Moonlight in Colombo

Weekend newspapers reported that the investigation initiated by Ban-Ki- Moon on alleged ‘violation of human rights in Sri Lanka towards the last stage of the war against terror is still on’ and the UN Secretary General is to go ahead with appointing an advisory committee to advise him on the matter.

The case against Sri Lanka is based on an allegation that 7,000 civilian lives were lost due to military operations during the last stage of the war which rescued 280,000 civilians from the clutches of the LTTE.

This is an allegation based on accounts of Tamilnet, the propaganda arm of the LTTE and apart from this there are no independent reports that blame for such excess on Security Forces.

In the first place there are no witnesses to testify a crime with evidence of where the corpse of these victims were buried. Even Tamilnet has not substantiated as to the places where these excess are alleged to have taken place with locations where the bodies of non combatants could be found. In such a context these allegations are bound to peter out to be heresy originated by parties who have an interest to sully the record of their rivals.

This story of alleged loss of human rights originated when some surgeons stationed in the combat zone in May 2009 made a statement to the International media about civilian deaths due to operations of the Security Forces during the last stages of the war.

Those same surgeons after the liberation, contradicted those statements and admitted that they made those statements on the directions of the LTTE to bring world attention to the issue in Sri Lanka.

The BBC and other international media institutions ridiculed these subsequent ratifications of the surgeons inferring that the ‘surgeons may be now countering their statements under Government duress’.

The irony here is that these international media institutions that cast aspersions on statement when they are made under Government have no compunctions in accepting them as unqualified truth when made under the duress of the world’s most brutal terror organization.

Is the LTTE a more credible organization than the Government? It is Sri Lanka that is the member of the UN and not the LTTE and in that context does Moon too take the position that statements made under the LTTE is more acceptable than the statements made under the Sri Lankan Government.

The other side of this whole scenario is, should Moon, the Secretary General of the only World Body express so much interest on unfounded allegation against Sri Lanka in a global milieu where thousands of innocent human lives are lost and human misery is enacted daily in different parts of the world with tenable evidence. What is UN’s performance in settling the protracted conflicts in Palestine, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and in many other troubled spots in the world where human rights are being continually violated with impunity but conveniently swept under the carpet of ‘collateral’.

The case against Sri Lanka is about a war ‘that has ended’ and hence it should properly be a source of relief to the UN boss plagued by continuing conflicts in the world. The irony however is that the UN Chief appears to be unduly concerned about the way the war ended than the fact that it ended bringing to an end one of the most difficult periods a UN member state had to go through in its history.

This conflict that raged for 34 years, cost Sri Lanka 90,000 lives and US $ 20 billion worth collateral. Where was the UN all this while and what action did it take to help Sri Lanka to come out of this vexed issue which at times threatened the very existence of the Sri Lankan nation? The incoherence here is that an unfounded allegation on 7,000 lives has been able to do what the verified loss of 90,000 lives have been unable to do all this while i,e. to bring UN out of its slumber.

What is the moral right an organization has to inquire into the ‘way the war ended’ after having remained a passive spectator during all those years when Sri Lanka was struggling with no end in sight to its cruel war?

The world is going through a period where crossborder terrorism has become the number one concern of world leaders and UN, being all encompassing World Body is expected to play a vital part in helping the world to overcome that menace. Isn’t UN aware that terrorist use propaganda hype, human shields, untenable grievances, element of surprise, guile and the very norms of modern civilization to hide their criminalities.

In such a scenario should not these allegations against Sri Lanka, that grappled with the most sophisticated terror outfit in the world, be viewed with some empathetic objectivity? On the other hand if Moon is so ignorant of the tactics and nuances of terrorism can the world expect him to lead it out of terrorism?

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