In the wake of the execution-style killings last month of 17 aid workers by Sri Lankan government forces, three United Nations Special Rapporteurs (Special Representative of the Secretary-General) jointly sought an immediate and independent investigation into the atrocity. They also demanded the perpetrators be brought to justice.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) supervising the 2002 truce blamed the Sri Lankan military for the massacre of the 16 Tamils and 1 Muslim aid workers of Action Contre Le Faim (Action Against Hunger).
“The deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers is a serious violation of the basic principles of international human rights and humanitarian law and the Declaration of Human Rights Defenders,” a UN statement said afterwards.
But the UN statement was a significant departure from the organisation’s usual silence on the extrajudicial killings of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
The UN has pointedly ignored, for example, the disappearance in January of seven aid workers of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation - for which Army-backed paramilitaries are blamed.
Similarly, when Mr. Joseph Pararajasingham, a senior Tamil parliamentarian and a founder-member of the North East Secretariat For Human Rights (NESOHR), was gunned down, also by suspected Army-backed paramilitaries, in Church during 2005 Christmas Mass the UN was silent.
Last month’s massacre of the seventeen aid workers was different for two reasons. Firstly the victims worked for an international – i.e. a French – aid group, not a Tamil one. Secondly, the UN’s own aid agencies are working in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. A dangerous precedent has been set by the massacre, which if unchallenged, threatens the protection of the UN’s own workers globally.
Notably, the three Rapporteurs who issued the statement were those concerned with ‘Human Rights Defenders’, Hina Jilani, ‘the Right to Food’, Jean Ziegler, and ‘Extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions’, Philip Alston.
The first two represent divisions of the UN which are involved, like ACF, in Food and Human Rights work: their concern is as much for the precedents set for their own work globally as much as for the Tamil people.
Dr Alston, on the other hand, has a mandate that is specifically focussed on extrajudicial executions. Nevertheless, this is the very first time that he has issued a strong statement on the execution of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military.
Dr Alston issued another statement this month, again recommending an international human rights monitoring body.
“The situation in Sri Lanka has deteriorated significantly since I visited Sri Lanka (at the end of 2005). Recent events have confirmed the dynamics of human rights abuse identified in my report and demonstrate the urgent need for an international human rights monitoring mission,” he said.
In Sri Lanka, he argued, “civilians are not simply caught in the crossfire of the conflict: Rather, civilians are intentionally targeted for strategic reasons.”
Dr Alston’s new observations are remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, arbitrary executions by Sri Lankan government forces of Tamil civilians were not identified as a serious problem in his April 2006 report on Sri Lanka. In fact, it was a glaring, and seemingly quite deliberate omission.
So while it is true to say that things have become worse since his last trip, it is not true for him to say that recent events confirm his report.
On the contrary, if his 2006 had been more accurate to start with, and if he had properly addressed the extra-judicial executions by the Sri Lankan armed forces as an area of concern, dynamics to prevent the massacre of the Action Conte Le Faim aid workers may even have been set in potion.
Particularly as, to use Dr. Alston’s own words, the massacre of the aid workers are a quintessential example of where “civilians are intentionally targeted for strategic reasons.”
If Dr. Alston had followed his own reasoning with concrete action within his considerable capacity, the Sri Lanka government would have understood, back in January 2006, when its military ‘disappeared’ TRO workers that the killing of aid workers is not an acceptable strategy. Notably, Amnesty International called in March for the protection of TRO workers.
But if did not address extra-judicial executions of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military, what did Dr. Alston’s report look at? Under the heading dynamics and causes of post cease fire killings, he has four headings (excluding two introductory general sections) as follows: ‘Tamil political parties and paramilitaries, the Karuna split, the use of civilian proxies by the LTTE, killings to control the Tamil population.’
In the first of these he argues that it is simplistic to consider the non-LTTE groups as paramilitaries, since they may be doing legitimate political work. Consequently he is concerned that the LTTE is wrongfully targeting them, thereby preventing Tamils from expressing a diverse set of opinions.
Under the second heading a similar logic is applied but specifically to the Karuna group. Sr. Alston argues that the group represents a political reality that now needs to be taken into account because, he says, the government may be unable to disarm the Karuna group, regardless of the government’s obligations to do so under the terms of the ceasefire.
On the other hand, as the third heading suggests, Dr Alston believes the LTTE also has proxies, but these proxies can be controlled by the LTTE, unlike the government, which, according to him, cannot control its paramilitary proxies.
But the main focus of Mr. Alston’s work comes under the final section: ‘killings to control the Tamil population.’ Essentially, Dr. Alston says, it is the LTTE and not the government which is killing most Tamil civilians, because it sees them as ‘traitors’.
Astonishingly, Dr Alston doesn’t include under ‘killings to control the Tamil population’ any of the murders by the Sri Lankan military of pro-Tamil intelligentsia including politicians, journalists, civil society activists, etc. The executions of Tamilnet editor Dharmeratnam Sivaram and many other prominent Tamil journalists, Tamil parliamentarians such as Pararajasingham and a number of pro-Eelam civil society activists are ignored in the analysis.
Neither does Dr. Alston include in this category, the targeted killings of family members of LTTE fighters.
Neither does he consider the rape and murder of Tharsini (December 2005), the torture and massacre of entire families, including young children, killings of five students executed on a beach in Trincomalee, and the numerous disappearances painstakingly documented by the NESOHR and the Human Rights Commission.
Indeed, Dr Alston completely ignores those murders whose sole purpose is to demoralise and terrorise the Tamil population.
Meanwhile, Dr Alston’s seven-day itinerary shows he gathered evidence in Amparai, Batticaloa, Colombo and Kilinocchi.
But unsurprisingly, for some one who was there at the invitation of the Sri Lankan government, Dr. Alston did not bother to visit Army-controlled Jaffna peninsula, where the vast majority of extra judicial executions of Tamil civilians had taken place.
It is arguable that if Dr Alston had done his job in January and raised the scrutiny and pressure on Sri Lanka’s government, many of the recent events such as the disappearances and executions of hundreds of people this year as well as the massacre of the aid workers may have been precluded.
But by his strategic omissions, Dr. Alston in fact signalled tacit international approval for the armed forces to murder Tamil civilians whom they saw as viable targets: aid workers who help Tamil refugees, journalists who report on rights violations, Parliamentarian who argue for the Tamil cause and so on.
The core of Dr. Alston’s political values and professional focus is revealed in his latest statement.
“As it stands,” he says, “no outside observer could wish rule by the LTTE on the entire Tamil community, much less on the Sinhalese and the Muslims of the North and East.”
As far as he is concerned, it is not what the Tamil people would wish for that matters. Outside observers, such as he, the UN Special Rappateur who visits the island at the government’s invitation every couple of years for a few days; and who cannot be bothered to visit key Tamil areas where the extrajudicial killings he is meant to report on are taking place, will decide what the Tamils should or shouldn’t want.
Dr Alston’s April report makes clear his core view: the Tamil people should accept rule by the majority Sinhala government and wait patiently for two things: firstly that competent authorities such as himself will eventually suggest to Colombo it should desist from extra-judicial killings; and secondly, that the Tamils should then wait for the Sri Lankan government to reform itself.
But we’ll need to wait another two years before he comes along to take a look - on our behalf, naturally.
