is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of our people, and it does not seem to care.

And they should not think that this refers only to one section of the population, such feelings are shared also by representatives of minorities amongst politicians and civil society workers who are concerned with the plight of their fellows abused for so long by the LTTE, without a word of criticism about actual incidents of abuse by those who cannot even now categorically call upon the LTTE to surrender, so that the rest of our suffering fellow citizens can be freed.

Whilst I was busy last week dealing with a host of international visitors in addition to regular and special work, I also did not realise that a reply was urgently needed, given the tardiness of the Special Rapporteurs to respond to previous interactions.

The Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings had not for instance responded to my previous letter to him in 2008, and I thought he had forgotten us, though it is good to know that we can rely on him to turn up in a crisis.

I have not had the pleasure previously of meeting the rest of the Rapporteurs who have struck now, even though I have communicated with some.

Sadly none of them indicated that a meeting would have been desirable when I was in Geneva in March for the Human Rights Council. I could then have dealt in detail with some of the queries they raise.

It has always been our policy to engage, but I now realise that perhaps such engagement is useless inasmuch as the Rapporteurs, without waiting even a few days for a response to the concerns they had raised at the very end of April, felt compelled by those who believe there is no other way of achieving their ends to raise issues publicly.

Given the campaign being conducted against the Sri Lankan state in Geneva now, a campaign which will strengthen the LTTE in its resolve not to surrender, to fight on, to further torment those civilians still amongst it, I should have realised that pressures for this purpose would be brought.

I will however seek to meet all these Rapporteurs, in a special trip to Geneva I am now compelled to make. Attached to this statement meanwhile are responses to their letters which should make clear the enormous efforts we make under difficult circumstances.

The Rapporteurs must realise that here the problems of the displaced have come on top of a hostage crisis, which was never properly addressed. Despite this the services provided have been successful in dealing with immediate problems, though as mentioned we believe standards could be higher, and the United Nations must not assume that minimum standards are enough in all instances.

Particularly for people treated badly for so long, with complacence if not connivance on the part of international officials meant to care for their welfare, higher standards must be sought.

I hope therefore that in meetings in Geneva we could discuss our concerns as well as theirs, and work out how we can help our people, without helping the LTTE to continue with its wicked ways.

Allowing this last to continue would be culpable wickedness on our part, and on the part of any who assist in manoeuvres that would permit such extreme callous terrorism to continue.

The writer is the Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process.

11th May 2009

Mr Olivier de Schutter

Special Rapporteur on the right to Food

Ms Catarina de Albuquerque

Independent Expert on issue of human rights obligations

Related to access to safe drinking water & sanitation.

Mr Anand Grover

Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the

enjoyment of the highest attainable standard

of physical and mental health.

Dear Special Rapporteurs,

Thank you very much for your communication of 29th, which was timely in that we have had a number of worries about the current situation in Sri Lanka, and hope you will be able to help us to remedy this.

We are in particular worried about toilet facilities, and this has come up repeatedly in recent meetings, in the context of the UN system only able to provide low quality toilets, on the grounds that anything better would contravene its provisions regarding emergency shelter.

As you may be aware, easterners, and in particular Sri Lankans, pride themselves on cleanliness, and thus water is essential for toilets, whereas the same sanitary habits do not obtain in the west.

Those who have escaped the LTTE have thus relished access to water, and that is why our Water Board has provided 50 litres per person where possible, whereas the UN standard is 15. However provision of water to toilets is inadequate, perhaps because of cultural insensitivity which we hope you will help to instill.

We did provide a cheap sanitary model earlier, but this was stamped on by UNHCR, which has been so bitterly opposed to it that we have even heard suggestions that deliberate sabotage is involved.

We do not believe this to be the case, but we hope very much that you will be able to ensure higher standards. A local NGO has now sent UNICEF designs for more hygienic toilets, which are in fact cheaper than those UNICEF is now putting up, and anything you can do to reduce dogma and increase effectiveness would be most welcome.

On the other issues you raise, whilst there were some shortages initially when we had a sudden influx of over 100,000 of our citizens fleeing from the LTTE, those initial problems have now been resolved.

Sufficient food is now available, though there have been many complaints about the quality of the rice provided by the World Food Programme, which most of these displaced find inedible - as was graphically shown to us when we visited.

The Competent Authority too, having tried to have it cooked properly, agreed that this rice could not be cooked at all, and we are now trying desperately to get WFP to be more sensitive, and not adopt purchasing principles that go against the needs of real people.

It should be noted however that even those who complained said that, since they were getting three meals a day, they could survive. Government provided cooked meals for more than the pledged three day period, but now we have started communal cooking in most centres, and even individual cooking where a magnificient very practical gift from the Indian government has facilitated this. All this feeding has been unusual for them, since as you know there has been chronic malnutrition in the areas controlled by the LTTE, and the checks we have done have indicated that this has gone on over a long period.

We long suspected that the food we were sending in was being misused, and we have proof of this both from the stories of the displaced and the stocks of provisions we have found in LTTE buildings, some of the bags being used to build up bunkers. Of course we cannot expect anything from terrorists, but we are deeply shocked that the UN staff working in LTTE dominated areas seem to have turned a blind eye to this.

We hope that you will insist on an internal inquiry into the misuse of provisions, and why the UN staff failed to report or remedy this. A United States diplomat asked me recently about the story that the LTTE had helped itself direct from the food convoys taken in by the UN, and I had to confirm that our information had been that this had taken place throughout.

Since the United States is much more principled than most about not assisting terrorist groups, this seemed to come as a shock, but I suppose a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, in the manner in which the United States government dealt with homosexuality in the military, is even more likely here, given that the United Nations is involved.

Your worries about distribution problems initially are understandable, but you must have realized by now that when people deprived for ages are suddenly provided with essentials, discipline goes by the board.

This is why we believe that to some extent at least initially the military might help in maintaining order, but as you are aware we strove to ensure civilian management within the camps where the incident of a child’s death was reported.

You have however been misled by the political version of the story, related by an opposition MP, that one child was killed by another when fighting over food, whereas other reports talk of a stampede. This was the OCHA version, so perhaps you could check with them too, before taking up what could well be used as a political slogan.

The health situation is of course worrying when we have suddenly to look after nearly 200,000 people who have been suffering for so long, who were grievously wounded as they tried to escape, including through landmines. We have however coped, and not now or previously have we suffered from the epidemics that were so gleefully predicted as imminent.

Perhaps you should check with the World Health Organization on the extraordinary resilience of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health, which has done wonders with the assistance not only of the ICRC and UNICEF and other donors, but also the sheer commitment of its Sri Lankan staff and Sri Lankan NGOs which have set up small scale facilities to supplement the major ones.

You also ask about supplies to the Safe Zone where several of our citizens are still being held hostage by the LTTE. The attached schedule indicates the amounts that were sent in over the last three months. You should recognize however that the ICRC cannot operate without agreement from the LTTE, and this has been slow to come.

In particular now the ICRC have said they cannot use the big ship we would like them to, and have to work with a smaller one, but that goes up and down regularly, taking food and medicine, and bringing back patients plus bystanders.

With regard to mental health, we have a psycho-social sub-committee which has developed special projects, whilst the Ministries of Health and of Social Services continue with their basic work.

You will note in this regard that, as long ago as September I approached WHO for enhancing services in this regard, but due to internal problems that proposal could not be taken forward. Still, we are well aware of the traumas that have been undergone, traumas that could have been avoided, had the UN not hesitated to demand months ago, when the process of hostage taking began, that it should cease immediately.

I hope that for the future you will work together to ensure compliance with the UN resolution on hostages, since clearly hostage takers will also violate the rights that you are meant to uphold, and which were breached so consistently in areas under LTTE control.

In addition to the attached list of statistics which you should please study carefully, I will try to get more detailed responses to your letter from the Line Ministries, but I should note that they are incredibly busy serving those who have suffered, and may not reply immediately.

My own practice of responding straight away has suffered from having to visit the Centres last weekend, and having to cope with a plethora of visitors from various countries during the week, whilst also attending meetings to try and get better services for our people, and other special and routine work.

You must also know that, even though you are no part of it, the total failure of those whom we trusted to control the excesses of the LTTE in the past, to ensure that food we sent reached suffering people, has made ministries who funded all over the country one of the best social service systems for countries at our level wonder what is the point of responding to mechanisms that have so signally failed our fellow citizens for five long years.

Yours sincerely

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Prof Philip Alston Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings Human Rights Council GENEVA.

Dear Mr Alston,

Thank you for your letter of 30th April. It is good as always to hear from you, and I am only sorry it has to be under sad circumstances. However I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that one of the initiatives I mentioned to improve matters in Sri Lanka has finally taken off.

It was a pity you would not respond when we last wrote, but we were able to get some positive help from the Office of the High Commissioner following the visit of a more positive Special Representative, and police training in Human Rights on the lines we requested is going on now.

I hope this will persuade you to engage more actively in the future in pursuit of your mandate, which is to assist countries too, not merely to point fingers whenever it is suggested by forces more powerful than all of us that you do so.

Pending a more detailed response, which I have requested from our Ministry of Defence, I would like to deal with some of the allegations you make. You have sent us three paragraphs based on information you have received.

Whilst it is of course incumbent on you to respond to such information, it would be more sensible to check carefully on your sources.

The figures you cite are suspiciously close to those circulated by United Nations sources, which has led to responsible officials in the United Nations apologizing for figures that are not confirmed reaching the public domain. Your concerns seem to relate exclusively to the No Fire Zone, which seems a strange field for your mandate, since you are entitled the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.

None of the killings to which you refer can be described as falling into any of these categories, unless all killings are deemed extrajudicial. You are of course correct in pointing out that attacks that could cause harm to civilians excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated is wrong, but it is difficult to understand how any such harm can be construed as coming under your mandate.

Your previous exercises in this respect, as with your passionate critique of NATO forces in Afghanistan, had more to do with surreptitious operations, which is more understandable even if those perpetrating such actions see this as an integral part of their war against terror.

Your second para, which deals in specifics, mentions that on 7 April shells reportedly hit an area near a health center killing at least 13 civilians immediately, and more thereafter. You must be aware however that one LTTE source reported on the 8th that 129 civilians had been killed in this reported incident, and another reported 40 dead with ‘injuries to more than 258 including 100 children’.

Whilst you may find such reports credible, we believe that they are perhaps the most important weapon the LTTE is using in its struggle to live to fight another day and continue with the abhorrent practices you refer to later.

I hope the Ministry of Defence will let us know what precisely happened on the 7th, and assure us that international law was not breached, but I believe you would do well to understand the circumstances under which we are dealing with terrorism.

We are deeply upset that five years of UN officials working in LTTE controlled areas failed to prevent such practices, and indeed that UN officials provided lame excuses for them, as when the Head of UNICEF argued that the LTTE needed to amend its legislation in order to release child soldiers aged over 17. With the UN in effect encouraging terrorism and inhuman practices, you must grant that it is incumbent on the Sri Lankan government to take remedial measures on behalf of our citizenry.

One corollary of what seemed UN indulgence on such issues was the blurring of the line between militia and civilians. You obviously live in a world in which combatants fight and civilians are kept far away from them.

When as happened in Sri Lanka forced recruitment took place under the noses of the UN, which did not immediately condemn this practice, the poor citizenry obviously thought this had the blessings of the international community, or rather that portion of it which dominates the UN and UN presences in countries such as ours.

Thus civilians mixed in freely in military installations, whilst people in civilian dress participated in operations. Our responsibility then to avoid civilian deaths has to be exercised in terms of concentrating only on military targets, with civilians wishing to benefit from the rules as it were having a concomitant obligation to stay away from such targets.

The situation is obviously complicated when we declare a safe zone, and civilians move into it, and then a belligerent also moves into the safe zone with heavy weapons and uses them against us - and also against those civilians trying to escape.

It would be irresponsible not to take all possible measures than to eliminate such heavy weapons. We are not irresponsible even if you are, and we have an obligation to stop the continuing servitude of our fellow citizens. It is precisely for this reason that international law talks about proportionality, not a total moratorium. I am subject to correction, not being a Professor of Law, but surely common sense should also have some say in unusual situations.

Your third paragraph is a bit strange because Puthukkudirippu is not in the No Fire Zone. Your claim is at odds with those of TamilNet, since your allegations start at 3.30 am and theirs at 6 pm, ie after the statement from the Presidential Secretariat to which you refer. Your claim is that 19 civilians died, whilst they have more than 200 killed, after firing of ‘at least 2,600 Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) rockets, more than 1,000 artillery shells and at least 2,000 heavy mortar shells’.

It does not take a professorial mind to deduce that all this precise identification shows a militaristic mindset, whilst the discrepancy may have been due to 19 actual civilians having been amongst the 200 and more militia who were deployed to defend the Tiger strongholds in and around Puthukkudirippu.

Incidentally, whilst the figures in your first paragraph are woefully suspect, you should think, if you have time to, about the relatively low proportion of children alleged to have been killed. You may not be aware that, of the near 47,000 who had got away from the LTTE into welfare centres by the 25th of March, nearly 29,000 were children.

These proportions seem to be replicated amongst the more than 130,000 who have got away since, so your figure of less than 10% suggests that a high proportion of those you allege were civilians were nothing of the sort, and that they were not in areas in which there were civilians.

This of course begs the question as to the accuracy of the figure anyway but, since you are inclined to act on it, you should use your little grey cells to work out what is at least plausible.

I look forward to at least an acknowledgment of this letter, and I hope a reasoned response.

Yours sincerely, Prof Rajiva Wijesinha