Sri Lanka thumbs nose at UN vote
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The rap on the knuckles that the Sri Lankan government has been dealt by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the second year in a row has raised hackles in Sri Lanka.
A US-sponsored resolution condemning Sri Lanka's human rights record was passed on Thursday with 25 countries voting in favor, 13 against and eight abstaining. However, as with last year's resolution, the new poll is unlikely to push President Mahinda
Rajapaksa to initiate steps towards reconciliation with the island's alienated Tamil population.
The UNHRC resolution calls on the Sri Lankan government "to conduct an independent and credible investigation into allegations of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law" allegedly committed by government forces against Tamil civilians during the final stages of the civil war in 2009.
The 26-year-long conflict in Sri Lanka ended in May 2009 with government forces defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The final stages of the war were particularly brutal as both sides unleashed horrific levels of violence on civilians.
However, since the LTTE leadership was eliminated, it is the government's conduct that is the focus of international scrutiny.
Mounting evidence suggests that the Sri Lankan armed forces tortured, even executed in cold-blood Tamil civilians and surrendering fighters of the LTTE in the last weeks of the war, prompting allegations that the Rajapaksa regime may have committed war crimes.
The Sri Lankan government has routinely rejected such allegations. Under international pressure it set up a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in 2011 but has done little to implement any of its recommendations. Neither has it pursued a political solution to the ethno-political conflict, a step that Tamils consider essential for reconciliation.
Instead, Rajapaksa has focused on strengthening his grip on power.
Members of the Tamil diaspora and human rights activists see the UNHRC and other international bodies as the vehicle to bring to justice alleged "war criminals" in the Rajapaksa government. They campaigned vigorously for a strong resolution at the UNHRC and are disappointed by its watered down content, especially its failure to set up an independent and international investigation into the conflict.
However, many - and these include Rajapaksa's critics - reject the idea that UNHRC pressure will initiate change for the better in Sri Lanka. "The resolution is seen as an infringement on Sri Lanka's sovereignty. It will only stir nationalist sentiments and shore up support for the president," a Sri Lankan civil society activist observed.
As Sumanasiri Liyanage, professor of political economy at the Peradeniya University in Kandy pointed out, the UNHRC resolution has only served "to strengthen the otherwise weakening Rajapaksa regime". "On this issue even critics like me are with the government," he told Asia Times Online, clarifying that his opposition to the resolution stems from the fact that it was sponsored by the US.
Critics of the UNHRC resolution argue that it is not so much a move based on moral principles of ensuring justice and accountability in post-war Sri Lanka as it is an example of double standards that the West adopts when it comes to dealing with human rights violations by developing countries.
"Compare what Sri Lanka has done in four years with what the US hasn't done in ten in Iraq," Malinda Seneviratne, editor-in-chief of the Sri Lankan English daily, The Nation, said in an emailed response to questions from Asia Times Online. Sri Lanka, he pointed out, "has rehabilitated and reintegrated into society over 95% of captured or surrendered LTTE cadres. Check the numbers in Guantanamo Bay [that have been reintegrated] and you will get the picture," he said, drawing attention to the abysmal US record on reconciliation in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. Yet it is Sri Lanka, not the US, that gets hauled by the UNHRC. Seneviratne had defended the Sri Lankan government at the UNHRC meeting last year.
As in 2012, this year too, the resolution has prompted the Sri Lankan government to strike a defiant posture. In his response to the passage of the resolution, Rajapaksa said that it would "not subdue, defeat or intimidate" his government "in any way''.
"It will take far more than petty skullduggery and pipsqueak comment and analysis to get THIS President of this country, to back down," an editorial in the state-owned Daily News remarked following the UNHRC vote, echoing muscular rhetoric from Rajapaksa.
At the best of times, Sinhalese nationalists are opposed to a political solution that involves devolution of power to the Tamils. Pressure from outside in the form of hectoring resolutions provides them with one more excuse to not do so.
"Unless there is an internal force supported by Tamils and Muslims there will not be a solution for the Tamil question," observes Liyanage.
India voted in favor of the resolution for the second year in a row. It was the only Asian country to do so; even Japan, an ally of the West, chose to abstain.
"India's vote in favor of the UNHRC resolution came under domestic pressure," said P Sahadevan, professor of South Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
The run-up to the vote in Geneva was marked by massive protests in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Tamils in India have long empathized with the suffering of their co-ethnics in Sri Lanka and this sentiment has surged over the last couple of years in the wake of evidence captured on camera of execution of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan army. Photographs of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's 12-year-old son, made public by a British television channel recently, suggest he was executed. This fueled public fury. The Dravida Munetra Kazhagam, a constituent of India's ruling coalition, the United Progressive Alliance, withdrew its support for the government.
Although India's vote supporting the resolution did ruffle feathers in Colombo, the government's response was "very subdued", even "mature", Dr John Gooneratne, a retired Sri Lankan diplomat, told Asia Times Online. The enormous role that India plays in the island's foreign investment, trade, tourism as well as reconstruction in the war-ravaged North is "seen as more important than the vagaries of a vote in the UNHRC''.
What is more, the Sri Lankan government would have understood that Delhi's vote was an outcome of domestic compulsions and that the Indian government's position was a response to "pressurized circumstances'', Gooneratne added.
That Indian parliamentarians "did not choose to pass a resolution against Sri Lanka would have also been factored in'', noted Seneviratne.
Yet, the Indian vote censuring Sri Lanka in the UNHRC is unlikely to go completely ignored in Colombo. "The government will most certainly appreciate Pakistan's friendship and also China's support [both countries voted against the resolution]. Unofficially, it is likely that it will move closer to these two countries, not to 'teach India a lesson' but for pragmatic reasons: basically, 'India cannot be counted on'."
According to Liyanage, Sri Lanka could "divert its imports buying goods that can be substituted for Indian goods from other countries''.
Meanwhile the Sri Lankan government and its critics are gearing up for the next bout. Sri Lanka is due to host the Commonwealth Summit in November. A successful meeting would be a feather in Rajapaksa's cap.
Tamil activists, however, are determined to deny Rajapaksa such a moment of glory. They have stepped up the campaign to get the summit moved from Sri Lanka. In India, Tamil parties are calling on the government to boycott the event.
"If there are moves to change the venue, Sri Lanka will do what it did in Geneva: appeal to good sense and fair play," Seneviratne said. "Did that help in Geneva? It didn't. Did Sri Lanka weep copious tears? It did not."
Colombo has chosen to thumb its nose at the international community. How long can it continue to do so?
Rajapaksa will have to remain in power to be able to continue fending off mounting international pressure.
"If he isn't in power he will be vulnerable to international pressure, and this will involve investigations against his conduct of the war," observed Sahadevan, adding that the military supports him as they were together in waging the war. "Neither can afford regime change.''
Rajapaksa's preoccupation with consolidating his grip over power, his growing authoritarianism must be seen in this context.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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