UN Expert Panel Report on Sri-Lankan War Crimes Shook the World From Its Slumber

By: Dr C P Thiagarajah

The unduly delayed UN special panel report on Sri-Lankan War Crimes shook the world from its slumber to see hidden facts behind the horrendous war that was described as a “War Without Witnesses” by a UK journalist during in May 2009 and the post war events. This is the studied view of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Navi Pillay as well. She divulged in Geneva on 26 April in their website. ““I hope the disturbing new information contained in this report will shock the conscience of the international community into finally taking serious action”. The activities that followed the release of this report across the length and breadth of the world show that the world had gone into action.

R.K. Radhakrishnan of The Hindustan Times wrote on 7 May 2011 under the title ‘Sri-Lanka under Fire’, “For the Sri Lankans, perhaps, the U.N. report will be the most important document from the international community in recent history. At no other time in the history of Sri Lanka has the U.N. appointed such a panel or issued a report of this nature. Different U.N. agencies have made reports on various issues, but these cannot compare with the political and social importance of this report”.

Ecumenical News International BANGALORE, INDIA announced that Ruki Fernando, coordinator of the group of about two dozen clergy and lay people calling themselves "concerned Christians" in Sri Lanka told it on April 27. "We are relieved that finally the report has been made public (internationally). But the response (to the report) here is shocking and disappointing," Retired Anglican bishop Kumara Illangasinge, one of the signatories to the statement told ENInews that "Finally, there is a credible report on the war of which many Sri Lankans were not aware of." "We need reconciliation and it should be built on truth. But it is sad that even the nationalist media here is portraying the U.N. report as a conspiracy," said Illangasinge.

Professor John Whitehall of Australia, is buoyed by the release this week of the United Nations Special Panel report. “The Sri Lankan army has a lot to answer for,'' says the academic. Prof. Whitehall continues to seek what he regards as justice for the Tamils, but remains pessimistic about any action from the UN.

In an interview with Radio Australia, Mr Gordon Weiss, the former spokesman for the UN in Sri Lanka said “Well, I've been saying since January, last year that between 10,000 and 40,000 people were probably killed in this later stage of the war and the panel has come out and said that indeed tens-of-thousands of people, it believes, died during this phase. The real impact of this report is really in its absolute clarity that grave crimes were committed and that there must be an international judicial inquiry into it”.

Gordon Weiss in an interview with Cameron Wilson in (Asia Calling) on Sunday, 24 April 2011 said “Well, the claims are extremely severe. The panel characterised what happened in Sri Lanka as a grave assault on the entire system of international law and security, so it regards the sheer magnitude of those crimes as a serious challenge to international order.”

I think that the panel wrote this report, then produced this very comprehensive investigation in order to make sure that they're could be no doubt left that mass crimes were committed in Sri Lanka. This is going to make it very difficult for the UN not to take action. It's going to make it very difficult for any member of the United Nations, and in particular, I'm thinking of India, China, Russia to obscure or obstruct a serious and credible international investigation into what happened in the tail end of this long civil war.”

NGOs and Human Rights Organisations like the Amnesty International (AI), Human Right Watch (HRW) and International Crisis Group (ICG) were too surprised at the grotesque barbarity of the war crimes committed by the Sinhala Sri-Lankan government on the ethnic minority Tamils.

Amnesty International has called on the U.N. to launch an independent international inquiry immediately.

The Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) and many Tamil Diaspora Human Rights campaigners knew it all along the way that they fought an internet war against the Sri- lankan government against the genocide.

In Geneva on Tuesday 26 April 2011 UNHRC welcomed the public release of the UN Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts report and supported the report’s call for a further international investigation giving the full reasons for such a request. “The way this conflict was conducted, under the guise of fighting terrorism, challenged the very foundations of the rules of war and cost the lives of tens of thousands of civilians,” the High Commissioner Ms Navi Pillai said. “----------As the report itself says, addressing violations of international humanitarian or human rights law is not a matter of choice or policy; it is a duty under domestic and international law,” she added.

The United States, which has taken a hard line on Sri Lanka over the conflict, also welcomed the panel's recommendations.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice declared that the UN Expert Panel report "makes a valuable contribution to next steps that should be taken in support of justice, accountability, human rights, and reconciliation in Sri Lanka". The United States, which has taken a tough line on Sri Lanka over the conflict, also welcomed the panel's recommendations. Rice said there has to be "an independent and full accounting of the facts in order to ensure that allegations of abuse are addressed and impunity for human rights violations is avoided."

AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday pressed the Indian government to move the UN against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa for "war crimes and genocide" after the world body's report on civilian casualties during the ethnic strife.

The UN report, Jayalalithaa said, "made mincemeat of the Lankan government’s claim that it had conducted a humanitarian rescue operation with a zero civilian casualty policy."

Jayalalithaa demanded that Rajapaksa be tried for war crimes and genocide, "along with his generals and senior ministers who were party to the brutal excesses." She hinted that they knew their culpability that they tried to prevent the report being made public that it will interfere with reconciliation.

The African national Congress (ANC) supports the recommendations of the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Panel of Experts that called for the establishment of an independent body to investigate all violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws committed in the conflict.

In a statement on 6 May in its website it added “We have noted, with regret, that breakdown of the ceasefire and the negotiations between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE led to a military solution of resolving the problems.

The ANC supports the recommendations of the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Panel of Experts that called for the establishment of an independent body to investigate all violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws committed in the conflict. “We also call on the government of Sri Lanka to take immediate steps to address the core grievances of the Tamil population and engage in a genuine reconciliation process”.

Tamil Diaspora in the UK: At a mass vigil held in Trafalgar Square in London on Wednesday 18 May 2011 to remember the innocents killed in the war in 2009, UK parliamentarians from all three major political parties and representatives of leading UK trade unions, rights and peace campaigners called for an international investigation into the atrocities committed by both parties in war in May 2009. Some of them advocated the recognition of Tamil’s right of self-determination for Tamil Eelam. British parliamentarians who addressed remembrance meeting included Robert Halfon (Conservative), Lee Scott (Conservative), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), John Mann (Labour), Adrian Bailey (Labour and Cooperative) and Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat), as well as Members of the European parliament Claude Moraes (Labour) and Baroness Ludford (Lib-Dems).

NGOs that participated in the above meet were Stop the War Coalition, Act Now and Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC). Prominent and powerful trade union the National Union of Teachers (NUT) joined in the vigil and addressed the gathering expressing in powerful terms that the genocide should be exposed more widely so that world government are pushed to take action on it at international level.

Response of the Sri-Lankan Government, a Party involved in the War Crimes is Total Denial.

The Sri Lankan government (GSL) has refused to admit the legality of the UN report questioning the authority of the UN Secretary-General to appoint a panel on his own without a mandate from a governing body such as the UN general Assembly or the Security Council.

Sri Lanka, childishly called the report of the three-member Expert Panel "Darusman Report" after the leader of the panel to cast a feeling of resentment against the report being called a UN report. The UN panel was headed by the former Attorney General of Indonesia Marzuki Darusman. Sri-Lankan government said the report was "fundamentally flawed" and "based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification”. It further added the decision to publicly release the report was divisive, disrupts the efforts to reinforce peace, security, and stability in the country, and feeds into the political agendas of interested parties. GSL denies that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the months leading up to the government's victory over Tamil separatists in May 2009. "The Sri Lankan army is not responsible and [the] Sri Lankan government is not responsible," government spokesman Lakshman Hulugalle said. "We never shelled or we never bombed. We never targeted innocent civilians. It's a wrong allegation and we can prove it," he said.

Sri Lanka had therefore asked the UN not to publish the report, saying it could damage reconciliation efforts.

The Crimes cited in the Report.

“The panel found credible allegations that comprise five core categories of potential serious violations committed by the Government of Sri Lanka: (i) killing of civilians through widespread shelling; (ii) shelling of hospitals and humanitarian objects; (iii) denial of humanitarian assistance; (iv) human rights violations suffered by victims and survivors of the conflict, including both IDPs [internally displaced people] and suspected LTTE cadre; and (v) human rights violations outside the conflict zone, including against the media and other critics of the government.

“The Panel's determination of credible allegations against the LTTE associated with the final stages of the war reveal six core categories of potential serious violations: (i) using civilians as a human buffer; (ii) killing civilians attempting to flee LTTE control; (iii) using military equipment in the proximity of civilians; (iv) forced recruitment of children; (v) forced labour; and (vi) killing of civilians through suicide attacks.”

How Substantiated:

The charges were established on eyewitness accounts and credible information on documents and satellite and video evidences.

What Crimes and evidence of Crimes that did not come up in the report:

Because of Sri-Lankan Government objection to the UN expert panel visiting Sri-Lanka to gather evidence using the power of “internal affairs of a country” more proofs of war crimes could not be unearthed by the Panel. These include

1. what appears to be mass graves shown in the satellite pictures. These if proven will reveal genocide which term the expert panel report avoided using.

2. The scorched Earth of Vanni. According to a speech delivered in Chennai (Madras) on invitation from Tamils in Chennai (Madras) a world recognized Sinhalese Human Rights activist Ms Nimalka Fernando the Tamils in Vanni who lived like kings (meanings they had all they wanted) before the government unilateral war had been reduced to paupers after the war.

This is also reinforced by another Sinhalese journalist Melani Manel Perera. Writing in www.asiannews.it she said “During the civil war, the residents of entire villages were forced to flee, finding shelter in refugee camps. Many of those displaced still live in those camps without the government providing for their resettlement and repatriation. Many live in “transit” camps in makeshift shelters”. A United Nation report states some 300,000 people who were displaced during the war were housed temporarily at refugee camps in the Chettikulam, Mannar, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Mulatheevu and Jaffna areas.

3. Post war cultural genocide and suppression of human rights of the Tamils in Vanni and the Tamils Homeland.

Recommended Remedial Action by IC.

The panel recommended that the Sri Lankan government open “genuine investigations” and that the Secretary-General immediately proceed to establish an independent international mechanism to conduct investigations into the alleged violations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms navi Pillai stressed the sheer necessity

for an independent International Inquiry “These alleged crimes demand a full, impartial, independent and transparent investigation” she said. She added further her skepticism that the Sinhala regime may not take any action voluntarily. “Unless there is a sea- change in the Government’s response, which has so far been one of total denial and blanket impunity, a full-fledged international inquiry will clearly be needed.” She reiterated.

Sri-Lanka’s Calculated Moves to Evade an Investigation.

Sri-Lankan Sinhalese government misleads the world through a decoy, their Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) instead of a reconciliation commission with international participation. The UN panel found that the LLRC is “deeply flawed, does not meet international standards of an effective accountability mechanism and, therefore, does not and cannot satisfy the joint commitment of the President of Sri Lanka and the Secretary-General to an accountability process”. The panel noted that the government's approach to accountability, which focuses exclusively on abuses by the LTTE, lacks “any notion of accountability for its own conduct in the prosecution of the war”.

There is a saying that a murderer always covers his/her tracks out of fear of the law. In the same way the Sinhala Sri-Lankan government conscious of its commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war immediately (about two years ago) moved a Special Session Resolution (A/HRC/S-II/L.I/Rev.2) in May 2009 in the UN body and got it passed before the world could find out how the genocide happened. Fairly enough the UN panel recommended that the Human rights council should be invited to reconsider its Special Session Resolution regarding Sri Lanka, in light of their report. Anyway, the UNHRC have changed beyond recognition now. And, there is no veto power for any member. The decision of the body on this years session that begins on May 29, 2011 will prove vital.

If convicted by a War Crime Tribunal:

These allegations which, if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE (often referred to as the Tamil Tigers). Military commanders and senior political leaders on both sides could bear individual criminal responsibility.

Even After Two Years the Oppression Against Tamil minorities continues.

Unmindful of their responsibilities to world order the Sinhala Sri-Lankan government is continuing to carry out cultural genocide of the Tamils. The Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act are assiduously enforced in the Tamil’s Homeland (TH) North and East of Sri-Lanka; disappeared cases are not resolved yet; the remaining LTTE detainees are not rehabilitated nor released; no full relief measures for victims and survivors of the conflict, no public accounting for civilian deaths and no recovery and return of human remains to the victim’s families. All homes of the civilians that were destroyed had still been not rebuilt by the government. Instead military personnel, who carried out the genocide are being provided with stately homes at government expense.

As an observer Ms Pillai commented “In the longer term, however, justice will be essential if there is to be true reconciliation after this terrible and divisive conflict.” .How the world react to the report.

Many Sri Lankans and others round the world were relieved that the LTTE renowned for its brutality was defeated. However many people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere were deeply disturbed about the means used to achieve the victory.

Ben Doherty writing in www.smh.com.au/world/peace-a-battle on May 14, 2011 describes a Tamil farmer’s woe in Vanni. He said that he was a farmer before the war. His land is ''gone'' and he is resigned to never getting it back. His son and daughter were killed in the war he says, tapping his finger on his heart. His neighbours are missing; he doesn't know what happened to them. ''Before the war, I had a lot of money, I had a nice house, I had my family, everything I could need. But I lost everything and everyone too.''

Jehan Perera, a Sinhalese of National Peace Foundation during a visit on 22 may 2011 to the Tamil Homeland of North and East that was destroyed by war has this to reveal regarding the poat conflict development by the government “The roads within the Vanni were in very poor shape, highly uneven gravel roads for the most part, which made a 40 kilometer drive take around three hours, and which gives an idea of the poor state of the infrastructure. Hardly any buildings were intact and most of the people were living in temporary shelters. It was difficult to talk to them about the war. Invariably when I asked them what had happened, there would be moist eyes and faraway looks and it seemed unfair to continue to question them along those lines when there was nothing I could do to directly assist them. So I asked them what they wanted most to happen next”.

Secretary General Ban Ki Mun’s double standard.

Ban Statement on Democracies that commits crimes on its civilians in its website under the heading UN CHIEF SAYS EASTERN EUROPE CAN SERVE AS EXAMPLE TO 2011’S EMERGING DEMOCRACIES New York, May 6 showed what was happening in Libya, Côte d’Ivoire and elsewhere as “an historic precedent… a watershed in the emerging doctrine of the responsibility to protect,” referring to the principle agreed to by world leaders in 2005 to come to the aid of civilians under attack by their own governments.

“The age of impunity is dead,” he stated. “Today, we are moving decisively towards a new age of sovereignty as responsibility… an era where those who commit crimes against humanity and violate the human rights of their people will be held accountable. “More broadly, we can expect that, in the future, the Security Council will increasingly place civilian protection at the centre of the UN peace and security agenda,” he added.

Surprisingly when it comes to the implementation of the UN expert panel report on Sri- Lanka Mr Ban says he is powerless to take any further action. Without the agreement of the host country or a body such as the UN security-council, he says, he cannot launch a judicial investigation. The secretary-general is wrong to walk away from his own inquiry without putting up a stronger fight. Certainly the obstacles are formidable. His chances for trying a second term in the office may be jeopardised. The Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government, itself deeply implicated in the alleged abuses, has called the report fiction, and has used an annual May day parade to whip up public opposition to the report. Yet the findings of the report are so stark, they cannot simply be left hanging as mere recommendations. It shows that up to 40,000 civilians could have been killed in the closing months of the war during; resulting in war crimes including the shelling of safe zones, bombing of hospitals and summary executions.

if Mr Ban lets the issue drop taking the view that if 40,000 – or 400,000 – civilians die in the process, then so be it, the message will be clear to other tyrants. Authoritarian governments then may take it that they have carte blanche to deal with internal security issues as they see fit, without regard to the laws of war or international humanitarian rules. That would be a terrible message indeed to allow the world go haywire.

Banyan in The Economist of April 28th 2011 under the title “Nationalistic fury is good for the government, terrible for Sri Lanka” wrote about the three steps Sri-Lanka could have taken:

1. It could, early on, have argued brazenly that the benefits of ending the war outweighed the cost in human life. The Tigers were as vicious and totalitarian a bunch of thugs as ever adopted terrorism as a national-liberation strategy.

2. The government could have insisted that its army’s behaviour was largely honourable, but that some regrettable abuses may have occurred, which would be thoroughly investigated.

3. Instead, it chose the third path: to lie, and to lie big. It insisted that it pursued a policy of “zero civilian casualties”. Even as its forces shelled the shrinking “no-fire zone” in which the Tigers held some 330,000 civilians as human shields, it either denied it was doing so, or promised to stop and did not. It kept foreign observers out and bullied the local press into silence. The UN report found that “tens of thousands” were killed in January-May 2009, with most civilian casualties caused by government shelling.

The Tamil Diaspora maintains that ethnic-focused riots in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981, and 1983, ultimately leading to the civil war was suppressed by previous governments using false propaganda giving impunity to the armed fiorces and the Sinhala hoodlums that caused mass murders to carry out ethnic cleansing.

NGOs are Up in arms:

According to www.freemalayasiatoday.com on 5 May 2011, 130 Malaysian non- government organisations want the UN to investigate war crimes by the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). 30 representatives from the NGOs gathered at the UN headquaters in Malayasia and presented a memorandum to UN official, Davendra Patel, urging UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to set up a mechanism to further verify these credible allegations of war crimes.

Eleven NGOs in the USA has written to Secretary Hillary Clinton to take action against Sri-Lanka at the UHRC.

Adotei Akwei, Managing Director, Government Relations, Amnesty International
Karin Ryan, Director, Human Rights Program, Carter Center
Don Kraus, Chief Executive Officer, Citizens for Global Solutions
Dokhi Fassihian, Executive Director, Democracy Coalition Project
John Bradshaw, Executive Director, Enough Project
Paula Schriefer, Director of Advocacy, Freedom House
Tom Malinowski, Washington Director, Human Rights Watch
Mark Schneider, Senior Vice President, International Crisis Group
Jerry Fowler, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Foundations
Hans Hogrefe, Chief Policy Officer/Washington Director, Physicians for Human Rights
Aung Din, Executive Director, U.S. Campaign for Burma

Reacting to the contents of the UN expert panel’s report on Sri Lanka’s war-crimes, Professor Boyle, expert in International Law, and Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, told TamilNet, “there is absolutely no way the GOSL [Government of Sri L anka] is going to implement any of them [panel's recommendations], and the GOSL has already rejected all of them, according to published reports. Therefore, under these circumstances of longstanding and ongoing genocide against them [the Tamils], the only effective remedy the Tamil People now have is to create the State of Tamil Eelam and move to have the International Community recognize it. Given the Council’s notorious bias in favor of Sri Lanka and against the Tamils, as recognized by this Report, the Council is not a viable mechanism for the establishment of that GOSL Commission. The U.N.Secretary General must do it himself on behalf of the United Nations Organization itself. As for the rest of these Recommendations, there is absolutely no way the GOSL is going to implement any of them, and the GOSL has already rejected all of them, according to published reports.

Josh Vardey of AFP reported on 26/04/2011 that Ban insisted an international probe would require Sri Lanka's agreement or the mandate of an "appropriate" intergovernmental forum; the UN Human Rights Council or the UN Security Council. But New York-based Human Rights Watch warned Ban against placing "unnecessary obstacles" to establishing a proper justice mechanism that would hold the Sri Lankan government accountable.

For Fr Reid Shelton Fernando, a Sinhalese Catholic political analyst, explained “The report is not based on hearsay,” but on direct eyewitness accounts of what happened. For this reason, we cannot walk away from its charges.”

Human rights activist Nimalka Fernando, a Sinhalese said “We, as Platform for Freedom, welcome the UN report on war crimes in Sri Lanka because we are working to build a fair society,” “This is a pluralist nation and the government should consider the accusations as an affair of state.”

Ethnic Political parties:
In the same way Sri-Lanka Sinhala political parties are uniting against the panel report so have the political parties in India begun to unite against Mahinda Rajapaksa by insisting that a trial shall be conducted against him on the war crimes. Scepticism and Confidence in Moral rectitude:

Stephen Keim is president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. In an interview in www.ABC.net.au said “International diplomacy is not about the truth. The truth can be ignored most of the time. It is a little surprising that it was not waylaid by diplomatic pressure and prevented from being as forthright as it has been. One might well think that such strong findings by a group carrying the secretary-general’s authority might well change the selfish dynamics of denial by many in the international community and even of some within the Sri Lankan government. The question remains, however, whether the panel’s conclusions will be acted upon. Will the international community realise that the game is up and everyone knows what it has been trying to ignore.

There seems little interest in pressing for accountability for the crimes that led many people to seek asylum in Australia.

However, GORDON WEISS, FORMER UN SPOKESMAN IN SRI LANKA - Interview with ABC April 26, 2011 is confident that moral rectitude will prevail. “ So it was a Srebrenica moment in the sense that it was a crime that happened behind closed doors and it takes time for something like that come out, for the evidence to fall in place.

The second thing is that it's a Srebrenica moment for the rest of the world. When you are presented with such overwhelming facts, what are you going to do with it? You can't ignore them. This is not a problem that can be ignored. I mean, everything in the post- Second World War state of play between nations is about trying to get people to abide by the rule of law. And as the panel says, in their view, the sheer proportion of what happened in Sri Lanka represents a grave assault on the entire regime of international law.

If there was going to be a move for political reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and people really aren't seeing it. And certainly in the domestic war crimes process that the Government has set up, as the panel report panel points out, it shows very little sign of bearing any real fruit that's going to contribute to the long-term stability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka”.

The government is still nervous and is still afraid to allow UN to visit the TH because it fears evidence of war crimes could be unravelled under the ground. This what Sutirtho Patranobis, of hindustan times.com (Colombo 17 May 2011) “Two years later, some new enemies, few old ones So, the second question: what is the government hiding in the north? The Lankan war was known as a `war without witnesses’. Two years later, why is the government still jittery? Is the UN report and its sweeping allegations the reason? Why is it that several areas in Mullaitivu, where the last battle took place, are yet to be released for mine clearance? Attacks on individual journalists might have gone down in Sri Lanka, but two years after the war the right to report – so crucial to the freedom of expression -- continues to be severely and suspiciously restricted”.

Rajindar Sachar is an Indian lawyer, activist and a former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, New Delhi. He was also a member of United NationsPeople's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a human rights group, and has served as its counsel. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and UN Special Rappoertuer on Housing Member. He was a member of the ten member panel of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Sri-lanka which held its sittings from January 14th 2010 at Dublin, His comments on the GSL are “It is regretted that Sri Lanka Government is refusing to receive UN delegation. This open defiance of international protocol can not be accepted. Govt. of India should, in the cause of Humanitarian Law insist and also create world opinion to demand that Sri Lanka govt. must abide and carry out the recommendation given in U.N. Report. To keep silent is not an option to India which owes not only moral but legal responsibility to see Sri Lankan Tamils are not denied, their human Rights and democratic political and dignified participation in Sri Lanka in all walks of society and the administration”.

In conclusion we could notice that the UN Expert panel Report on Sri-lanka had shaken the world in a multitudinous manner. It gave a shocking reality of what really happened behind the iron curtain set up by the Sinhala communalist government to carry out a well planned ethnic cleansing with the connivance of some reactionary governments that had vested interests. The horrors of the crime showed those civilians were wantonly killed in the vendetta against the LTTE. It is unpardonable that some countries advocated and assisted in the war which could have been very well avoided by a negotiated solution to their political problems. In any event the perpetrators of war crimes deserve the punishment that is prescribed by law.

Courtesy: TamilCanadian
Published on: Jun 02, 2011 2:51:12 GMT

via tamilcanadian.com