RANJITH SOYSA

The USA has issued yet another ‘order’ that Sri Lanka should implement all conditions covered in the UNHRC resolution 30/1 moved against Sri Lanka’s successful war effort to defeat Tamil Tiger Terrorists .
One has to assume that the USA , the world wealthiest and the most powerful nation naturally is interested in protecting the human rights and taking punitive action against all crimes committed against humanity. Is it a fair assumption based on accurate facts? Or, is it only facade behind which many deals are done and selective actions  promoted by the USA in the name of the human rights? Is it that the USA and her allies -vote banks- in the United Nations, the UNHRC and in other international bodies make their moves in a discriminatory pattern targeting some countries and extending a nelsonian eye to many other obvious perpetrators of human rights abuses?

In keeping with the rules of the Human Rights Game, unfortunately, the international organizations such as UNHRC can be proved to collude with the narrow objectives of the nations which call the tune. If not, Sri Lanka does not warrant to be mangled with the strictures of the UNHRC resolution including the unjust and possible punishment
of the members of theour armed forces.

The following extract from an article by Lenora Forestel and Brain Wilson in Global Research magazine summarizes  ‘The holier than thou’ , the USA  record in the area of human rights.

“Since the Geneva Convention, a number of other significant international treaties addressing war and human rights have been drafted, but the United States has rejected almost all of them. Among the treaties that the United States has refused to sign are the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (1966); the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (1966), and the American Convention on Human Rights (1965).

The United States has been particularly reluctant to sign treaties addressing the laws of war”. It has refused to sign The Declaration on the Prohibition of the Use of Thermo-Nuclear Weapons (1961); The Resolution on the Non-Use of Force in International Relations and Permanent Ban on the Use of Nuclear Weapons (1972); The Resolution on the Definition of Aggression (1974); Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention (1977); and the Declaration on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(1989).1

Equally disturbing was the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Rights of the Child, introduced into the United Nations General assembly  on November 20, 1989 and subsequently ratified by 191 countries. The first use of atomic weapons against human beings occurred

on August 6-9 1945, when the United States incinerated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, killing an estimated 110,000 Japanese citizens and injuring another 130,000. By 1950 another 230,000 died from injuries and radiation. Earlier in 1945 two fire bombing raids on Tokyo killed 140,000 citizens and injured a million more. ” Since the world war 11 the USA had bombed nearly 23 nations.(now it is well over 27 countries)

The invasion of Iraq, Afganiztan, armed interference in Libya, Syria and well known massacres in Azzizabad and Kandahar in Afganiztan and the killings in Aby Gharib are few of the recent incidents in which the USA should investigate and offer satisfactory answers , if the UNHRC is interested.

We can never expect the UNHRC to have the  guts or any need to raise queries and pass repeated resolutions on the acts commissioned by the USA as the country  is beyond its reach!

So, we have to conclude that there are definitely double standards to measure the importance of Human Rights.

You can fool all the people all the time, if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough”

RANJITH SOYSA