Dr Gideon Boas, Associate Professor in the Monash University Law School and a former Senior Legal Officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, writes on Australia’s response to war crimes charges filed in a local court against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa:
“Despite our recent endeavours (driven by Kevin Rudd) to make a case for a seat on the UN Security Council, and our purported desire to assert our relevance in the international community, the fact remains that we are a parochial and unsophisticated country, both socially and politically.
“Fearful of allowing international law to play any real role in our own domestic legal and political life, lest we be contaminated by cosmopolitan politics and conceptions of international morality, our own Federal Court could hold as recently as 1999 that genocide (yes, genocide) was not a crime under Australian law.
“Of course, the prosecution sought by Jegan Waren against the Sri Lankan president was never going to get off the ground. I doubt that was genuinely the aim.
“It should, however, serve to highlight how inadequate the response internationally and in our own country has been to the clear evidence of massive human rights atrocities and war crimes by the Sri Lankan authorities against the Tamils during the bitter civil war in that country.”
See the full text of his op-ed on ABC's blog here.
