By Kalinga Seneviratne* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

SINGAPORE (IDN) – UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) head Navi Pillay’s current campaign against Sri Lanka over alleged human rights violations – along with similar campaigns against Libya and Syria earlier – could jeopardize the cause of human rights around the world, analysts say.

Pillay released a report in February calling for an international investigation into alleged war crimes when the Sri Lankan armed forces crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a final battle in May 2009.

Navi Pillay | Courtesy: Wikimedia

Sri Lanka’s Permanent Envoy in Geneva conveying the Sri Lankan Government’s response to Pillay’s report stated that the UN High Commissioner’s recommendations, “reflect the preconceived, politicised and prejudicial agenda which she has relentlessly pursued with regard to Sri Lanka”, and in a 18-page document pinpointed her double standards accusing her of giving “scant or no regard to the domestic processes ongoing in Sri Lanka”.

The Sri Lanka government has also criticized the report for arriving at conclusions in a “selective and arbitrary manner” and ignoring requests from the Sri Lankan government to provide factual evidence to substantiate allegations and to refrain from making general comments.

Sri Lanka’s criticism of Pillay is not new. But, commentaries in both mainstream and online media in Sri Lanka indicate a hardening of attitudes in the island state against Pillay’s perceived bias and alleged abuse of power as head of UNHRC. She is said to have got away with it in the international media because the western media apparently tended to believe – and continue to – most of the propaganda put out by the LTTE supporters in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora over the past 30 years.

At the twenty-fifth session of the UNHRC from March 3 to 28 in Geneva, Pillay’s report is due to be officially tabled, and she has refused to entertain a request from the Sri Lankan government that its response to the report be attached as an appendix. The United States has indicated – supported by EU and India – that they may table a resolution at the meeting to establish an independent international investigation into alleged war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka, which the government is sure to reject.

“How many of the bullying countries accusing Sri Lanka of crimes against humanity and war crimes have clean hands or a flawless record?” asks Senaka Weeraratna, a Sri Lankan lawyer and international affairs analyst.

“What we see today in western dominated international organisations such as the United Nations related bodies such as the UNHRC, ICC and the like are proceedings conducted on an Inquisitorial footing i.e. witch hunts aimed at devastating the target country or individual usually of non–European descent thereby perverting the course of justice. No quarter is given to the other party until it submits to the political will of the bullying nations,” argues Weeraratna.

“It is a shameless display of brute power making a mockery of institutional rules and procedures. The targeted country is assumed to be guilty right from the start ruling out any mitigating circumstances. It is virtually a re-enactment of the Inquisition under the auspices of the United Nations rather than the Catholic Church as in the days gone by.”

It is not only Sri Lankans that are complaining about the UNHRC and Pillay’s tactics. Anti-war activists in the West and supporters of the former Libyan regime and that of Syria have also pointed out how these UN agencies, and particularly UNHRC under Pillay, are practicing double standards to promote Western imperial designs.

Veteran Canadian antiwar activist Ken Stone writing for the website ‘Syria 360′ argued in an article written last year that Pillay has abused her power to facilitate western military interference in Libya and Syria to change regimes. He argues that the western media, and CNN in particular, have used interviews with Pillay to promote military intervention in Libya and Syria, where she relates the actions of these regimes to defend their country from rebel forces, to human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

In the name of humanitarian intervention

“Two very useful precedents for illegal, but so-called ‘humanitarian’, intervention by NATO were set by the United Nations in regards to Libya,” argues Stone. “The first was that the doctrine of the responsibility to protect (R2P) was successfully invoked, for the very first time, as a legal ground for over-riding the fundamental principle of national sovereignty as the basis of international law.”

R2P holds that, if a government cannot protect the human rights of its own citizens, the international community may step in to do so. In the case of Libya, R2P was used to justify United Nations Resolution 1973, the motion that authorized NATO to create a no-fly zone over Libya.

“Resolution 1973 was perverted by NATO within hours into a full-blown military intervention for regime change in Libya that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Libyans, pogrom against black persons resident in Libya, the assassinations of Muammar Gaddafi and members of his family, massive infrastructure damage, the de facto partitioning of the country, and a failed state machine,” notes Stone.

He argues that the first precedent (above) could not have been realized without the fancy legal footwork executed in advance by the nimble Pillay in demonizing Mouammar Gaddafi and his son, Saif, at the UN. “The second precedent, then, was the initiative taken by the UN Human Rights Council, chaired by Pillay, in calling for an international inquiry into violence against civilians in Libya,” he says.

Stone goes on to detail how Pillay has been playing a similar role in appearing in the international media accusing the Syrian government of crimes against humanity and calling upon the ICC to mount a war crimes investigation against President Assad, while ignoring the role played by foreign-funded mercenaries in the civil war.  “Humanitarian intervention is a powerful tool in the West, where even people on the ‘left’, who should know better, fall for it,” notes Stone.

Libya is the real tragedy of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ that has turned into an ‘Arab Winter’. This brings into question the real motives of those International NGOs who promote human rights with an evangelical zeal.

Libya under Gaddafi may have been an authoritarian state in terms of freedom of speech (not any worse than U.S. allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and UAE), but, was a success story in human development. In Gaddafi’s Libya, the right to free education for everyone from elementary school right up to university and post-graduate studies at home or abroad were implemented with government subsidies; there was free health care with 1:673 doctor-patient ratio; free electricity for all citizen; interest-free housing loans; and free land for farmers.

Libya had no external debts and its reserves amounted to $150 billion. Today we have a Libya that is ruled by warlords and terrorists and human rights campaigners are silent about the human rights abuses taking place today in Libya and no one is asking the question what is happening to Libya’s huge financial reserves and its oil? Who is benefiting from it?

What happened in Libya amounts to a war crime for which both NATO and International Crisis Group (ICG) that came up with the R2P formula should be held accountable, analysts say. But, UNHRC is muted about it. Instead, a report will be tabled at the current session titled “Technical assistance for Libya in the field of human rights”.

The report does not discuss accountability issues with regards to human rights in the implementation of the R2P formula nor does it address in any serious manner the problem of the anarchy created as a result of regime change. It assumes that there is a regime in charge, when there is not.

A question often asked by Sri Lankans is why Pillay is not calling upon President George W Bush, Tony Blair, David Cameroon and ICG to account for the war crimes USA, UK and NATO forces have indulged in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya?

During her visit to Sri Lanka last year, at a press conference, she said that UNHRC has indeed questioned these countries on certain human rights issues and they have responded. But, what the Sri Lankan journalist didn’t press her on is why she cannot do the same with Sri Lanka, rather than indulge in a public spat and witchhunt?

Opening up old wounds

Most people in Sri Lanka believe that what she is trying to do is to open up old wounds and it is completely counter productive to promoting reconciliation between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Nor is it helping to improve human rights in Sri Lanka, where a government that is threatened by what they see as an international conspiracy to change regime, has cracked down heavily on internal dissent and freedom of expression.

Weeraratna argues that Pillay’s methods are harming human rights and increasing the credibility gap of UN agencies in the eyes of the international community (which is not just the U.S., EU and its allies). Instead he argues that UNHRC should adopt the Japanese model of solving a post-war crisis.

“The Japanese approach advocated by the Buddhist Prince Shotuku to use the method of consensus and dialogue, and not allow the accused party to lose face is a far more enlightened approach to resolution of complex human rights issues than the ‘ burning at the stake’ inquisitorial approach of the West” notes Weeraratna.

“It is the employment of double standards and devious methods to achieve ulterior political ends of powerful Western actors that have resulted in the moral collapse of the UN and related agencies.”

http://www.indepthnews.info/index.php/global-issues/2076-unhrc-part-i-navi-pillay-faulted-for-abuse-of-power

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*Kalinga Seneviratne is IDN Special Correspondent for Asia-Pacific. He teaches international communications at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

[IDN-InDepthNews – March 3, 2014]

The writer’s previous IDN articles:
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