Unnatural selectivity

Last year, when the government of Haiti decided to allow deposed former President Bertrand Aristide to return, President Obama himself telephoned President Jacob Zuma of South Africa (where Aristide had obtained sanctuary), informed him of his ‘deep concerns’ about the return and asked him to prevent it.

However, the same ‘deep concerns’ were not apparent when former dictator Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier returned two months earlier. ‘Baby Doc’ had taken over after the death of his father, François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who killed an estimated 30,000 opponents in his 12-year repressive rule.

It is estimated that Baby Doc embezzled US $ 300-800 million (15-40 percent of Haiti’s GDP) during his 15-year misrule. He continued using his father’s dreaded ‘Tonton Macoutes’ death squads to kill opponents and critics. He was finally forced out after a popular rebellion in 1986 and was flown in a US aircraft to France, where he lived untroubled without a visa for 25 years.

It should be mentioned, parenthetically, that the ‘Tonton Macoutes’ (the term means ‘uncle gunny-bag’ - the equivalent of ‘gonibilla’ in Sinhala) was dissolved following Baby Doc’s downfall, but was reborn as the Front pour l'Avancement et le Progrès Haitien (FRAPH), whose leader, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant was an operative of America’s Central intelligence Agency (CIA). FRAPH carried out acts of anti-Aristide terrorism and Constant was later convicted in absentia - he obtained asylum in the USA.

Natural justice

The difference in treatment afforded to the two - one a democratically elected leader forced out in a coup d’etat, the other a bloody dictator overthrown in a popular revolution - is an example of the selectivity of the ‘justice’ of the ‘International Community’ (the Western media’s shorthand for the Western powers) – which now appears to be its hallmark.

One of the general principles of natural justice is that there should be a common standard that applies to all equally in the same way, with no selective treatment. As the eminent 19th century constitutional expert A.V. Dicey elaborated, unequal treatment and arbitrary justice is not justice at all.

This principle was restated in January 2011 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which said that there cannot be selective justice. The statement was included in a PACE resolution which, adopting a report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, called for an international investigation into alleged crimes committed by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), led by Hashim Thaçi. These crimes included ‘assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations’ as well as peddling weapons, heroin and the kidneys of Serbian prisoners captured by the terrorist organization.

Criminal activities

The Marty Report was backed by secret documents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which, based on reports by intelligence agencies, provided detailed information about criminal activities in Kosovo and accused Thaçi, now ‘Prime Minister’ of the region of being ‘one of the biggest fish’ in organized crime.

The British Guardian newspaper, which leaked the documents, said that they ‘indicate that the US and other Western powers backing Kosovo's government have had extensive knowledge of its criminal connections for several years’.

In other words, the ‘International Community’ had been backing a known criminal organization in its rebellion against a sovereign state.

Indeed, in December 2000, Ralf Mutschke of Interpol revealed to the US Congress that the US State Department had as early as 1998 listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financed by narcotics trading and by contributions from funders' such as Osama bin Laden. He also stated that a top Al-qaeda commander had led a KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict.

A UN report said that the KLA -‘ethnically cleansed’ 90 Serb-villages in Kosovo were in the months before March 1999. Subsequent to NATO taking over the province later that year, tens of thousands more Serbians were ‘ethnically cleansed’.

Notwithstanding their knowing the aforesaid, the USA, Britain, Canada, France and other representatives of NATO and of the ‘International Community’ recognised the KLA’s unilateral ‘declaration of independence’ on February 17, 2008. On the fourth anniversary of the US recognition of this UDI, William J. Burns, US Deputy Secretary of State, made a statement in Pristina in Kosovo, in which he said that the United States wanted ‘to see Kosovo take its rightful place in Euro-Atlantic institutions, including NATO and the European Union’. Burns did not mention war crimes, human rights or the rule of law.

Western powers

It is in this context that the US-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka, now before the Human Rights Council in Geneva, should be considered. In Sri Lanka we have gone through due process, with an inquiry by the duly constituted Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. The government of Sri Lanka has committed itself to implementing the LLRC recommendations, which include investigations of possible abuses.

Furthermore, Sri Lanka has been fighting terrorism, an aim which the ‘international community’ has adopted as its own. On the other hand, we have the province of Kosovo being ruled by a coterie which had been declared terrorists by the USA, which had been aided by the declared sworn enemy of the USA, Osama bin Laden.

It was the very investigative institutions of the Western powers which had stated that the KLA carried out war crimes. There are even videos on the internet showing war crimes being carried out by the KLA (videos are, in the eyes of the West - at least as far as Sri Lanka was concerned - considered pretty damning evidence)!

So, why the differing treatment, so clearly clearly a violation of the principles of natural justice? Why is Sri Lanka being singled out? Does this mean that war crimes may be carried out with impunity as long as they are carried out under the aegis of the Western powers? Is this notification that any country standing for itself will be subject to harassment on spurious human rights grounds?