LankaWeb Weekly Editorial

August 20th 2014

Although there is every likelihood that it will cause an international furore, the choice of the President to deny entry to the team of UN investigators seems justifiable on the simplest rationale that it has been instigated by biased former UN representatives such as Navi Pillai and others who have very openly as well as blatantly taken upon themselves to be adjudicators over their perceptions of human rights violations during the decades long internal armed terrorist insurrection some mistakenly label a War.Well for their information what the Government of Sri Lanka did as many rational analysts far removed from bias interpret was a very justified defence of Sovereignity and Territorial Integrity by a nation against subversives aided and abetted by a miniscule minority whose violations of human rights during their terror campaign was far reaching and significant.While the Government and the armed forces in reality protected the rights of all citizens during the long terrorist campaign, the supporters of the terrorists both within and without Sri Lanka have taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury and executioner over the issue plying the world with falsified evidence against the Government and taking great pains to do this with far reaching responses from some world powers who beyond hearsay and digitally enhanced fictitious videos as well as the sob stories of the supporters of the vanquished, for various reasons and perhaps conducive to their own agendas have chosen to attempt incarceration of the GOSL when in reality they should isolate the criminals the Tamil Tiger terrorists were and any who continue to support them while acollading the triumph of the SL Armed Forces.

It was was a triumph over terrorism which has benefitted not only Sri Lanka but the entire world considering how well organized albeit dangerous the terrorists were and on this grounds alone the decision of the President seems more than justifiable where there was much more than meets the common eye when it came to the mendacities of the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lanka was spared the ignominy of being subjugated by them through the prompt and assertive responses which eventually saw their demise although a neavy toll was taken in the process through loss of both military and civilian life as well as horrendous harm and injury and the destruction of public and private property.
 
As posted in the international as well as local media the news that Sri Lanka will not grant visas to UN investigators probing war crimes allegedly committed during the island’s decades-long separatist conflict, as decreed by President Mahinda Rajapakse it therefore seems not only justifiable but also appropriate given the aforementioned reasons.
 
Given the bias within the UN towards Sri Lanka ( there has been similar biases in other international situations iniated by the likes of Navi Pillai and co.) it comes as no surprise that Sri Lanka has refused to accept the direction of the UN Human Rights Council, which voted in March to investigate allegations that the military killed 40,000 civilians in the final months of the separatist war in 2009.

But it is the first time that Rajapakse has said UN investigators will not be allowed into the country although not with the objective of ” effectively barring them from face-to-face access to Sri Lankans wanting to testify” as  insinuated by those who oppose government policy but on the principle of standing their ground that the facts, figures as well as the accusations are distorted and not justifiable as it was not a miniscule minority involved here but an entire nation of 20 million people who need to have their grievances addressed for what they suffered as a result of the Tamil Tiger insurrection.
 
 Quoting again from the International Press as well as the local media The President has said that “We will not allow them into the country,”, although under international pressure to cooperate with the UN-mandated investigation although he has asserted that his government was cooperating with all other UN agencies.”We are saying that we do not accept it (the probe). We are against it,” he told Colombo-based foreign correspondents at his official residence.”But when it comes to other UN agencies, we are always ready to fully cooperate and fully engage with them.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders have urged Colombo to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council after ending a prolonged separatist war that pitted ethnic minority Tamil rebels against the largely Sinhalese Army.
 
Interestingly and perhaps aware that hers might be a wasted effort eventually the outgoing UN rights chief Navi Pillay earlier this month has suggested that” her staff investigating allegations of mass killings may not have to travel to Sri Lanka at all.’ which seems another ploy towards eliciting the accurate related facts which would contradict UN accusatioins, particularly hers. And when she says there was a ”  ‘wealth of information’ outside the country,”  This as dubious as it sounds points to the wealth of exaggerated and distorted fabrications presented by Tamil Tiger supportive diaspora which is now becoming  very widespread and for very obvious reasons.
 
Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry has responded that her investigation was on a “preconceived trajectory” and that her “prejudice and lack of objectivity” were unfortunate as she had conducted a worthless mission in the absence of the President from the country and only confronted the Tamil minority where the grievances of the rest of the country perhaps to suit  her own convenience was visibly overlooked once again pointing to her bias.
That the President’s decision is not  an attempt to ward off the UN investigators due to any apprehensions becomes very evident as he is simply exercising his prudence and perceptions as someone with the authority to rationally make choices which would not be detrimental to the well being of all Sri Lankans nor bow down to the puny intimidations of the likes of Navi Pillai as well as the tentative and at times seemingly confused vision of the UN Secretary General who also made his way into Sri Lanka sometime ago for  what he termed ascertaining facts but returned empty handed as there was nothing tangible to suggest that all the accusations against the Government were accurate.
 
To further consolidate its veracity Foreign Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris has been quoted as saying that  “Colombo-based Western diplomats may have been trying to gather evidence surreptitiously. Relatives of missing people had gone to the capital earlier this month for a meeting with diplomats.
I have mentioned it to ambassadors that this is not correct.  Colombo maintains that its troops did not commit war crimes while crushing the Tamil Tiger rebel movement at the end of a conflict which lasted more than three decades and claimed more than 100,000 lives,  a figure that has yet to be confirmed.The government has chosen the path to conduct and put togethr its own fact finding mission where there are appointees in a qualified capacity already looking into missing persons issues and to expand its work and investigate the actions of both troops and Tamil rebels. President Rajapakse has said  that he was naming two more foreign experts — an Indian and a Pakistani — to join three international legal experts already on a panel of advisers helping the presidential Commission of Inquiry.Indian rights activist Avdhash Kaushal and Pakistani lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi join British lawyers Desmond de Silva and Geoffrey Nice and US law professor David Crane.

The Britons and the American are former UN war crimes prosecutors.Rajapakse said he was willing to give even two more years to the commission to complete its work. The commission said it was probing 19,471 cases of missing persons as of Tuesday and completed hearings only in respect of 939 cases.The president denied that naming foreigners to the list merely as advisers amounted to a whitewash, saying the government was serious about investigating rights abuses.”We appointed these foreign experts because the commission itself asked for it. They (the commission) thought it would be helpful if we had these experts to advise them. In a government decree published last month it has been indicated that the commission would investigate the military’s adherence to or neglect… of laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law”.The commission is the latest investigation initiated by Colombo.

Experts and activists who had said that earlier attempts amounted to a whitewash therefore have no entitlements beyond their own apparently
misconceived conclusions towards fingerpointing at the Government of Sri Lanka where the UN Investigators spurred on by the likes of Navi Pillai are in  all probabilities better off finding other agendas better suited to their particular type of bias which too would get them nowhere as bias in every form is contentious and the President has surely got wind of this quite justifiably in order to deny access to the UN Investigators whose directions appear to be steeped in bias