UN Chief’ comments unfair to all Sri Lankans

(Courtesy of The Island)

Dr D. Chandraratna

UNSG Ban Ki-moon was unfair to all Sri Lankans who are trying managing their affairs in a racially jumbled space by his comments implying that the Sri Lankan army is guilty of an act that bears some similarity to the massacre of Srebrenica in July 1995. This crime ‘which needs no Picasso for its frisson’ committed by the Mladic’s army was an exercise in ‘ethnic cleansing’ and Mr Moon refused to admit that it was committed under the noses of the Blue Helmets of the UN and sometimes ‘with their complicity’. (Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes against Humanity, Penguin, 1999). This was the negligence on the part of the NATO Commanders who were charged by UN Security Council Resolution 819 to resort to aerial bombardment to save this safe haven. The men of Srebrenica were caught in a human rights trap who were hostage to the cowardice of leading countries in the human rights propaganda brigade. The SG should not attribute the grave misdemeanors of the UN to others. Even the ineptness of the UN was obvious even in Sri Lanka when in early 2007 the UN admitted that its mission in Colombo kept New York in the dark regarding the LTTE detaining UN workers for helping Tamils to leave the LTTE-held area which may have saved unnecessary casualties in a war. We shoals remember it was Gordon Weiss the UN Chief of Colombo operations at the time who coined the parallels with Srebrenica in his book, the ‘Cage’.

For Mr Samarasinghe to suggest that Mr Moon intended no such thing is the usual cognitive dissonance affliction suffered by most of the Sri Lankan Parliamentarians that come as no surprise to any. We have read that Mr Moon’s words and hope the editor will allow me to quote him the text which read, “In1994, in Rwanda, there was a massacre. More than one million people were massacred. United Nations felt responsible for that.Of course, it was their war and massacres. But the United Nations was not able to act on it. We said repeatedly, ‘Never again, never again’. It happened just one year after in Srebrenica. Many people were massacred when they were not fully protected by the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. So we repeated again, ‘Never again’. How many times should we repeat never, never again? We did again in Sri Lanka. We have to do much more not to repeat such things in Sri Lanka, Yemen and elsewhere.”

Mr. Moon undoubtedly used is as the ultimate in justificatory conversation, giving credence to past, present and future acts. As the Chief diplomat of the UN it is extremely importantthat his diplomacy is not to stoke but to put out the embers of war. Mr. Moon also failed us last time whenhe, as Neville Ladduwahetty noted in his valuable articles to this paper, that by appointing the Darusman Panel of inquiry which had as a member Ms. Sooka who had openly campaigned for the LTTE, the UNSG is failed to abide by the provisions in the UN Charter as to the formalities that the UN Secretariat should follow, particularly the Article 100 of the UN Charter, which states that, ‘the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action, which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.By duplicitously making public the Darusman (POE) document, which was only a bibliographical summary of other people’s versions, which did not have the sanction of the General Assembly, he did untold damage to Sri Lanka and miniaturized the neutrality of the UN. There is no argument that his action gave ammunition to the LTTE Diaspora propaganda to fix the numbers of casualties at 40,000 which was given the official imprimatur by the British parliamentarians like Keith Vaz who resigned recently for unparliamentarily conduct. Contributors to the debate have noted with dismay the unprofessionalism and misconduct to which the UN and its agencies are manipulated; a fact that should be a matter of deep concern for all Member States.

In this limited space I can only lament the bleak future of our country which was given a ray of sunshine by the gallantry of the Armed forces that we ourselves disparage when in around 2006, according to the recently published memoirs by Major Kamal Gunaratna ‘when people were not bothered even if the LTTE had killed 50 soldiers. But the entire nation mourned if a cricketer was run out for a few runs’ the SLA managed to free the entire nation so that all civilized people can live in peace. Major Gunaratna goes on to warn that, ‘We talk about reconciliation but listen only to those who ask for land powers, devolution of powers, police and judicial powers and demand the removal of the Director of the Kilinochchi Hospital as he is a Sinhalese and to appoint a Tamil official. Just because we sang the National Anthem in Tamil, reconciliation doesn’t take place’. The political leadership needs to examine the Jaffna university ethnic brawl, the Kuala Lumpur assaults, not from political party affiliations but as eye-openers and look at from a wider angle. As Rajiva Wijesighe opined, ‘It is a great pity that we do not have someone like Mr. Kadirgamar, who was intelligent and outspoken, and made it clear that he would not tolerate the UN violating the sovereignty of its member states. We continue to live in hope.

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