Shenali D Waduge

 UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights & fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism Ben Emmerson has overstepped his line. Not only is he presenting factually incorrect statements he is making demands that exceed his & the UN mandate and are a violation of the spirit of the principles in the UN Charter. Is Ben Emmerson suited to be a UN envoy – accused of sexual assault, representing consensual same sex, having a law firm that defends war criminals which raises questions regarding the demands for foreign tribunals, foreign judges and foreign lawyers! Ben Emmerson does not have mandate to give orders to a sovereign country!

Article 2(7): Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter

http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/

UN and its envoys have been regularly violating protocols. Ben Emmerson is just one of the many officials seen flouting the UN Charter blatantly abusing the office and overstepping their mandate.

Having visited several prisons in Sri Lanka, Emmerson has made very unacceptable statements. Has this Ben Emmerson gone to meet the prisoners in West’s secret torture chambers to assess the impoverished conditions they are living in without even access to a lawyer?

When UNHRC head and other envoys come parroting of repealing the PTA we are very curious to know why? Why do they want to release hardcore LTTE cadres? Which Government wants to repeal terrorist laws just to make terrorists and their families happy? Where does the justice to the victims fit it in the agenda of these UN officials?

While the UN officials are ridiculing Sri Lanka’s military celebrations after defeating a terrorist movement banned in 32 countries, no one in the UN is asking why Allied Forces are celebrating Victory Day ever since 1945!

Didn’t the British PM recently say that she would shred all human rights laws to protect the British soldiers & she is continuing with this statement. While UN will issue no demarche against the British PM’s statement, the UN will turn the world against Sri Lanka if we said the same!

How come Emmerson has not made a single comment on why the government the West/India helped bring to power assuring good governance & better democracy is delaying holding elections – there has not been an election since August 2015!

• Iraq was invaded to get rid of the ‘dictator’ its been 14 years since and what has US/NATO achieved?
• 3.3 million Iraqiswere internally displaced after 2003 – what has the UN done about this? There are said to be 6000 US troops still in Iraq!
• Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 and the US/NATO continues to occupy it!
• 3 million Germans are said to have died after the end of World War 2, 2milion of those being German civilians!

The Sri Lankan government that came to power through regime change helped by West & India not surprising has gone and co-sponsored the UNHRC resolution, that still cannot hide or erase the question of the process of accountability being illegal – the core question being can a personally commissioned report (that covers only 3 months) by a controversial team appointed by the UN Secretary General be used by the UNHRC for investigations and drafting resolutions against a UN member state? This immediately brings to question is the UNSG above the UNSC and the UN General Assembly if he can take ad hoc selective decisions and raises the bias of his office!

Where are the evidence of war crimes to establish beyond doubt that a case for war crimes exist? The burden of proof rests with those making allegations. You cannot make allegations and demand people be put into prison and charged without proof simply because you produce some anonymous ‘witnesses’ whose identities are sealed for 20 years and a few edited drama documentaries!

None of the handful of items that have been flagged and flogged by these UN officials as war crimes need war crimes tribunals. The accusation of genocide of minimum 40,000 is without names and without dead bodies or even skeletons! How can there be murder without a dead body?

They can be easily dealt under existing local laws or be taken up at Universal Periodic Reviews of the UNHRC given that they are human rights law issues and covers after the war period where the applicability is to only one party!

Moreover, we learn that the UN is having a list of people they term ‘War Criminals’ WITHOUT any of them being even proved guilty. This is a violation of their fundamental rights for UN to be creating lists of names and having them circulated thus tarnishing their character.

Moreover, there can be no counter-terrorism measures without the investigation of people and organizations that indirectly helped LTTE ground force. LTTE ground force were funded and provided material support by people who were living overseas and even throughout Sri Lanka. These people include foreign governments, foreign intelligence, western-government funded NGOs & their local lackeys, Church NGOs, Missionaries, LTTE diaspora groups most of whom are foreign passport holders and camouflaged by registering themselves as charities and human rights groups. Then there is also the TNA and all of its members – their links to LTTE has to be investigated and cleared.

We need to also remind all those parroting reconciliation that the military effort was against TERRORISTS and not TAMILS. The question of reconciliation with Tamils doesn’t arise as we have no issues against Tamils. We only have issues against LTTE Terrorists and anyone who supports Terrorism and Separation. UN needs to clearly understand this.

• UN and its envoys cannot come to a sovereign country as a guest visitor and threaten the country.
• UN and its envoys cannot interfere in the domestic affairs of the country except provide guidelines and assistance which cannot be presented in the form of dictatorial orders!
• UN and its envoys cannot make demands to change legal systems in Sri Lanka.
• UN and its envoys cannot come making brash statements without proof. Most often UN officials think that they can sit behind a press conference table and use their mouths like machine guns making allegations and statements without anything to substantiate their statements! This is unethical and shows the arrogance of the UN Officials taking their role to their head!

Emmerson should know the damage of false allegations. He himself has been accused of sexually assaulting a person inside a lift. Though cleared, that incident will ever be shadowing him. Similarly, we do not want our war heroes to be unfairly subject to allegations sans proof and based on drama and propaganda as is seen happening via LTTE funds!

As for Emmerson, we learn he is the Founder Member of the London based Law Group Matrix Chambers” which includes Tony Blairs wife and incidentally it was this group that cleared him of the sexual assault! The law firm that he founded specializes in defending dissidents and terror suspects … very interesting!

(..Terrorist suspects, transsexuals, protesters – society’s dissidents and outsiders – are their meat and drink…”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/aug/04/ukcrime)

We also learn that in the late 1990s Emmerson represented Bolton 7, a group of men who had engaged in consensual group sex but were prosecuted for gross indecency under the Sexual Offence Act of 1967 when it was illegal for men to have sex with each other! He’s been a busy man! Probably we will next see calls to promote homosexuality inside the Army!

When bread talks I have often found that soldiers and commanders, with experience of the theatre of war, have greater respect for human life than the politicians who send them into battle,” Ben Emmerson QC – defending Ramush Haradinaj, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army who was acquitted of all charges after 2 years of trial for lack of ‘evidence’.

The acquittal was masked with witness intimidation allegations too. Serbian media claimed that Mr. Haradinaj’s acquittal was based on the ‘mafia style killing of witnesses.’  Haradinaj does not consider himself as a Muslim, he declared “For generations my family members were Catholics. I do not know why I am Muslim. I’ve never been in a mosque, nor ask for anything else”.

KLA has been likened in many ways to LTTE! Both are terrorists! Haradinaj as commander of KLA is equivalent to Prabakaran of LTTE.  After NATO intervention in 1999 – KLA became Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) just like LTTE became TNA!

Geoffrey Nice, a former ICTY judge said that the Haradinaj case is an embarrassment for the ICTY”, as several lawyers had advised Del Ponte and her colleagues that there is not enough evidence to prosecute.

Florence Hartmann former spokesperson of the ICTY declared The international courts were set up to do things that the domestic courts could not do, and instead of exercising these powers, the ICTY became yet another provincial court,”

So much for these ‘foreign judges and their evidence!’

Ben Emmerson has no mandate to be making orders and it is time the UN take stern action against their envoys who think they are sent to issue demarches against sovereign governments. The credibility of the UN and the hypocrisy the officials are making out of the UN Charter is seriously in question.

Shenali D Waduge