UN Human Rights Council fails Tamils

In what is seen as another blow to its already damaged credibility, the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday, May 27, voted in favor of a resolution praising Sri Lanka, which western nations said would do nothing to help victims of the just-ended civil war or remedy widespread human rights violations.

An emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) was initiated by the council’s European Union members and supported by Argentina, Bosnia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Mauritius, South Korea, Switzerland, Ukraine and Uruguay.

However, by passing procedures, Sri Lanka pre-empted scrutiny from a UN HRC emergency session by tabling its own resolution, supported by 12 allies, that praises itself and calls for funding by the international community.

Entitled “Assistance to Sri Lanka in the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights,” Sri Lanka’s text was co-signed by Indonesia, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, Philippines, Cuba, Egypt, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

The Sri Lankan-proposed resolution described the conflict as a “domestic matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference”.

The resolution also supported Colombo’s insistence on allowing aid group access to 270,000 civilians detained in camps only “as may be appropriate”.

The resolution condemned attacks on civilians by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and their use of civilians as human shields in the final stages of the conflict, but said nothing about mass scale civilian killings committed by government forces or other human rights concerns including forced disappearances and the harassment of human rights activists and journalists.

The European Union and some other countries sought to make amendments to the Sri Lankan resolution.

However, Cuba tabled a ‘no action motion’ claiming that the proposed changes would alter the tenor and intent of the consensual resolution.

Subsequently, the Sri Lankan resolution was voted on and carried by a majority of 17 member states.

Western diplomats and human rights officials were shocked by the outcome at the end of an acrimonious two-day special session to examine the humanitarian and human rights situation in Sri Lanka after the blitzkrieg of the final military offensive that wiped out the Tamil Tigers.

Twelve countries, mostly European and including Britain, opposed the resolution after failing to win support for their version, which called for unfettered access to detained civilians and an internal investigation of alleged war crimes by both sides.

The Sri Lankan government hailed the outcome as an emphatic “diplomatic victory".

While the army and state-run newspapers continued to celebrate the victory on the battlefield, the government celebrated what it saw as a triumph on the diplomatic front.

"This is a strong endorsement of our president's efforts to rout terrorism, and the successful handling of the world's biggest hostage crisis," Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said.

"It is a clear message that the international community is behind Sri Lanka."

Samarasinghe thanked the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Group and the Organisation of The Islamic Conference (OIC) Group - two important cross-regional groups at the HRC - and in particular the support of the African Regional Group as well as some countries of the Latin American and Asian Groups for their support to Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lanka Ambassador in Geneva said that European nations had failed with their “punitive and mean-spirited agenda” against his country.

“This was a lesson that a handful of countries which depict themselves as the international community do not really constitute the majority,” Dayan Jayatilleka said.

“The vast mass of humanity are in support of Sri Lanka.”

Western diplomats said that the result called into question the entire purpose of the HRC – where the 47 members sit as equals with no right of veto for any country.

The US and other newly elected members of the council did not vote.

They are due to take their seats in mid-June.

The United States only recently agreed to join it in the belief that the council had been reformed.

Many rights organisations calling for an independent probe into atrocities the Sri Lankan military committed against Tamils in the past few months were dismayed at the results.

Tom Porteous, the London director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The Human Rights Council had a chance to prove itself by calling for a serious inquiry into violations of the laws of war and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, and they failed dismally.”

Juliette de Rivero, advocacy director in the Geneva office of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: “This is a step backwards for the human rights council. The resolution fails to hold the Sri Lankan government accountable.”

 “The vote is extremely disappointing and is a low point for the Human Rights Council. It abandons hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka to cynical political considerations,” Amnesty International said.

The European Union also expressed regret at the failure to launch a probe into alleged war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military during its offensive against Tamil Tigers.

"The EU regrets that it was not possible for the Human Rights Council to agree on an acceptable outcome of the special session addressing the serious human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis," a statement said.

"We regret that the proposals presented by the EU to amend the Sri Lankan draft resolution could be neither discussed nor considered by the council" after a "closure of debate" rule was supported by a majority of members.

"Such motions contradict the very spirit in which the Human Rights Council was conceived," the Czech presidency of the 27-nation bloc said.

The EU said that the outcome of the rights council meeting in Geneva "does not, in our view, address the complexity and the seriousness of the situation on the ground."

It said it would continue to work with the UN and its agencies to alleviate the suffering of civilians on the ground and to work for the achievement of durable stability."

UN Watch, a non-governmental organization based in Geneva described Sri Lanka’s preemptive move as an outrageous abuse of the system.

"Sri Lanka’s action today constitutes an outrageous abuse and show of contempt for the international human rights process," said Hillel Neuer, an international lawyer and the executive director of UN Watch.

"Sri Lanka does not deserve to be praised, but rather condemned for blocking humanitarian emergency relief to thousands, creating conditions leading to the spread of diseases, and for seizing doctors who exposed to the world the untold suffering of innocent civilians.”

Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, referring to the resolution passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Sri Lanka war, said: "This is one of the most unprincipled and shameless resolutions ever adopted by any body of the United Nations in the history of that now benighted Organization. It would be as if the U.N. Human Rights Council had congratulated the Nazi government for the "liberation" of the Jews in Poland after its illegal and genocidal invasion of that country in 1939,"

"This Resolution simultaneously gives the imprimatur of the U.N. Human Rights Council to the ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that the Government of Sri Lanka has already inflicted upon the Tamils in the past , as well as the Council's proverbial "green light" for the GOSL to perpetrate and escalate more of the same international crimes against the Tamils in the future," Boyle said.