Sri Lanka must demand answers from UNHRC

Point to note is that a missing or untraceable person is not necessarily dead because they can be in hiding, they can be living in a foreign nation under a fictitious name, they may have changed their looks with cosmetic surgery – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara 

By Shenali D. Waduge

A UN member state is being accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and even ‘genocide’. Sri Lanka has been the victim of an annual witch hunt sponsored by blood-money for 12 years. All of these allegations have credibility if and only if they can prove Sri Lanka intentionally killed 40,000 and the deaths are disproportionate to the military advantage legally accepted in a non-international armed conflict. 

Sri Lanka has given Geneva 12 years to come out with the basic requirement of 40,000 dead names. They have failed. Sri Lanka must now refuse to respond to any of the non-conflict related questions being asked for these are traps riding on the bogey of ‘accountability and truth’. If it is accountability Sri Lanka must demand where was the UN and its apparatus for all the victims of LTTE. If it’s truth, Sri Lanka must take UNHRC back to the conflict and demand answers for the initial allegation of 40,000 or more dead. Sri Lanka must refuse to answer anything until UNHRC can produce credible evidence beyond a shred of doubt to prove 40,000 or more were intentionally killed by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces disproportionate to international laws. It is in taking this principled stand that Sri Lanka can turn the tables on the UNHRC.

This is the first time that the UNHRC and the former UNSG chose to take up a conflict that had ended.

Sri Lanka’s conflict was three decades old. Why were there no resolutions seeking truth and accountability when LTTE was committing pre-meditated murder on Sinhalese, Muslims, Burghers, Tamils and foreigners? 

Why did UN, UNSG and UNHRC wake up only after Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces ended LTTE ground force on 19 May 2009? 

Why are death estimates ranging from 7,000 to 9,000 by US State Dept. (6,710 casualties), UN Country Team (7,714 casualties), ICRC reports, and dispatches of US and UK military attachés as well as census statistics by Sri Lanka not accepted?

The numbers game and the challenge to accusers

• Present the evidence that Sri Lanka Armed Forces ‘intentionally’ targeted civilians
• Present evidence that Sri Lanka Armed Forces attacked without military necessity to intentionally kill civilians
• Present evidence of disproportionate killing of Tamil civilians (LTTE Armed Civilian Force does not belong to this category)
• Darusman Panel must present evidence that the Sri Lanka Army killed civilians through widespread shelling (as alleged in its report which is contradicted by ICRC, UN Country Team reports)
• Darusman Panel must respond to why it inserted ‘there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths’
• Bishop Rayappu Joseph, Francis Harrison and Yasmin Sooka claim deaths from 147,000 to 200,000
• Sooka now on a campaign of her own against Sri Lanka cannot produce names of 40,000 supposed to be dead! She keeps presenting dead LTTE names. 

UNHRC cannot be allowed to be recommending changes and interfering into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation ‘without’ proving its allegations. 

A person is born. His/her birth is registered. A national identity is issued. Grama sevaka registry has records and election registry also has records. A marriage certificate is issued at marriage. A death certificate is issued at death. Anyone missing, a police entry is lodged. All these methods have a means of verification via passport office/immigration/emigration, etc.

Therefore, bring on the evidence that these 40,000 were even born, produce the police complaints by families to claim them missing, produce complaint to the Presidential Commission on Missing Persons. 

Point to note is that a missing or untraceable person is not necessarily dead because they can be in hiding, they can be living in a foreign nation under a fictitious name, they may have changed their looks with cosmetic surgery. All these possibilities can be verified if foreign governments share the refugee/asylum seeker details with the Sri Lankan intelligence services. There were reports that NGOs played a key role in sending some of these hardcore LTTE members overseas claiming to be going for training. Did they return to Sri Lanka?

All the allegations of murder being hurled against Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces makes any to think that the LTTE was keeping 300,000 Tamil civilians and handing them roses and sweets while Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces were hunting them down. How ridiculous can even the UNHRC be. They may like to count the many times the UNSG and diplomats appealed to LTTE not to shoot fleeing civilians, not to keep Tamil civilians as hostages and the manner that freed Tamil civilians cried how LTTE stole provisions sent by GoSL and ICRC to feed their combatants and the families of combatants. So clearly, LTTE gave preference to its combatants and their families and to the Tamil civilians who sided with them. Can the UNHRC come up with some numbers for these divisions?

Sri Lanka must tell UNHRC, to hold its horses and demand that the script returns to 2009, the end of a three-decade conflict and ask UNHRC to come up with the evidence to prove its allegations. 

All of the sugar-coated resolutions by UNHRC bloc nations have been aligned to fulfilling their geopolitical agendas via Sri Lanka using the May 2009 concluded conflict as ruse.

Sri Lanka should not fall for any more traps.

Sri Lanka must now demand UNHRC to come clean. No more non-conflict related items. The whole basis of this international stigma campaign against Sri Lanka taking place all over the world claiming Sri Lanka committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and even ‘genocide’ must be proved with facts, not fairy tales. UNHRC must remove the 20-year cap on their supposed ‘witnesses’ to see if they were even born! 

No more resolutions

No more responses by Sri Lanka

Until UNHRC can prove Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces intentionally killed civilians disproportionate to the military advantage accepted in international law in a non-international armed conflict.

Prove we killed 40,000 or more or just shut up and close the case against Sri Lanka!