UN Charter and Sri Lanka – President’s WORD
It was a very clear message of Independence and Sovereignty as a
nation, and that Sri Lanka is entitled to all rights based on the
principle of sovereign equality of all members of the United Nations. On
the 65th anniversary of independence, President Mahinda Rajapaksa saw
the need to emphasize these facts to the world in his address to the
nation from the port city of Trincomalee.
Taking the Freedom Day celebrations to Trincomalee this year was of
significance as it emphasized the post-conflict progress made in
national unity and the conditions of peace that prevail throughout the
country. It is a location that demonstrates well the multi-ethnic and
multi-religious nature of Sri Lankan society, with considerable
historical importance attached to it. Its importance as a harbour with a
strategic location in the Indian Ocean, and the centre of the
interactions with the world through millennia, made it a suitable venue
to send out the President’s important message to the world on the
principle of sovereign equality.
The continuing pressure being brought to Sri Lanka by sections of the
‘international community’, in total disregard of the three decades of
tragedy it suffered when attacked by the forces of separatist terror,
and what seems to be the continued lack of genuine interest in the
successes achieved in building peace and reconciliation, as well as
economic growth, under conditions of democracy since the defeat of
terrorism, President Rajapaksa gave a very clear message of Hands Off
Sri Lanka, based on the Charter of the United Nations.
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa hoists the
National flag at the 65th Independence Day celebrations held
in Trincomalee. Picture by Sudath Silva |
As a country that has always respected the Charter of the United
Nations, and believes that all member countries, whether powerful or
weak, should similarly this Charter, he thought it both timely and
necessary to remind the world of the key provisions in the Charter that
provided for equality among members and respect for sovereignty and
territorial integrity.
He quoted the provisions of Article 2 of the UN Charter that said:
* The Organization is based on the Principle of the sovereign
equality of all its Members.
* All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, or any other manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations.
* Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United
Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to
submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.
Focus of pressure
From even before the LTTE and its brutal terrorism was finally
defeated, Sri Lanka has been the focus of pressure mainly from countries
of the West, with a greater interest in domestic politics in their own
countries due to the influence of pro-LTTE Tamil settlers and asylum
seekers in those parts. In some countries they have become the deciders
of elections in important cities and local authorities, and electorates
that are in the balance. These reasons, and not any concern for the
Tamils of Sri Lanka, saw many countries of the West seeking to bring
pressure on Sri Lanka to come to a cease fire with the LTTE, when it was
clear that its fighting capability was fast on the wane. These pressures
paid no heed to the conditions of the Tamil civilians who were being
herded through LTTE controlled areas as human shields, or for the
continued use of child soldiers and suicide killers. This is in strange
contrast to the battles against terror that these same countries claim
to wage in other parts of the world, in coalitions that have no
hesitation to use strategies that lead to much civilian killings,
displacement of civilians in vast numbers, and also running away from
their once declared aims of establishing democracy in the countries that
have been bloodied and divided in their proclaimed operations against
terror.
From the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to lesser UN officers and
key figures in western governments have been consistent in their efforts
to echo the claims and demands of the pro-LTTE forces that operate in
western countries and in organizations that have demonstrated their
links to the funds and other resources of these forces. These are groups
that do not reject separatist terror nor have uttered one word of
apology for all the crimes against humanity they have committed or
supported in this country, and abroad too, in their battle for a
separate state within Sri Lankan territory.
Darusman charges
A good example of such interference is the document known as the
Darusman Report, compiled by persons with a clear bias against Sri
Lanka, which was intended to give advice to the UN Secretary General on
the developments in Sri Lanka, relating to the period of leading to the
rout of the LTTE in May 2009. It is a clear example of this biased
interference in Sri Lankan affairs. Leaked to a pro-separatist media,
before any consultation with Sri Lanka on its contents, it stands out as
a document that lacks the basic requirements of reliable verification of
alleged charges against Sri Lanka, and also takes shelter under a
secrecy clause that hides its sources of information from the public,
whether in Sri Lanka or abroad.
Commenting on it shortly after its release by the Office of the UN
Secretary General, President Rajapaksa said this report on the final
phase of the operation to defeat terrorism in Sri Lanka is a tendentious
document that makes grossly false allegations about Sri Lanka and its
Security Forces. The government will defend the good name of the country
and expose the false allegations that are abundant in this report.
Speaking to editors of the print and electronic media in Sri Lanka,
the President emphasized that although there were questions about the
validity of the panel that prepared this report, Sri Lanka would not
take it lightly because it is necessary to expose the abundance of false
allegations made, and it is the responsibility of government to
safeguard the good name and the image of the country.
The report was admittedly a narrative of unsubstantiated statements
and not a record of any verified or authenticated facts. He said there
was an abundance of evidence available through very reliable sources
within the UN and several international agencies that were associated
with the government in carrying out humanitarian operation to eradicate
terrorism. None of this had been looked into by those who produced this
report.
On the matter of civilian casualties mentioned in this report, there
were many reasons to doubt the authenticity of the sources that have
provided these figures. The government had consciously followed a policy
of aiming at zero casualties among civilians. For this purpose the
Security Forces had been given special education and guidance on Human
Rights and humanitarian law. Considering that nearly 300,000 Tamil
civilians sought relief and protection with the Sri Lankan Armed Forces
it was most surprising to believe that they came for such relief to an
army that was attacking them. He added that there was considerable
evidence, somehow missed by this panel, which recorded the mass killings
of Tamil citizens who tried to flee from the LTTE by the same LTTE that
claimed to be their liberators.
The President also said it is surprising how any reasonably accurate
figure of civilian casualties or even the number of civilians present in
the battle-torn area could be assessed with any exactitude when it had
not been possible to carry out a proper census of the population in the
North of Sri Lanka from 1981, due to the obstruction of the enumeration
work in the census of 1991 and 2001 by the terror of the LTTE. In fact
those who are aware of facts know of the several conflicting reports
about civilians present in the area in the last months of the operation
against the LTTE.
If the Darusman Report showed the bias against Sri Lanka within the
UN structure, especially the Office of the Secretary General and its
chosen advisors, there was another example of such unwarranted criticism
of Sri Lanka in the internal UN report that found fault with the UN
staff for its major failings in the last months of the battle to defeat
the LTTE.
Petrie Report
Taking note of how this internal report known as the Petrie Report,
had also been leaked to the pro-separatist media prior to any
consultations with Sri Lanka, the Ministry of External Affairs was very
strong its criticism of how it was released and its contents. Sri
Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York protested against the
leak an stated the “Petrie Report” was an internal document to assess
the working of the United Nations system in Sri Lanka during a given
period, following a recommendation in the Report of the advisory Panel
of Experts appointed by the Secretary General, known as the “Darusman
Report”.
The Permanent Mission stated that while noting that both these
Reports are internal advisories to the UN, it is disconcerting that the
Darusman Report came into the public domain initially through a leak,
and in this instance of the Petrie Report too, the unacceptable
procedure of leaking has been resorted to, establishing a disturbing
pattern which brings into question the bona fides of the authorship of
the document and its underlying motivation. It may be recalled that
following the leak of the Petrie Report, while the UN Spokesman took the
position that he could not comment on a leaked Report, the author stated
to the media that the penultimate draft “very much reflects the findings
of the Panel”. Following formal discussions on this issue by the
Permanent Representative in New York, with the UN Secretariat, the
latter characterized the Report as a document prepared by an independent
body over which the Secretariat and has no control. However, the
expectation of a sovereign government, quite legitimately, is that the
accepted procedure of first consulting with the country concerned be
rigidly adopted when commissioning experts. It is pertinent to recall,
in the context of a recurring pattern, that the Darusman Report was
formally made available by the UN to the public on the basis that it
first leaked through the media, and in fact the Petrie Report also was
formally released to the media the day after its leak.
The government of Sri Lanka does not intend to comment on the
entirety of its contents. However, some of the issues raised in the
Report are of grave concern to Sri Lanka, and should not be construed as
the accepted position.
This Report seems to seek to endorse the baseless and discredited
allegations in the Darusman Report, of an exaggerated civilian casualty
figure during the last stages of the terrorist conflict, which has not
been agreed upon even among the senior UN officials at the time, because
of the speculative nature of the information which could not be
verified. The statistics in the Petrie Report are based on 'unnamed
sources' quoted in the Darusman Report and unsubstantiated allegations
made by NGOs and certain lower level UN officials. However, a censored
section of this Report refers to a meeting of the Policy Planning
Committee to discuss Sri Lanka where several participants including the
then Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Resident
Coordinator did not stand by the casualty numbers, saying that the data
were ‘not verified’ and questioned the proposal by the Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights to release a public statement
containing references to the numbers and possible crimes. No mention has
been made of the intransigence of the LTTE which held the people as a
human shield, and even shot in cold blood those who tried to escape to
gain their freedom.
Humanitarian assistance
While the Report admits that the LTTE positioned its artillery among
civilians, the allegation of government shelling into civilian
concentrations does not take into account the principles of self-defence
or reasonableness of retaliation, proportionality, or a technical
analysis of the trajectories of the shells allegedly fired, to determine
their source.
The allegation relating to the government deliberately restricting
food and medicine to the North is another unsubstantiated statement
which, as in the Darusman Report, is repeated in the Petrie publication.
The attempts of the GOSL to demonstrate the fallacy of this contention
from the time it emerged seem to have been dismissed in cavalier fashion
in the Petrie Report. It is a well known fact that food and medicine
sent to the North were monitored regularly by the Consultative Committee
on Humanitarian Assistance (CCHA), which comprised officials from the
government, the UN and other humanitarian agencies, and representatives
of the diplomatic community based in Colombo, including Japan, USA,
Norway and the European Union. The efforts of successive governments to
provide food and medicine to the North, despite the definite knowledge
that a major part of it was ending up in the hands of the terrorists,
have been appreciated from the early stages of the conflict by the UN.
This is amply corroborated by contemporaneous statements by the UN in
Sri Lanka at the time. Further, the alleged intimidation of UN staff for
delivery of humanitarian assistance is completely baseless, a position
which has been endorsed by the former United Nations USG for
Humanitarian Affairs and reported widely at the time in the media.
Repeated characterization of the welfare villages without any basis
as “military run internment camps” demonstrate the ignorance on the part
of the author of the Report, as well as resolve to ignore the efforts
taken by the government to provide basic needs and essential services to
the thousands of displaced civilians who fled from the stronghold of the
terrorists to the government side. Without the assistance of the
military at that juncture, the GOSL could not have handled the magnitude
of the humanitarian task at hand. The military’s role in responding to
any humanitarian crisis is well established the world over. It has been
in this sense that the military has been engaged in Sri Lanka to
overcome the challenges of the terrorist conflict.
Furthermore, while it refers to the military campaign to defeat the
LTTE, the Report makes scant reference to the long series of
negotiations engaged in by successive governments to arrive at a
peaceful settlement, while all those efforts and brief periods of cease
fire were used by the LTTE to regroup and rearm, to be subsequently
unilaterally violated.
The Report appears to be another attempt at castigating Sri Lanka for
militarily defeating a ruthless terrorist group which has held the very
people it claimed to represent as human shields. The basis for blacking
out sections of the Petrie Report is unclear and it is left to the GoSL
to surmise that references which may serve positively are those which
have been censored.
Finally, the Report, which is critical of the Member States, seems to
forget that the United Nations is an inter-governmental organization
whose members are equal in terms of sovereignty and dignity. We remind
the author of the Report that they must act within their given mandate
and the Charter, and be equal and fair in their dealings with all Member
States. A Report of this nature could serve to dangerously have the
statistics and unsubstantiated information acquire a life of their own.
In fact, the initial statements emanating from some countries seem to
disregard the fact that the basic purpose of the Report was to engage in
a critical appraisal of the UN system’s performance. Ignoring this vital
aspect, they have taken the opportunity to resort to criticism of the
GoSL in a manner that reflects patent bias and unwillingness to examine
the developments with any degree of objectivity.”
The situation arising from these two reports alone, and the manner in
which they were released and subsequently used by UN officials in
continued attempts to castigate Sri Lanka on its success in defeating
terrorism, points to the necessity for President Rajapaksa to draw the
attention of the world to the situation faced by Sri Lanka in the
context of disregard for important aspects of the UN Charter. It is a
timely call for the sections of the 'international community' that is
wallowing in double standards over violations of human rights,
humanitarian law and war crimes, to look at the Sri Lankan situation
with greater objectivity, and the success it has achieved in the
important areas of resettlement and rehabilitation of the victims of
terrorism, and the continuing process of reconciliation in the country.
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